The Home Improvement Group - THIG

I was taken aback by The Home Improvement Group’s response to my review below. Christine, Rod, and Amir all recognized there were delays in the work and apologized for those during the project.

We got quotes from 4 different companies, all of which said they would finish the project in max 7-10 working days, i.e. two weeks. All of those companies also included project management. The problem with the Home Improvement Group was that there were 4 complete days during the weeks when no one did any work in our house because you didn’t get the workers to show up, and days when only a couple of hours worth of work was done. You admitted that earlier as well as that there were issues with the communication between Amir and us, and apologized to me then. Your response now seems like an attempt of damage control, which is not helpful or necessary. On top of it, Christine, you misspelled my name. What I would have appreciated more here would have been a more honest and open response, as I got from you before.

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THE REVIEW:

We hired The Home Improvement Group to renovate our small, approx 35 sq ft, upstairs bathroom. We got a a few quotes from different contractors, and the Home Improvement Group’s quote was both competitive as well as we liked the initial experience with the sales person, Les, as he was friendly and knowledgeable. The work included gutting the floor and the exterior wall, adding a bit of insulation, installing a ceiling fan, a new window, floor heating, pot lights, new tub, tiling, vanity and faucets.

After a project manager, Amir, took over the project, the work started. The demolition got done on the first day and the workers were generally taking good care of keeping our house clean while doing dusty, messy work in the bathroom during the day. This was particularly important to us as our toddler’s bedroom is only four feet away from the bathroom.

The first problems came up when I came home from work just a bit early one day, bumped into the main worker, Joe, at the door as he was just leaving, and discovered there was no progress made at all that day. At this point, while the workers had initially been making good progress, the pace of work generally had slowed down for no apparent reason, and we were into the second week of the project. We had initially been told by Les that the whole project would take only 7-8 work days, and so I called Amir, the project manager, for an updated timeline. To my surprise, he seemed upset on the phone that I would even ask for a timeline, and instead of trying to answer my question, argued that this is the nature of the construction industry that timelines change, there are often delays, and that he can’t really commit to a deadline. With the Home Improvement Group ensuring “timely results” and a “stress free experience” in their own marketing, I did not want to accept Amir’s response. The next day, Amir emailed me to say that the project would finish by Mon-Tue on the following week. I accepted this update and assured myself and my family that the work would soon be done.

But by the beginning of the next week, they had completely missed two more work days, and a lot of bigger pieces of the work remained undone. I was also concerned about the window which seemed to be poorly installed, hadn’t got Amir’s response to my questions about insulation which was supposed to have been installed in the exterior wall but was missed, and so I was getting more uneasy about The Home Improvement Group’s ability to finish the project. When I called their office, a manager, Christine, seemed to take my concerns very seriously and got another person she said was Amir’s manager, Rod, to visit the site. Rod addressed our concerns about the window and promised all the remaining work would be finished by the end of the week. I told both Christine and Rod that we would all be on vacation after this week and could not have workers in the house anymore, and again they assured me the work would get done by the end of this third week.

But then the workers missed two more days completely. When I called Rod again, he actually told me I should accept that the project may go into a fourth week and that if the guys have to come do some more work to finish the project on the following week, it should be fine. I was very frustrated at this point, as I had told the company numerous times that we could not have them in the house anymore on the following week, and both Christine and Rod had promised earlier that the work would wrap up by the end of this week. They had also charged me for the work up to the stage where all tiling would be done, as per the payment terms on the contract, but in fact the tiling was not done yet.

In the end, I pushed and I pushed and got them to finish the work on the Saturday that week. So the project that was sold to us as a 7-8 day project had in reality turned into three weeks. It seemed they were never truly concerned about setting a timeline and managing the work to it. There were no delays caused by us, and no lack of supplies.

Despite the delays, we have a new bathroom now. It was not a great experience, but the work did get done. We have a lot more work left in our house, and are looking for a dependable, reliable general contractor to work with in the future. Based on this experience we are not convinced that we would turn to the Home Improvement Group again.

We hired The Home Improvement Group to renovate our small, approx 35 sq ft, upstairs bathroom. We got a a few quotes from different contractors, and the Home Improvement Group’s quote was both competitive as well as we liked the initial experience with the sales person, Les, as he was friendly and knowledgeable. The work included gutting the floor and the exterior wall, adding a bit of insulation, installing a ceiling fan, a new window, floor heating, pot lights, new tub, tiling, vanity and faucets.

After a project manager, Amir, took over the project, everything got started well. The demolition got done on the first day and the workers were generally taking good care of keeping our house clean while doing dusty, messy work in the bathroom during the day. This was particularly important to us as our toddler’s bedroom is only four feet away from the bathroom.

The first problems came up when I came home from work just a bit early one day, bumped into the main worker, Joe, at the door as he was just leaving, and discovered there was no progress made at all that day. At this point, while the workers had initially been making good progress, the pace of work generally had slowed down for no apparent reason, and we were into the second week of the project. We had initially been told by Les that the whole project would take only 7-8 work days, and so I called Amir, the project manager, for an updated timeline. To my surprise, he seemed upset on the phone that I would even ask for a timeline, and instead of trying to answer my question, argued that this is the nature of the construction industry that timelines change, there are often delays, and that he can’t really commit to a deadline. With the Home Improvement Group ensuring “timely results” and a “stress free experience” in their own marketing, I did not want to accept Amir’s response. The next day, Amir emailed me to say that the project would finish by Mon-Tue on the following week. I accepted this update and assured myself and my family that the work would soon be done.

But by the beginning of the next week, they had completely missed two more work days, and a lot of bigger pieces of the work remained undone. I was also concerned about the window which seemed to be poorly installed, hadn’t got Amir’s response to my questions about insulation which was supposed to have been installed in the exterior wall, and so I was getting more uneasy about The Home Improvement Group’s ability to finish the project. When I called their office, a manager, Christine, seemed to take my concerns very seriously and got another person she said was Amir’s manager, Rod, to visit the site. Rod addressed our concerns about the window and promised all the remaining work would be finished by the end of the week. I told both Christine and Rod that we would all be on vacation after this week and could not have workers in the house anymore, and again they assured me the work would get done by the end of this third week.

But then the workers missed two more days completely. When I called Rod again, he actually told me I should accept that the project may go into a fourth week and that if the guys have to come do some more work to finish the project on the following week, it should be fine. I was furious, as I had told the company numerous times that we could not have them in the house anymore on the following week, and both Christine and Rod had promised earlier that the work would finally wrap up by the end of this week. They had also charged me for the work up to the stage where all tiling would be done, as per the payment terms on the contract, but in fact the tiling was not done yet.

In the end, I pushed and I pushed and got them to finish the work on the Saturday that week. So the project that was sold to us as a 7-8 day project had in reality turned into three weeks. It seemed they were never truly concerned about setting a timeline and managing the work to it. There were no delays caused by us, no lack of supplies, and only a couple of additions to the scope in the beginning of the project. We had not expected at all that to renovate this small room would have to take nearly a month. But in the end, we have a beautiful new bathroom. It was not a great experience, but the work did get done.

We have a lot more work left in our house, and are looking for a dependable, reliable general contractor to work with in the future. Based on this experience we are not convinced that we would turn to the Home Improvement Group again.