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For her, remodel became her rage

When the contractor hired by a St. Petersburg woman didn’t finish her addition, she started hammering away — at him.

By IVAN PENN
Published July 29, 2006

Debbie Rowe wanted to expand her St. Petersburg home to take in and care for her aging mother, a widow and Alzheimer’s patient.
She had hoped a contractor could do the work quickly and help ease her mother’s move from Ohio . In January 2005, she called Jack Quick Construction Inc., of Pinellas Park, a company referred by a friend.

Rowe said she found company owner Jack B. Quick to be nimble when it came to getting her money. But despite pledges that he would be done in three months, she says the contractor has been anything but quick.

“He’s destroyed my house,” said Rowe, 52, while sitting in her living room, beneath her leaky roof. “I don’t have the resources to finish it.”

As the popularity of renovating and expanding homes has grown, many consumers looking to improve their piece of the American dream have found themselves trapped in a nightmare. State and local officials say part of the trouble comes from unlicensed contractors, but even the licensed ones are racking up complaints for unfinished or shoddy work.

Today, three out of four construction complaints are related to such issues as contractors failing to complete projects or subpar construction, according to the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Deborah Berry, chief investigator for the Pinellas County Department of Justice and Consumer Services said Quick is one of a growing number of contractors locally under investigation after homeowners complained they paid thousands of dollars without ever seeing their projects completed.

“In the last five years, there’s been a huge problem with these contractors completing these jobs,” she said.

Quick, 53, declined to discuss Rowe’s case or the five other complaints against him from customers in Pinellas and Hillsborough. “My attorney has advised me at this time not to comment. We will settle it in court, and after that we will comment.”

In Pinellas, the number of criminal investigations of grand theft and unlicensed contracting increased more than two-fold from 2000 to 2005, reaching 296 last year.

“It’s hard to keep up,” Berry said. “It’s unbelievable.”

In Hillsborough County, the investigations of contractor fraud are handled by various agencies. The Hillsborough counterpart to Berry’s office began conducting criminal investigations in 2001, but the county has not centralized statistics about such cases.

Kevin Jackson, chief investigator for the Hillsborough County Consumer Protection and Professional Responsibility Agency, said his office, the police and Sheriff’s department and local building code investigators are increasingly targeting fraudulent contractors.

“I think it’s a problem on both sides of the bay,” Jackson said.

With the growing the number of complaints have come several high-profile convictions, including Raymond E. Orlando, dubbed the

“Cabinet Bandit,” and Mark M. Langley, the “Pool Shark,” who each stole more than $200,000 from Pinellas homeowners.

And there are repeat offenders such as Steven J. Kelly, 51, who was previously convicted of theft and unlicensed contracting in Hillsborough and is facing fresh charges of fraudulent contracting by multiple agencies, including the sheriff’s department and the consumer protection agency, Jackson said.

Quick’s customers said they ran his name through either the Better Business Bureau or the Pinellas County Department of Justice and Consumer Services and found either no complaints or a loan incident that was resolved in 2004.

Quick has had his contracting license since 1995.

Rowe is among a half-dozen customers in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties who filed complaints against Quick alleging he pressed them to pay thousands of dollars without finishing — or even starting — the jobs over periods as long as three years.

Rowe said she gave Quick $30,000  for a job he said would cost $95,000.

In response to Rowe’s complaint to the Pinellas County Construction Licensing Board, Quick said delays in the project were the result of changing orders and interference  by the homeowner.

“It’s my belief that Ms. Rowe has told a series of untruths about this whole project from beginning till now,” Quick wrote March 19, echoing similar responses that he made about allegations from other customers.

Angela Marie Cannon, Quick’s daughter and an employee of his company, filed for a temporary injunction against Rowe last week. Cannon has asked the Pinellas County Circuit Court to prevent Rowe from seeing her, Quick or any of his customers because Rowe “is full of rage and very unpredictable.”

The court reviewed the petition when it was filed and ruled that there was “not a sufficient factual basis” to grant it without a hearing. A hearing has been scheduled.

Interviews and documents filed with Pinellas County show the complaints against Quick also include:

• Linda Sackett, 58, a St. Petersburg resident who has paid Quick $49,300 to construct a two-bedroom, two-bath addition to her home. Construction began in March 2003 but has yet to be completed;
• Krista L. Rauch, a 49-year-old lieutenant with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, entered a contract with Quick in July 2003 and paid him $24,150 for the renovation of a bedroom and addition of a dining room and a utility room for her Gulfport home. Rauch said Quick never finished the project, so she hired another contractor for an additional $13,000 to complete it;
• David J. Miller, a 27-year-old accountant, said he paid Quick $9,000 to renovate a small investment property. Virtually nothing was done and he was forced to sell it at about the $65,000 purchase price without any work or refund, Miller said;
• Byron Nelson, 55, a Plant City environmental consultant, who paid Quick about $15,690 to add an addition onto his business. Quick performed about $3,000 of the $72,500 job before Nelson hired another company to finish, Nelson said.
• Donna Myers, a St. Petersburg resident who wanted a garage and utility room added to her house. Myers said she paid $5,900 on a $17,700 job that Quick never finished. She left it undone.

“It’s terrible,” said Myers, 51. “I would hate to see him do this to someone else.”

Virtually all of the customers described Quick as an affable man who always seemed sincere when entering an agreement. But after the contract was signed, they said Quick would begin to increase the project’s cost, often saying that the price of materials was rising.

“The way he comes off, he’s very smooth,” said Miller, the accountant. “I took him to dinner with my family.” Nelson, Miller’s former father in-law, also was impressed with how Quick presented himself and asked him to do some work for him.

Nelson said he recorded just nine appearances by Quick or his workers over a year’s time, and the only part of the project they completed was the installation of a footer to support the foundation for the new addition to his business’ building.

“We would go weeks and weeks at a time and never see anybody,” Nelson said. He finally hired another company last November to do the work. They finished in about eight months.

Gary White, an assistant state’s attorney in Pinellas who specializes in fraud cases, said consumers should be cautious of contractors who appear exceedingly charming.

“It’s their ability to deceive people” that leads consumers to fall prey to them, White said. “They become like family. They seem like really great guys.”

Miller and several of the others said they never would have raised a fuss about Quick if it were not for Rowe. She found them through county construction permits and word of mouth, after becoming increasingly frustrated.

Rowe said she never imagined that her life would go this way when she assumed taking care of her mother three years ago.

Rowe’s father died in 1995 and her older sister, and only sibling, died in 2000. By early 2003, Rowe noticed that her mother’s memory was slipping, and became alarmed because of a family history of Alzheimer’s.

With few options other than a nursing home, Rowe decided to move her mother 900 miles to St. Petersburg. “I always promised my parents that they would never have to go into a home,” Rowe said.

She packed up her mother’s belongings and moved her into Rowe’s two-bedroom, one-bath house, crowding virtually every room.

Rowe thought the inconvenience would be temporary while Quick added another bedroom, sitting room and wheelchair accessible bathroom.

“The reason I went with him, he assured me he could finish in three months,” Rowe said.

Quick started demolition, but his appearances tapered off, she said.

Now growing short on funds, Rowe wonders how she’ll ever piece her home together again. “I’m so leery of contractors in this county, I wouldn’t hire a one of them right now,” she said.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Ivan Penn covers consumer affairs issues and can be reached at ipenn@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2332.

[Last modified July 29, 2006, 21:21:45]