Doug Bell 3rd General Contractor Services

A COMPLETE NIGHTMARE.  DO NOT USE THIS CONTRACTOR.  YOU WILL REGRET IT!  In July 2022, we hired Douglas and his “company” to pour concrete in our walkway, driveway and sidewalk.  We gave him a down payment at this time.  A very large job for ONE man to accomplish on his own.  First, to be clear, I would NOT have hired him had I known he was a one-man show.  The contract stated that the job would be completed in 6 or 7 days.  He was supposed to start in August but pushed back the job to September.  He pushed back the job several times before he started.  Once he started the job, we were required to give him another 25% of the total payment.  He disappeared.  Left big chunks of concrete in front of our house for 2 weeks.  No call, no show, no return calls.  Finally, we heard from him with an excuse.  He completed another section of the job.  We gave him another payment.  Disappeared again.  No call, no show, ghosted us.  Weeks later came back, with yet another excuse, poured the sidewalk.  A complete mess.  The sidewalk was squiggly because he used cheap materials, per the Inspector.  Oh and I forgot to mention, he failed inspection for the driveway.  The Village put the sticker on our door that he failed the inspection, but he poured the concrete anyway.  When he finally met with the village inspector they were arguing because Doug did not do what he was supposed to do but continue to give the inspector excuses stating he had pictures.  Well pictures is not what is required, the inspector has to see the job before he pour the concrete.  To speed this story up, it took Douglas 3 months to complete the job.  We insisted that he repour the areas that he messed up.  Had to wait until the following year.  When he broke up the areas he had to repour, he damaged the good sections.  He attempted to cover cracks that he made in the concrete and had a power wash guy come and “attempt” to smooth it over to see if that would suffice.  Well, the power wash guy power washed the surface of the concrete off.  We have permanent circles and lines throughout the entire concrete he poured except the approach.  We were left with 5 different colors of concrete.  Every time he poured a section, he would wait at least 3-4 weeks to pour the next section, which led him to using a different color concrete.  The village inspector told us not to allow him to come back, that he is incapable of doing a professional job and to request a portion of our money back.  Which we did and Doug agreed to do.  Now we are going on 2 years in July that we have been dealing with Doug.  We have tried to reason with him, we had a Pastor as a mediator speak with us and try to reason with Doug to do the right thing.  Every agreement Doug made with us he broke.  We have yet to receive all our money HE agreed to pay back.  We are left with damaged concrete that will have to be replaced because its cracked.  And once again, he is ghosting us.  Lastly, Doug has a business account and a personal account.  When we made the check out to the business account, he came back and asked my husband to write it to the personal account so he would not have to wait 10 days for the money to be released.  Looking at the complaints against him, it is possible that he had a lien on his business account.  My husband told me this later.  I would not have agreed to this because we could have least stopped payment on the check.  Even the inspector told us, he hoped we did not pay him in full.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.  A COMPLETE NIGHTMARE.  DO NOT USE THIS CONTRACTOR.  YOU WILL REGRET IT!