Ma - Contractor Took $2,000 Deposit, Abandoned Job For 5 Weeks, Now Sending Retroactive Invoice After My 93a Demand Letter

Location: Boston, Massachussets.

I hired an HVAC contractor for repairs. On October 23, his technician came out, assessed the problem, and partially dismantled the system (3 hours of work) and discovered several issues. The next day, the owner asked for a $2,000 deposit to proceed with repairs. I paid via PayPal.

No written contract, no estimate, no scope of work, no timeline, just a text asking for the money. My bad. I trusted them.

Over the next five weeks, I texted repeatedly asking when they'd return. Every response was "next week" or "tomorrow." or ignored altogether. Meanwhile my upstairs had no heat and the system sat partially dismantled and exposed to the elements.

When I pressed harder in early December, he responded: "I talked to my brother and he said no one is going to try and remedy that like we will they will just want to do a whole new system". That felt like coercion.

On December 5, I gave up and asked for my deposit back. The owner agreed to refund it "less the last call we just came out on 11/19" (a brief visit where his tech checked the other system, found nothing wrong, and left. That system kept failing afterward and is now throwing error codes).

I asked him directly: "How much is the service call?" He refused to answer.

I sent a 93A demand letter on December 9 asking for a full refund of $2000 with the following complaint:

"accepting a large deposit without any written contract or estimate, failing to start or perform the work, leaving equipment exposed and partially dismantled for weeks, ignoring repeated attempts to schedule the work, imposing an undisclosed fee, refusing to disclose the amount of the fee, providing no documentation or invoice, and mischaracterizing our written conversations".

A week later, I received a check for $1,484.06 along with an invoice charging me $516 for labor, a diagnostic fee, nitrogen gas, and the service call.

Here's the problem: the invoice is completely fabricated after the fact. It's dated September 19, but it includes charges for work done on October 23 and a service call on November 19. He created this invoice after receiving my 93A letter to justify keeping my money.

He's charging $300 for three hours of labor on a job he abandoned for five weeks and never completed. He's charging $100 for a "diagnostic" that I thought was supposed to be an estimate before the real work started. He's charging $15 for nitrogen gas that was never disclosed. And he's charging $100 for a service call fee he refused to tell me the price of when I asked directly.

None of these charges existed until I demanded my money back. His own text said he'd deduct "the last call"—one item. Now suddenly it's $516 across five line items.

I'm rejecting the partial refund and proceeding to small claims for the full $2,000 plus treble damages under 93A.

Am I on solid ground here? The retroactive invoice, lack of any written contract, and pattern of conduct feel like clear violations to me, but I want a reality check before I make a fool of myself.