I hired HD to pour a grey stamped concrete patio and they poured RED! I watched the first blob of concrete hit the ground and said "guys, that's red" and they said .. don't worry it will dry a different color. It dried red! Then they painted it and said put pads on all the furniture so it wont scratch and show the red! Seriously? How long will that last??? Their forming guy, who is NOT a qualified gas fitter, did the gas line work and put the wrong size gas line in the concrete so the fire table doesn't function properly! The small hose they used gives just 13000 BTU's when I need 60000. He buried a 3/8" hose in the concrete rather then the necessary 5/8" that was required. The transformer for the lights doesn't work and substandard wire was used so some lights don't work at all! They left plastic around the edges of the concrete. Sid said he would burn it out and Matt said he doesn't agree with Sid, so it's still there. Matt told me he himself is "young and still learning" and he is running the business?!?! I had to hire professionals to try to fix all their mistakes but they've poured concrete over the gas line and lights so it will never be a decent job. I wish I never met these amateurs!!!
- Approximate cost of services:
- $20,000.00
- What could this company do to improve their services?
- Any advice to offer fellow homeowners facing a similar project?
- Company Response
After a few years the difficulty of dealing with this gentleman Nd the loss we took still stings. If you took the time to read the review it is likely you will read the response as to what happened:
- The homeowner chose a brown from a colour palette that uses cured pieces of concrete, it is supplied to us from the concrete manufacturer. When the homeowners saw the cured colour after it was poured they immediately regretted their choice and likened it to "human skin", not red. We disagreed with their assessment and arranged for the quality control from the readymix supplier (Lafarge) to test and verify quality and colour of the concrete. The Lafarge rep examined and tested the concrete and found that it was an exact match to the colour chosen by the client. The client was still very unhappy so we recoloured and antiqued the concrete at an extreme expense. After doing this he was very pleased but continued to bully us to do extra work not in the original scope at no cost with the promise of paying the $20,000 remaining. The metal chairs and table we asked to put protective feet on as to not scratch the protective sealant which we explained needed to be resealed every 2 years.
- The gas fitter was ticketed and certified owner operator. Our carpenter does not know how or want to install a gas line. In fact the gas fitter had to show his licensing and insurance to get a permit from the city to upgrade the house gasline and installed the size as requested by the homeowner.
- The light transformer works great. We hooked the lights up to a gps timer that automatically turns the lights on at dusk and off after a few hours. The clients demanded that a light switch be installed later, when switched off it cut power to the gps timer. This meant we had to recalibrate at our expense and he would continually disrupt the power by mistake using the light switch we advised against, disrupting the power and shutting off the timer.
- After understanding the client was upset we cleaned and sealed at our expense the existing concrete on the property as value added. Even going as far as installing the metal railings not in our scope. The client expressed his willingness to pay and arranged for us to fix the gps timer one last time, saying he had the payment ready. After fixing the timer we knocked on the door and he sent a text message saying we were "fired"; this is after completing the project to his satisfaction at our expense. He refused to answer his door and stole $20,000. Being a lawyer he ignored our payment demands and disregarded the lien.
He is right; we did learn a lot. There are some people you will never make happy no matter the lengths you are willing to go.
Have clear contracts and get payment draws. When some people have the power to break the law with no consequences they will manufacture excuses in order to do so.