Interlocking and driveway paving
I hired royal town in June 2014 to remove stamped concrete and install interlocking stone as well as pave and widen my driveway. They showed up in September at my door without any warning or indication that they would be coming, They started right away at 11am to remove the concrete that the sales guy(Anthony) measured and quoted. At 6pm that evening I was informed by the lead hand Carlos that they were going to have to charge me more to remove the concrete because it was taking longer then they thought. Not sure how they would have thought that removing concrete was going to be easy when you only have 2 guys for half the day until a third guy showed up ...that should have been my first indication that these guys had no clue what they were doing. While removing the concrete they didnt use a wet saw to keep dust down and away from my home and that of my neigbours(who were very upset about the dust in their pool). While they were removing the concrete from my backyard using there power driven wheelbarrels they damaged my fence and now looking at a cost of $2000 to repair. They also broke my water tap outside even when I warned them about it and they reassured me that their machines would fit which caused damage to my finished basement ceiling. When Carlos came to fix it with his brother(who he said was a plumber) they told me it wasn't from their machines breaking the pipe but rather from a slow drip at the elbow...repair cost $200 and a bigger hole in my ceiling. When they finally started to put the interlocking stone down in the backyard it was looking good....until they got to the front and damaged my stamped concrete step( which they insisted on me keeping because they knew they had no clue on how to remove it without causing even more damage) The step had a chunk broken off and somehow they managed to damage the underside of the step again they attempted to fix it with their homemade solutions and only made it worse. At this point I thought it couldn't worse....boy was I wrong. After the interlocking was complete they placed what I thought was dirt around the interlocking stone (until it rained, which washed off most of the dirt and left behind mainly gravel with some dirt)...how was I suppose to grow grass on gravel. Carlos returned and apologized for his mistake, he went and removed some of the gravel but hid it well with some dirt on top followed by some grass seeds. At this point Royal Town also managed to destroy my neighbours grass and they were very upset. I sent royal town an email insisting they return to fix the damaged they caused to my neigbours property who wanted it repaired immediately...it took over a week for them to respond to the issue which they did with the same solution they used on my property...leave the gravel, place dirt on top, and put grass seed down. I was left with no choice but to relieve Royal Town of their duties....enough damage was enough. We settle on a price of $12000 which was outragous with all the repairs needed but i counldn't take it anymore and they had to go. Stefano called me in December and said he wanted to still pave my driveway and said that was his specialty...I agreed(what was I thinking). The job was done fairly well with the exception of an area I wanted done(in the contract) but they never removed the grass or laid down gravel first and now I have weeds growing straight threw the asphalt. I wouldn't recommend this company to my worst enemy. The cost of having to resod my lawn, fix my first step, fix my fence, fix my water tap and pipe, have someone install bracing for the interlocking stone as they are already shifting and now fix the asphalt from the side of my house is approx. $10000 Please be aware that this company is absolutely terrible..please look at the pics before calling these guys.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $12,000.00
- What could this company do to improve their services?
- Go out of business.
- Any advice to offer fellow homeowners facing a similar project?
- Run from this business