State plans to ask judge to keep banning unlicensed Charlotte contractor

CHARLOTTE — Sean Price wanted a screened-in porch. He told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke he paid Canary General Contracting more than $4,400 to get started, but that the company never did the job.

“Putting me off and putting me off and give me excuse after excuse,” Price said.

Now it’s more than a year later.

“He never gave me anything back. Never did any of the work,” he said. “It feels really bad to work hard for your money and then you want work done and none of the work got done at all.”

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein told Stoogenke he’s received 15 complaints against Canary. Stein sued the company and the two people who allegedly ran it. He claims they took customer’s money but didn’t do the work and that -- when they did do work -- it was often “shoddy, unsafe, and not up to code.”

He says Canary left projects “in such disarray” that consumers had to give up on them or hire other contractors to “redo much of the work.”

“We have had too many complaints from too many Charlotteans who’ve given too much money to this company that has not delivered the work,” Stein said.

Stein also says -- and Action 9′s research confirmed -- the defendants aren’t licensed contractors. You need a license in North Carolina if you take on projects larger than $40,000. Stein says they did do that without a license.

Stein won a temporary restraining order against the business, banning it from doing any home repair work in the state.

He plans to ask a judge Monday for a preliminary injunction to keep that ban going.

Eventually, he would like the judge to:

• Cancel any Canary contracts customers want out of.
• Make Canary give those consumers money back.
• Fine the company $5,000 per violation.

Stoogenke texted and emailed the company but hadn’t heard back in time for this report.

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