Initially I quoted for a new home renovation includes a mudroom cabinet, bench, office bookshelf, crown moulding and valance, 25 pot lights, 8 network jacks, 2/F hardwood floor, whole home painting. Their pricing is not competitive. But we thought they're big company, have good reviews in homestars and listed in DirectBuy contractors so we still picked them. Unfortunately, that is the biggest mistake we made.
Hardwood flooring:
At the beginning, they suggested us to shop around for flooring work as they're not specialize in flooring and can't sell in volume. That is honest opinion so we picked a flooring specialist to do which is 40% cheaper than their quoted price.
Crown moulding:
- no selection for materials (e.g only can select from black & white crown moulding catalog with only cross-sectional view. Only 1 or 2 style to pick because of the width we want to cover)
- After project manager came the first day of work, he said that size won’t fit ours and asked us to pick from another catalog with real wood because of the limitation of MDF.
- end up we received untreated raw wood without prime so we saw all kinds of knots & vines which we didn’t expect
- since we don’t like that, we have to take that out from the job.
Electrical:
- no selection for LED pot lights or dimmers after the quote
- after they finished wiring and installed trim kit, ONE MONTH LATER they came back all of a sudden to install the light bulbs
- but the light bulbs were cool white colour which we specifically asked for warm white since day one
- luckily, they agreed to change; then I called and emailed the sales guy that we want sth brighter. The cool white bulbs that they installed were too dim. The bulbs are no name brand that didn’t say how much wattage it use and the model # didn’t exist on internet search engine at all. So I just tell the sales guy to order sth brighter but no response from him at all
- we just waited patiently. 6 weeks and 3 days later they came with the same bulbs but warm white colour. So they’re still not bright enough. The guy said that bulb was 9W and standard install for him. If I ask for brighter bulbs, it’ll be much more expensive. They asked for $20 more per bulb but it wasn’t included in the quote. Good thing is we don’t have to wait for 2 months for shipping to get that. They can get it same day. If we were giving the choice of selections in day one during the quote, we won’t end up in this situation.
Workmanship:
- we found our basement is wet and the carpet on top is soaked wet across half of my basement as shown in the attached pictures. We found out the plastic transparent tube which I circled in picture was just dropped on the floor. No other people would go near the electrical panel in an empty basement except electricans doing electrical and network cabling.
- work like in a factory with all wood debris, wire clips, cables ends, screws, Tim horton cups, empty wiring wheels everywhere in the house
Before we sign the contract, we were attracted by the online scheduling and messaging system that they provide to keep track of schedules and photos without going on site. However, we found they don’t update it at all. Initially a 2 week project became more than 2 months even though they end up just doing electrical work. They said we took off so many big jobs from the contract so they don’t have much money to make. Then they’re not happy about us and avoid our calls and emails.
Since we have such a bad experience, I can’t recommend to anybody.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $36,600.00
- Company Response
The Renovators of Canada takes our commitment to quality work and customer satisfaction as the highest priority. On this project, the customer was aware that we would not be the least expensive option for the hardwood component. We offer a wide selection of moulding products through our suppliers and the customer was given several to choose from, but decided to remove this component from the scope of work. We satisfied the customer's bulb preferences, albeit with a delay, and provided a credit for the bulbs. The customer's wet basement was coincident with the timing of our electricians being on site. The electrical work completed did not cause the wet basement. Our team members are expected to tidy the work-site at the end of each day. Based on this customer's comments, we have reviewed work-site cleanliness, updating of the online scheduling system, and customer response time with all of our team members, to ensure the consistent delivery of these items to meet our high standard of customer service.