I can give the story. I'm not sure about reddit rules about posting personal info so I won't name the companies or people unless a mod tells me I can link to their site. I apologize in advance to anyone who actually knows about concrete as this whole thing will make me seem like a moron.

So here's the story. We decided to get a new stamped concrete patio. The old one was super uneven. We used a site that helps you get multiple bids from professionals. We got several bids, checked reviews (there were a couple really bad ones, but they seemed like outliers, most were great), looked at some pictures of previous work, and made our decision. We didn't pick the cheapest option. Ironically, as you'll see, we picked the one that offered the best warranty.

They started tearing out the old concrete and the first thing we noticed was their machinery tore out a bunch of overhead lights (some white bulb christmas lights strung overhead for ambiance). This was somewhat our fault, I wouldn't have expected them to take them down, but I would have expected them not to drive their machinery right into them. It was a foreshadowing.

Right after the old concrete was torn out, the guy called me in and told me that in order to prevent flooding, we would need to spring for a couple french drains. They would dig down and place a bucket/barrel and some gravel to collect water. Technically this made sense to me. The old patio had one inch spacers where water could drain, the new patio would be an impermeable surface. A french drain also made sense because the old patio didn't have any special draining, things just went into the ground. What seemed fishy was that this guy didn't realize on day 1 that he'd need to do something for proper drainage.

We selected a stamp and color. They tried to talk us out of the stamp since it would be cheaper to use no stamp (Italian slate). We ended up paying 250 extra for "stamp rental". We actually checked ahead of time with the guy to make sure he felt comfortable using the stamp. We wanted to make sure it was just a question of more time/labor, not expertise.

So they pour the patio. It looks pretty nice from far way, and we don't get too close while the color/powder is on it. They tell me the job is done. I say "what about sealing?". This guy "mike" says that the concrete comes pre-sealed, and the job is done. But if I want the concrete to look really good I can pay extra and leave a good review and he'll do something called "wash and shine". I'm sure anyone who knows concrete is groaning right now. He was really charging me $500 extra to seal the concrete. $500 for a job that uses maybe $100 worth of materials and takes almost no time, and which was really part of the original job.

They eventually do the sealant. I literally was home and didn't see them do it, so I know they spent < 20 minutes.

Let's talk about the job so far. There are bootprints in the concrete. The corners are atrocious. The stamp is barely visible in some parts because the concrete got too hard before they finished. The sealant literally stops 6 inches away from the edges and they decided not to seal an area where my hose was. Also my yard is torn up from their machinery. They told us their equipment would leave "an impression" instead it looks like a big truck peeled out in our yard. They killed a huge swath of grass where they piled the dirt and didn't properly remove it afterwards.

I paid them in full, because I'm an idiot. Figured the concrete was done and the seal and cleanup was a quick job. Had to make the check out to a different company name, which I did, because I'm an idiot.

But at this point they were supposed to come back and do a 2nd coat of "shine". They are supposed to clean up the yard. Things are getting a little tense, and during one phone call this guy starts yelling at my wife and telling her to "shut up!".

We didn't like the job that much, but I'm still being Mr. Nice Guy. We figure if they do what they said they would do, we'll enjoy our new patio and whatever. Maybe we'll leave a bad review. He starts delaying the 2nd coat of seal (we have a deadline) and I start to put a little pressure on him, asking for firm dates when he'll do X and Y. He claims he doesn't even need to do a 2nd coat of "shine". That was just out of the goodness of his heart and for a good review. I snap a little and start sending him pictures of the bootprints and clearly visibly shoddy work. I'm pissed, but all I want is for him to come out and finish the damn job and get out of our lives. He stops responding to my calls.

Then it rains, and our house floods. It turned out that the patio sloped towards my house and alot of the water didn't drain towards the drains he put in (not that it would have mattered, but more on that later).

I'm not sure who to call. He won't respond. Talk to my home insurance, but it's pretty clear that they won't cover it.

This guy won't give me his contractor license number, or information about his insurance. These are things I should have checked beforehand, but I'm an idiot. Basically the only thing I know about this guy is the name he goes by, a phone number, and a business that only seems to exist on 2 sites. I start going into internet sleuth mode. Like, I assume, many on this sub I know how to google.

His company doesn't really exist. The person who supposedly owns the company is either fictitional or died a decade ago. The only real info I can find about his company
is 2 denied contractors licenses on my state website.

So I keep sleuthing, but I also try to take advantage of the "guarantee" offered by the website that we found him through, a lawyer I talked to thought that was the best course of action too. I initiate a dispute process on the website, which consists of me writing lots of documentation and demands for this guy to "come up with a plan and timeline to fix the flooding". He of course doesn't respond.

So I started to uncover more nuggets of info. I analyzed every bit of info I had, which wasn't much. I started reverse image searching his work samples. I discovered those were stolen from a company halfway across the country. So I guess now I understand why is work is so much crappier than the samples he gave us.

I follow up on every lead I can find. The company that runs the concrete truck has a record of the pour, I was supposed to get a copy for warranty purposes. I start calling concrete truck companies and the very first one I call is a hit. They look the guy up by phone # and get a hit that matches the name he gave me and the name of the company I wrote my check to. They can't give me any more info, but at least I've connected his fairy tale to the outside world.

