On February 4th, we had a huge snow storm. I went to snow blow my driveway and discovered my snowblower had died. My wife had an important medical appointment to get to so I scrambled to find someone who could plow us out.
I found his information on Nextdoor and, to his credit, he was incredibly responsive and was at my house within 20 minutes of first contact. I felt very relieved. But things went quickly downhill.
After he left, I discovered large mounds of snow were left in front of four critical places: my front steps leading out of the house, the two garage bays, the doorway to the garage, and my mailbox. The snow by the front steps and the garage doorway required climbing over. Had I or my wife been disabled or elderly, we would have been unable to get out of our house. See the pictures I've included.
Thankfully, we are young and healthy, so I was willing to quietly grumble about the bad job and just move on. But the kicker came next.
He emailed an invoice for $190.31, which was $175 plus tax. I was shocked. I had previously had my driveway plowed for $30 (this was a few years ago and almost certainly a smaller storm, but still, I wasn't expecting anything over $100 at the absolute most). My driveway is not huge. I'm terrible at estimating distances so I won't try, but we're not that far back from the road.
I'm conflict-adverse so I wasn't sure what to do next, but I figured I have time. The due date on the invoice is 3/6.
An hour later, he texts telling me to pay the invoice. I won't recount the whole conversation; I included screenshots here that you can read. But the highlights are that he **harassed** and **threatened me** into paying immediately. I have a small child and I don't know this man who now knows where I live. I was honestly scared.
He told me to get a quote from someone else to show that his price was reasonable. I did exactly that and the other contractor quoted me $75.
Do yourself a favor and avoid this man. I wish I had. read more