Total Plumbing and Construction

Mr. Smith not only did not complete the construction job for which he was contracted on my house, he signed a document that he would complete the job or give up all profit on the job if he did not finish the job. He was given an advance payment of $5000 based on this assurance to cover his shortfall in materials to complete the job.  He subsequently walked off the job and attempted to file a false lien on the job, which caused me significant issues in refinancing, but was cleared because it was untrue. He then changed the name of his business in an attempt to avoid the ramifications of his unprofessional actions. He did not respond as required to filing debt claims during the closing of his business. Although he may no longer be on Angie's list, we originally got his name from that service and no longer use it because of Mr. Smith's poor and unprofessional performance.  As part of the bathroom modification an expensive controller under his control and accountability went missing.  I determined later that he incorrectly powered the controller via extension cords. To this day, I don't know whether he damaged it by this action and then tossed it to cover his actions or whether he took other actions with it to disrupt my ability to complete the job. I do know that I had to go through great difficulty and expense to obtain another controller and finish the job. Mr. Smith also returned expensive marble slab I already paid for and kept the proceeds which were not his. On at least one occasion he launched his boat on the private lake behind our house without permission and fished with a friend when he was billing us for work on the house.  He did this at a time in which he was significantly behind schedule on the job.  The end date had to be extended several times because of his poor performance, almost causing me to lose the bank financing. I recommend anyone considering the use of this or any contractor check the FL DBPR records prior to signing any contract. I believe this job was above his ability and instead of doing the right thing by the customer and seeking help from the OEM, he chose to give the appearance of completing large proportion of the easy work and abandoning the most critical and valuable work.  This caused us great harm and expense. We completed the work with some of the same sub-contractors he used, even though he attempted to turn them away from the work. I will never use Total Plumbing and Construction I, II, or any other number he chooses to file his next business under.  Ask yourself why he would close a business and open an identical business with a similar name?

I am surprised to read the couple of terrible reviews about Total Plumbing and its owner, Jason Smith.  I had a much better experience.  I hired him to find and fix the leak under my house that was smelling of sewage and attracting bugs.  He did the fix under difficult circumstances and stopped the problem.  I then hired him to renovate my nasty, 50-year old kitchen.  He allowed me to do part of the work (sub-floor repair, tile and painting) which I knew how to do to save money, working with me on the scheduling so I could get it done in the midst of the other parts--his crew tore out the old cabinets, repaired and rewired everything, installed the new cabinets, and the trim work.  He recommended a good marble company for the countertops which we got at a decent price.  Jason only does the technical plumbing work--the rest of the renovation was done by one of his crews, and they were just great--super nice and very skilled and fun to talk to.  The work took a little over a month, but I think that was a reasonable time frame for the amount of work required.  My kitchen is now transformed and beautiful, with plentiful storage and counter-space, and we have decided to stay in this house a while longer and enjoy it.  It wasn't exactly cheap, even with the work I did myself, and I did get a surprise bill at the end that went a little over the estimate, but you get what you pay for and I couldn't be happier with my new kitchen.