Michaels Painting Plus

I found Michael’s Paint on Craigslist in 2012. We hired Mike to paint our very small apartment on 42^nd Street (2 bedroom, & kitchen). He charged over $ 2,000 which I was later told by others when it came time to repaint that the price was absurd but beyond that (and this is the part that is completely my own fault) because Mike was such a friendly, nice guy, we had got to chatting a little and about a month later he texted me asking to lend him $ 500 to hold him over because business had been so bad and he couldn’t find work. Because I had planned on using him again to paint our bathroom or do some work in there eventually it didn’t occur to me that this was extremely unprofessional and I said «sure no problem» — he came and got the cash and swore up and down to pay me back within a month, apologizing profusely. Well… about a month later I texted him asking if he’d pay me back and he said the same thing, business had been so terrible, etc… he asked for more time, I said sure. Six months went by, a year… every time I asked about the money it was the same story. So now it’s been almost 3 years and I realize I fell victim to a scam artist, however, in all fairness, it was entirely my fault for being so naïve and not talking to my son’s father about this before stupidly withdrawing the money. Lesson learned! In the future we’ll use someone whose business isn’t struggling to the point that they have to scam their own customers out of money and hopefully this review spares someone else this same lesson though I doubt anyone else would be as naïve/​trusting as I was.
Oh and as far as the quality of the paint job, it was OKAY, but for that price, I would’ve expected it to have been above and beyond — instead there were constantly little jokes being made about how high maintenance and perfectionistic I was — which, at the time we could laugh about but in hindsight, was actually sort of annoying considering the amount we were paying.