News 12 at 6, January 14, 2009

JACKSON, SC--A Jackson man says a contractor doing repairs on his house stopped mid-job and the homeowner says he hasn't seen him since. And the homeowner says the contractor took a good portion of the money for the job with him.

So he called 12 On Your Side for help.

Jimmy Hopkins says his contractor pulled a disappearing act of sorts. Now he says most of his money is gone and the work is only halfway done.

You could say Jimmy is a bit irritated. First, a storm makes a mess of his house.

And then he says the contractor he hired to fix all the damage stopped showing up.

"He got another payment. I haven't seen him since," he said.

The back end of Jimmy's house suffered a bunch of damage in a storm last spring.

Once he got the insurance money, a friend referred him to Welsh Brothers Construction to get the job done. He and Brian Welsh worked out a list of things to be done.

Pretty soon, work got started, but just as soon as Jimmy says he made another payment, the work stopped altogether and despite repeated phone calls, he couldn't get in touch with Brian Welsh. He says the job was just around half done.

So he called 12 On Your Side for help.

We found Mr. Welsh pretty quickly. He didn't want to go on camera, but he apologized profusely saying that he had fallen on some tough times personally and professionally. He also said he'd get to work on the house as soon as possible.

For Jimmy, he understands the hard times, but he says he needs this job complete.

"Get it repaired," he said.

Welsh Brothers did call Jimmy to apologize and he said they also promise to get started as soon as possible.

We'll stay in touch to make sure the work gets done.

Lastly, Jimmy did everything we'd recommend on something like this. He got a contract, had a detailed list of repairs and even paid in increments. And he also was persistent when things went awry.