He bragged at one point about doing an entire street near my house. Said I could go look at it. I find the neighborhood he was talking about and start knocking on doors. Amazingly people are super nice and helpful. Nicer than I would have been to a 30 year old man in a EFF hacker hoodie knocking on my door. First person says they bought their house from their neighbor, who built everything. I go to their house and only a woman and her grand daughter are there. They invite me in and she tells me that she doesn't recognize the name of my contractor, they always use a guy named "ofa". I give them my phone # but they never call me back. I find out later that it's likely there was a connection between my guy and "ofa" but I drop it. Ofa didn't do anything wrong.

This is becoming a bit of an obsession, I haven't cracked the case to find who this guy is so that I can potentially take him to small claims court. Finally one night around midnight as I'm going to bed I make a breakthrough. I found a few people on facebook who claimed to work for the company I paid. They were usually young men, and from their feeds it seemed like they were in the construction industry. Many of them had the same last name.

Somehow I think to move my search from the state professional licensing search engine to the business license. I get a hit. There's no phone number and the name seems to be fake, but there's an address. I start going through ownership records for that property and see that the owner of the business has this same common last name. I also see that about 15 other people with the same last name have lived at this house at one point or another. I search for their last name and most of the hits are for some brutal gang murders. I'm a little worried I'm chasing down a crime family.

I randomly google $fake_first_name $lastname and I see a picture in google images. A mugshot. I'm 80% certain this is the guy. I don't even know why his image showed up because the first name was fake. But now I have his real first name and last name. I look at his rap sheet (my state has a right to know site). Boom. Decades of construction related fraud. Oh, and identity theft, assault, child abuse, and kidnapping. I learn that just like sex offenders, kidnappers have to register. There's an updated picture and a description of his vehicle. I'm now 100% sure I've found the guy and as a bonus if I ever need to serve him papers he'll be easy to find. Because he has to publish his address publicly or go to jail for failing to register. I'm a little scared, I'll admit it. I thought I was going after a slimeball, but now I'm going after a hardened violent criminal who as far as I can tell works in the family business of crime. When I google his last name all I see is news stories about a couple notorious gang members. I try to relax a little. Hopefully kidnapping "just" was some sort of custody dispute. And assault could be one drunken fight a decade ago. But I have to be careful.

Now that I know he's breaking the law, who he is, and that he's doing it again, I go to the police. They don't care. They first claim it's civil, but then later understand and say maybe I should talk to the department of public licensing or attorney general. This was eye opening for me. I assumed when people were breaking the law you went to the cops, but I understand the broader picture a little more. Makes sense though. It's like a health code violation. It's not a civil matter, but you don't call the cops if you find a rat in your soup.

So now we have the info needed to go after this guy, and we send it all to the company with the "guarantee". We figure hey, if flooding our house and sending a kindapper over doesn't quality for the guarantee what does? I understand they might not be legally responsible for much, but they want people to trust their service. They don't want horror stories about this kind of thing in "the gig economy" and "the sharing economy"  getting out. We get a response from them pretty quickly. They got in touch with contractor. He yelled and threatened them. They shut down the guys account and charge his credit card for the full amount of the job (several pros told us we needed a complete repour) and gave it to us. They were only able to get some of the money before maxing his credit card but it was a pretty good start. Probably enough to make us avoid going to court. They ended up paying personally for some more of the damage (the guarantee doesn't cover the work but it does cover damage). So we came out on top.

We thought that was it but there was a post script. I re-vamped out cameras and checked they were all recording, and then things settled down for a few days. I focused on getting bids for fixing the concrete and the yard. We finally worked out a solution to create a new channel drain with a covered grate and drain that into an existing drain. Should have been pretty simple to do assuming the original concrete was done correctly they could connect the new channel to the old drain by taking a hose through gravel.

But why would I assume the original concrete was done correctly? As they dig into it they see that he didn't put a gravel/road base under the concrete like you're supposed to. The concrete is super thin (2 inches) because they didn't feel like digging through tree roots. So that meant in order to finish the job they had to cut a new channel to the drain.

But why would I assume the drain was done correctly? Turns out this asshole stuck a 3 inch pipe in the mud, put a grate over it, and called that a french drain. He completed one of the 2 drains he told me he would do. I assume that he didn't want to dig through tree roots to do the 2nd drain. So now I have to pay for more demolition and a proper french drain. In a way I'm not even mad. This drain is a key part of my plan to not have a flooded house and if I have to pay a real professional to know it's done right, I'm ok with that.

So to recap. Fake name. Fake business. Fake reviews (he held work hostage for good reviews). Fake work samples. Likes through his teeth about the job and floods my house. Everything you can see was crap work and it turns out everything we couldn't see was crap work too. I've reported this guy to all the websites he advertises on and my state professional licensing division. The sad thing is the most I can expect is he'll get charged again. Change his name and business, and he'll be back doing this again next summer.

Lessons learned? Check their license number and proof of insurance. Online reviews aren't really reliable anymore, word of mouth is best. Try and learn as much about the job as you can beforehand so you can at least sanity check some of their bullshit.

My biggest lesson? Don't be a pushover. If you let people push, some of them will push hard enough that you have to take action. If I'd been a bit more of a hardass we wouldn't have thought he could get away with so much. I didn't want to wipe this guy's business from the face of the earth and drag his name through the mud. If we would have showed up and tried to fix my flooding he could have gone on being a dipshit with no consequences, but we all have a line that we won't cross. For me, that was water in my house.