Ah, the old junk mail excuse. That's a good one!
But in all seriousness, yes, I know many people that still use him. And it seems to me that if the piece is more expensive, the work is often of better quality (from what I have heard). If he thinks he can pull something over on you, like me and many many others, he will, by doing crappy half-assed work and not responding to questions. OF COURSE he is nice to Bruce and probably does decent work for him, because Bruce throws a ton of work his way (like he did with you). That's just good business, not to piss off your best clients. I'm just saying beware, if Mario thinks you are a "nobody" expect to be disappointed. I wasn't even THAT upset (as Jeff can attest, I was very understanding) with how long it took, since I was expecting the work to be done well. But when I received a very butchered piece of work, I started digging a little further and found MANY horror stories. Buyer beware.