Skanes General Contracting

Mr. Park-Lee,

We're sad that you seem to regret hiring us for your recent painting project. We have to confess that we are confused about some of the statements you have made in this review, especially since these are being made nearly 3 months following the completion of the work. We would have preferred to address your concerns by email closer to the completion date. We would welcome an email reply to continue the discussion of the project. In the meantime we will reply to your concerns as best we are able here.

First, thank you of course for the kind words, Jen is a regular point of contact for our clients and takes her responsibilities as both our Operations Manager and co-owner very seriously. We are a smaller company and it's true that there is not always somebody by the phone every day, however all of our clients have a direct number for at least one of the owners (in your case Jen) and clients are encouraged to call in the event of any problems. It is our company standard to return calls within two business days, and this was true for your project. Rarely was the phone answered on your end and so we sent emails rather than leave repeat voicemails when there was no answer.

With respect to the length of the project - we, like most general contractors, are rarely able to start new work immediately due to other projects already in the calendar. Your project was started on time based on the project timeline that was included in the project paperwork. However, it seems that only after the project was complete that the timeline has become unacceptable? Feel free to include additional detail to clarify in a direct message or email.

As you say, the project paperwork (in particular the scope of work) contains the details of the work included for the estimate price. Our scope was very clear that no wall prep was included as you were going to do this work yourself as a cost saving measure. We always want to go above and beyond for our clients and as such did include a few tasks (eg stripping hinges of previous layers of paint) that were not part of our original scope as we and our crew felt that these items would bring the project up a level in quality.

At our final meeting on site you acknowledged that additional work was done, and that you were happy with that work, however you again requested further work for free. This work included drywall repairs and sanding back some sags in the original primer layer which we did not apply. Per discussions both before the start of work and after the work was complete, these items were surface preparation which was clearly stated to not be included in our quote. Of course, had drywall preparation been included in our quote and imperfections were found following paint we would have absolutely fixed those for free. When we offered to price this work your reply was along the lines of "this is one star company work, but if it was fixed at no charge that would be five star work".

Mr. Park-Lee, our company will not be bullied (or bribed) into performing free work with the threat (or promise) of poor (or good) reviews. At the time we assumed that this was an idle threat in order to receive the work for free, and we are left extremely disappointed that you chose to follow up our work in this way.

We would welcome an email to continue the conversation about this project should you so desire.

Thank you,

Skanes General Contracting.
Jen & Andre Skanes, Owners.