Authentic Cabinet Works

We wish someone would have warned us about Authentic Cabinet Works. We had a horrible experience, never received the cabinet we hired Authentic Cabinet Works to build for us (in spite of the fact that we paid 50% of the cabinet’s price up front), and ultimately ended up having to sue Authentic Cabinet Works in small claims court. It was a major hassle and an extremely frustrating experience. After it became clear to us that Authentic Cabinet Works was not going to be able to build the cabinet we hired it to build, we tried to compromise to resolve the dispute short of going to court. That did not work, though, and the company and its owner told us that we would «let a judge sort it out». We largely won our case against this company (the Court ordered the company to pay us half of the amount we had paid Authentic Cabinet Works up front, so it was not a full victory – and of course we still don’t have a cabinet), but, as of this writing, it still has not paid us the judgment that the Court ordered it to pay. This statement by Authentic Cabinet Works that a Court should decide – and the company’s failure to pay us in spite of what the Court did decide – exemplifies our experience with this company. A little more detail is in the paragraph below, if you are interested:
We hired Authentic Cabinet Works to build a cabinet for our condo back in the winter of 2014. Authentic Cabinet Works missed the initial deadline for finishing the project and never ended up completing the project. We had a really difficult time working with this company because it felt like Authentic Cabinet Works never understood any of the details or specifics about the cabinet. Every time we emailed with the owner about the cabinet, we found ourselves having to start over and discuss aspects of the cabinet that we thought we’d already talked about – color, furnishings, fixtures, etc. It felt to us like Authentic Cabinet Works was not paying any attention to the things we had said during our months of emails, phone calls and meetings. In addition, it seemed to us like Authentic Cabinet Works could never keep track of any of the details about the project. It was really frustrating to have to constantly be having to go over the same ground. We tried to be patient, we communicated about the same aspects of the cabinet numerous times and we were even ok for a while with the company finishing the project later than it had said it would finish. Eventually, though, it became clear that Authentic Cabinet Works was not going to produce what we hired it to produce. We tried to come up with a compromise, but Authentic Cabinet Works was not interested in compromising. After we suggested that the company just return our downpayment (and that it could keep what it had built thus far), the owner wrote, «there is no scenario where I would ever refund any money for work that has been done». So we ultimately felt like we had no choice but to go to small claims court. That was a pain too and, since Authentic Cabinet Works still has not paid us our money back, we are now stuck having to enforce the judgment against the company in collections. That is also a major hassle. We just can’t say strongly enough what a terrible experience this has been.