Watch out for this Company

WOW! Watch out for this company! I hired them with great expectations because of their clever sales tactics. They really seemed to know their stuff and I was excited about all the promises like..."all covered surfaces will be hand-scrubbed with tri-sodium phosphate solution...and...thorough handscraping of loose and failing paint...and...all horizontal surfaces will be DOUBLE oil primed...and the list went on and on promising thorough use of caulk etc etc. The salseman walked around the house with me pointing out every flaw and making claims about what they would do that completely sold me.

The reality of the job was a complete 360. First of all, they sent a team that had "very little" outside painting experience as I learned later (it seemed to me they had never painted before). After they finished about 1/2 the house (very sloppy job with no prep) I was feeling a sense of dread. I investigated their supplies...no primer, no caulk, no tri-sodium phophate solution. When confronted they admitted that none of it had been done. Through the remainder of the job I had to have almost daily meetings with the owner of the company to prevent a total disaster. And despite the meetings, things continued to go wrong almost daily.

We had also contracted with MSI for some deck and replacement woodwork and had to cancel all woodwork after the sub-contractor they provided built a trellis that was completely uneven. The sub-contractor's suggested solution to the crooked trellis: "sure it was a little crooked, but we should just live with it. It wouldn't bother him if it was at his house" Only with incredible pressure, were they rebuilt to be square.

The job that was supposed to take a few weeks dragged on for an interminable 2 months (partly due to weather but also because of the need for the second team). A second team needed to be brought in to try to fix and undo what had been done. For much of the house, it was too late, 1/2 of it was painted with no washing!

Because of the poor quality of their work, and the miriad of problems we had, the owner promised me a discount on the job. I wasted So much of my time and effort to keep them minimally on track.

When I received the final bill (which he refused to itemize despite my voice and email requests), the owner charged the full price of the contract. And you guessed it, NO DISCOUNT!

Initially, I refused to pay for the things that were not done and insisted on the discount that was promised. The owner's response: he refused to take my calls, reneged on the discount and started the process to file a lien on my home. Unless I paid the full amount of the contract, they also threatened to slap me with interest and legal fees. When I emailed and phoned the salesman and company owner for a chance to please go over the item by item charges, they refused. The cost of fighting the lien would have been far more than the over charging so I had no choice but to pay for services that were not provided (including full charges for hand washing). They also canceled any warantee on their work as part of the lien threat. NICE! I can only guess that they assume the paint job will not last and do not want to take responsibility for standing by their work.

This was, hands down, the worst experience I have ever had with a service company. I've done many renovation projects on my house and built a 7000 sq/ft office from the ground up. I've worked with MANY contractors and I can say without reservation to avoid this one!

Comment On This

Most of the items discussed in this complaint are slanderous, half-truths that stem from this customer�s inability to walk away from her final bill. While this project did take longer than projected they were not promised a deadline because they insisted on painting their exterior in the Spring. 4 weeks of the delays were due to her scheduling walk-through meetings with us and either not answering the door or just making sure she was not home. 2 weeks of extreme weather made it difficult to paint as the rain was on and off.

She bragged to us the first day I met her that she got away with not paying the contractor for the slate roof on the garage and we were told by another contractor working on her house to be careful because she won�t sign off on change orders and then will argue her final bill.

I got involved with this project the first day of production. It was drizzling rain and we decided to try to power wash the home in between the rain. The crew washed about 50% of the home and had to stop because the slate roof was too slippery to walk on. She came home and called the office in a rage saying she wanted a discount and that we lied to her about washing. I came to her home that day and told her that we don�t offer discounts. We do the work we promise and don�t pay off customers. I�ve been involved with over 50,000 residential homes in 22 years and have never given a discount for sub-par work. We fix what we do wrong, we don�t �buy off� our mistakes. It�s bad business.

In order to keep some sense of order on the home I would start every other day with the crew and set them up with a job plan while checking their previous work. I told our client that I would tell them when a side of their home was done and we could walk that side together for any areas of concern that they had. She was just fine with this.

She had hired us to build some trellises for her in the back of her home. Our carpenter�s first attempt didn�t meet our standards either. We met with her on the site and told her we intended to re-do these and she again asked for the price to be deducted. We again said no, we will do them the way we promised. We also, at no charge, built her a couple more trellises to match under the deck. There was no �incredible pressure�. She called me with a concern. I told her I would be there in the morning. The trellis squares were off 1/16� of an inch in some spaces. You had to look pretty hard to see it. But we agreed without argument that we promised to match the existing trellises in the back and that�s what we did. She called me later that day to thank me personally for backing up what I promised her the first day on our job. I told her that I was sorry our carpenter didn�t agree to fix it when she first noticed the mistake.

At this point in the project we would see her leave for work in the morning and she would tell us that the project was looking good and coming along great. We have saved emails from her stating this. I have outgoing phone records from three phone numbers showing an unbelievable volume of calls to their home and office to keep them informed of their progress and discuss concerns with them.

At this point is where she really begins to bend the truth. I have documented appointments for our meetings. I have documented appointments that she missed. We met 5 times during the project, she agreed to and missed 4 other meetings for walk throughs.

We sent her an itemized bill by email and three weeks later received a letter from her stating that she wanted an almost 35% discount on a $20,000 project after the work was completed. We tried for another three weeks to contact her at her office and home to discuss her bill and she refused to return phone calls. I left her a voicemail after six weeks and told her that she needed to contact me within 48 hours or I have to turn it over to collections. At that point it would be out of my hands. Within hours of my attorney�s letter of intent to lien she began to plead her case to him about the severity of her issues on the home. I suspect that if we allowed her what she felt she should pay we wouldn�t be reading this. She assumed we were a small company and we wouldn�t push back after her refusal to pay her bill.

Despite being screamed at and accused of many things that were not true every employee involved with painting their home met her with a smile on their face each day with an �attitude of servitude�. I find it interesting that she states we refused to take her call after we were done with the project. Why would we NOT want to get paid?

Because we feel her accusations are slanderous to our company we have turned over copies of our phone records, email correspondences, and project files to our attorney in order to explore the possibility of getting her to legally recant her slanderous review. While there are many service companies out there who get in over their heads and create problems for the clients there are also many of us who are trying to provide an honest service for a fair price.

We paint over 500 homes each year and we have a documented 95% customer satisfaction rating. The perception our clients have of us is our principle tool to succeeding. While we are not perfect, we back up our promises and think it�s important when we run into an unscrupulous client to make sure they don�t have the ability to strong arm the next service company they hire by threatening to paste the internet with bad reviews.

I would invite anyone who is interested to come to come to our office and have a cup of coffee while looking through our project file to see the sheer number of untrue accusations she alleges. While I am sorry that this project ended up this way I am proud of the effort our company put forth to deliver what we promised on their project.