Rod Hardister calls himself a contractor. I call him a liar, thief, and a lot of other things I can't type here- here's why:

In early 2010 I posted an ad on bidclerk.com for a flooring job in my Dallas home. Mr. Hardister aggressively pursued my project with phone calls and emails, and offered to undercut every other respondent's bid. I did a search on him and found nothing bad, so I hired him for the offered $1300. He asked for an upfront advance of half the project price, but I thought that was too much since he wasn't providing any materials, so I instead agreed to give him a more modest advance of $200. He also stipulated that his low bid was dependent on starting work quickly to 'fill a gap' in his schedule, so I took four days off work to accommodate that. He and a worker showed up on the agreed date, we signed the contract, and I gave him the advance. Upon receiving the advance his companion immediately departed 'to get help' and never came back; Mr. Hardister also left about an hour later after unloading some materials, and promised to get his crew properly sorted by the next day. He showed up late and alone the next day claiming that he'd been stood up by his crew again, and that he couldn't work himself because his child had a doctor's appointment he'd forgotten about. I was very unhappy at this point, and let him know that I'd want a refund and he'd be fired if he left me hanging again; he promised to make good the day after next. On that day he didn't even bother to show up, and when I tried to contact him I received a text message from someone claiming to be his wife that he was in the hospital. I gave him notice that he was fired and I wanted a refund of my advance, and he agreed that he would provide a refund, but in reality all I got for the next month were increasingly ridiculous excuses with no end in sight.

At that point I asked bidclerk to help me resolve the matter with him, and to their credit they sent in the cavalry pronto! They froze his account until he ponied up the refund, and then he cooperated real quick, so big thanks to bidclerk (and BTW, all the other contractors I've hired through them have been great). It's clear that Mr. Hardister never would have given me my refund willingly, and other reviewers state that his work is shoddy when he bothers to do it anyway. So in short, STAY AWAY!!!