This Nigerian architect, while a smooth, soft talker (beware), he is unknowledgeable, unprofessional, unethical, and manipulative with threats, and he charges a high initial deposit compared to other architects (x4) without being able to deliver the expected services.
MANIPULATIVE
He will occasionally subtly threaten you with losing the large deposit he demanded you pay to him. This is in order to get you to continue with his poor services. He also refused to refund me my balance when, at the beginning, he showed signs of unprofessionalism and inability to deliver, and I signed a document HE SENT to cancel the contract. This happened after he threatened that I would lose $500 of my deposit if I chose not to go ahead with the contract, and I said that was fine and signed the cancellation.
UNPROFESSIONAL
He was presented with a discussed list of requirements but largely ignored the list and went off to do different than what was requested. Even if it is that a customer's requests are not achievable due to constraints, the professional thing to do is to alert the customer before doing something different.
UNKNOWLEDGEABLE
At the tail end of our interaction, he threatened that if I did not accept his last design, which was missing many of my basic requirements and poorly designed (e.g. in one drawing a main door leading outdoors went through a bedroom in a house, not a motel!), that I would have to find another architect. In other words, he was threatening me that I would have to pay for another architect, which is what I ended up doing. And my new architect has made happen many things in my requirements that this architect, OAL Engineering, said were not achievable.
UNETHICAL
This architect has not considered returning any of the x4 deposit I paid him, given his non-delivery of services that have made me have to hire a new architect. Rather, he came back to ask that I additionally pay him a balance.
Also, to show further unethical behavior, earlier, when I found him through the website Bark, he asked that I text him that I do not need an engineer so that he will get a refund from Bark, whereas it was untrue that I no longer needed an engineer. This should have been the first flag to me about his crookedness.
NOTE TO GOOGLE USERS:
Users should not be fooled by this company's currently high rating because many people shy away from posting negative reviews about bad businesses, so that such businesses end up with only good reviews, which falsely makes them look good.
(If this architect disputes this review, I will add snapshots of my phone and email communications with him and his poor designs. If he shows remorse, I would be happy to pare down this candid review.)