Refresh Renovations Phoenix - Rick Maddox

My wife and I hired Rick to do a major renovation of our home (all bathrooms, garage, kitchen, laundry room, floors, etc.) in February of 2022. Our initial meetings with Rick in January 2022 were great. He was very responsive, friendly, and communicative. That was until we signed a contract with him and paid a $4000 permit retainer. As soon as we paid Rick the communication and proactiveness disappeared. To summarize the details below, it was a nightmare of 8 months just to get a permit approved by the city.
We were told he would have the initial plans ready for us within 2 weeks. It took over 6 weeks and multiple follow-ups just to get him to provide a draft of the remodel design which had numerous mistakes. The following day we sent an email with a list of all the mistakes that needed to be fixed including measurement corrections that I had to take myself.
3 weeks later and no word from Rick, I follow up to check and he indicates that he will be submitting the plans end of the week (April 12th). After many more follow-ups and involving the Refresh Renovations corporate we finally get him to submit the plans to the city on May 13th, 3+ months from signing the contract. Note, the contract indicated that the project would start in mid-April.
The plans that were submitted were riddled with issues and required THREE rounds of corrections! We finally got the permit approved at the beginning of October. Rick provided excuse after excuse throughout the whole process. I have worked with dozens of contractors in the past and Rick and Refresh Renovations were BY FAR THE WORST!
We canceled the build contract and have found much better professionals to complete the elements of the renovation.

We got a qoute for our project November 2021. It took months to get through permits, etc through the city. I realize this is not their fault. It turned out to be almost over $20k over their quote!! For a rooftop patio!! A roof top patio that we were told would take about 6 weeks to complete. Obviously it took way longer....We are now in January of 2023!! We had so many hold ups. Lumber prices went up, we had 3 different electricians out here, so many things came up over and over again. People in and out of our yard for months. My office is in my backyard and I couldn't work from there for months. I understand projects can cause issues but this was way over the top. We asked for deadlines and they were all missed over and over again. We had cracks, leaking, and then our travertine was flooded. They said it was a home owner issue, but my husband took work off that day and took pictures of everything.Turns out someone didn't cap a pipe from months ago and caused a leak in our yard that's been going on for months. We paid for that for months. We weren't given a disount for ANYTHING! I was so unhappy with how everything was handled. We waited days and weeks for issues to get fixed and no apologies. We paid throughout the process and when we owed our last payment, we were contacted to get it resolved immediately. We have several other projects that we want to do for our house but will never do this again with this company. If you make a mistake or over promise...make up for it. You FAILED!