Bennington Arkansas
My grandparents and mother were originally from Bennington Arkansas, a medium sized town in North Arkansas. Why my grandparents decided to set roots in this godforsaken town is beyond me. Harold and Jane Mavelly, my mother's parents, spent the majority of their lives in Bennington. My grandfather was a high school history teacher for 30 years while my grandmother worked in a bank for those 30 years beginning as a teller and promoted to banker by her retirement at age 65.
I can go into the history later but for now I want to explain why I lay to claim this town has zero redeemable qualities and I say it is godforsaken. When my grandparent's house, Grand, was in limbo we had several people do work for us in Bennington to refurbish it prior to selling which turned into getting ripped off every second in any way possible, all by the locals.
It began when we needed a locksmith to replace the front door and garage door locks which really I should have done myself, but instead my sister somehow found some very low quality individual that charged us $60 for 5 minutes of work. He had his young son with him so I wanted the father to use that money on his kid so I just paid them in full. After I left Grand I shut and locked the door like usual and headed back to Rochester. When I returned a week later the front door was open because the strike plate didn't line up with the opposing closing part. My sister ended up having to hire someone else with a better background to fix this man's mistakes and we were already out $60 before going with an actual company that charged and additional $120
The people we paid to mow our lawn I paid the worker on site $100, and it was on our ring doorbell camera me paying her, and what does she do? Being a local of Bennington, she went to her boss and said we didn't pay her which I found out days later when the boss called my sister asking why he hadn't been paid.
The guy we hired to fix the air conditioner which only required a flip on the circuit breaker he took the panels off and said he refurbished it costing something in the realm of $300.
When we decided to have the house cleaned prior to selling it a maid service quoted my sister something like $15 an hour. The maid service didn't tell us that they were going to bring two maids both getting paid that wage so a $15 dollar an hour bill ended up being $300. The only positive actions that I truly commend them on is that they found two $100 bills in my grandmother's closet when cleaning it when I left to get food and when I returned they immediately brought the money forth. I believe seeing those hundreds is what made them believe we were well off enough to charge double, and so we paid them reluctantly.
When we needed bathroom and front entry way tile laid replaced the workers would show up wreaking of weed and had the appearance of meth addicts. We told them at least three times and even placed the correct tile in the area it was to be laid and they still messed it up. They laid the tile in the wrong place and then tried to put the blame on me for not supervising them. These were just another description of the type of service you receive in that town. We ended up having to buy $60 more in tile to fix their mistake and before they left the main boss tried to buy $100 fishing poles out of our garage for $25 on top of a $60-$100 in tackle gear.
When it came time to move the furniture and packed boxes out of the house, my sister and I had learned our lesson enough so we hired some workers a city over that made the drive. These people were very hard working and kind so much so we gave them likely over $1,000 in items, mostly landscaping equipment and a trailer on top of a $100 tip. When I told one of the workers that my sister wanted to pay more than they asked, he wanted me to make sure I told the boss it was a tip so that the money would be split evenly and they all get $20 instead of the business getting the $100. I had absolutely no problem with that and I hope it bought them all a good meal after working literally harder than anyone we had work done by the locals of Bennington.