If you would normally give good feedback online, then you should give honest feedback.

Destroy him, completely

honest feedback, no moral issue that i can see.

I do feel rather vindictive and want to see him not do this to others but a little bit of me thinks maybe as a young guy with a new business who had real issues at least in part due to things outside his control then he should get a bit more sympathy.

I am a bit conflicted 🙂

Give feedback – briefly explain the situation and allow others to make their own mind up.

Just give a fair balanced review, state what happened, if you feel the need balance that with your assessment of what the issue was and that it wasn’t malicious, just incompetence…

I’m on the let it slide / give him sympathy side.

You say you think he’s not dishonest and just got in a pickle and tried to blag, badly – I’d base any moral decision on that.

Add to the fact he’s young and just starting out, he’ll either learn from this (i.e,don’t rob Peter etc), or he won’t – if the former, his livelihood will hopefully take-off and if the latter, there will be plenty of negative reviews to follow anyhow 🙂

Edit: I wouldn’t go for the factual / balanced thing either personally – I’d just say nothing.

Now the moral question is do I put out online the issues I had with him to help others know what he can be like?

I wouldn’t, when I get my money back it stops there. We’re all on a learning curve, and what he’s learned from dealing with you is enough IMO.

Ta for your thoughts chaps

I’d give honest feedback, if people were only supposed to give good feedback then how do you weed out the scammers, idiots and incompetent?

I’ve given business to places that you can see have had bad feedback but have subsequently got themselves together. Similarly where I stay there are a multitude of tradesmen with endless glowing reviews (including the effing herpes delivery) that previous form tells me I wouldn’t trust them to run a bath never mind a professional business.

“he’s obviously busy and after some delays we agreed to cancel the job. I did get my money back”

I might well still book him if he was doing good work but I’d consider myself forewarned

I’ve fallen foul of similar with someone doing work on my car. Turned out a year or so later that a large number of people also had, but had also given him the benefit of the doubt, and the colossal prick had the gift of the gab, and had **** a lot of people over. I was kicking myself for not publicly giving him shit.