The measure of a good company is how they respond to clients when things dont go as planned under the written contract. West York Paving failed in this measure.
We hired West York Paving to replace the asphalt on our wide mutual driveway in mid-town Toronto. The contract included a specific written guarantee that the grading would slope water away from our house. The work was completed in early August 2021 and after the first heavy rainfall a few weeks later, we noticed that the water was collecting and running off towards our house. This also happened during a second rainstorm.
We called the company to discuss this and followed up by email. Frank (one of the co-owners, we believe) and a worker inspected the asphalt and Frank told us that it was not sloped properly away from the house. In fact, it was sloped to drain water from our neighbours side of the drive onto our side, rather than into the middle of the mutual driveway. Frank told us he would get back to us after he spoke with his brother Joe (also a co-owner, we believe). No one called us back. We later telephoned the company and Joe told us there was no problem with the workmanship and there was nothing they could do. He raised his voice, yelled at us and then hung up on us. West York Paving later failed to respond to our registered letter, in which we requested a refund for failure to honour its contractual guarantee. We have never had a contractor refuse to at least make some effort to remedy their defective work and honour their written guarantee.
We hired another company to completely re-do the work, which involved digging out all the new asphalt. This other company did a great job, used smaller rollers and hand-finished all the asphalt to ensure the asphalt was properly sloped and graded into the middle of the driveway. They took the time to explain to us beforehand the additional steps to consider in order to pave our wide mutual driveway something West York Paving had not bothered to do.
We had an extremely poor experience with a contractor that has no interest in responding to its customers concerns.