My son cracked 5 rollers on our shutters while playing indoor soccer (not a good idea to let kids kick soccer ball in the house). I found M3 design on Homestars and talked to Mike. He gave me a quote based on the number of panels he needed to fix (not the damaged rollers), specifically, $75-100 per panel. Upon his request, I sent him the pictures and our address for him to come by. One week went by without any communication from Mike. I messaged again and he told me he was going for a week vacation and to contact him a week later. I contacted him and after some back and forth, he finally made it to our house. He quoted me $100/panel plus $100 for a gallon of paint and $100 for transportation on his Hummer (apparently it consumes a lot of gas) for a total of $500. I can't say he had an endearing attitude and $500 sounded awful a lot for what the job is (paid $900 in total for 8 panels in 2005) but I thought to myself, he is going to give the shutters a face lift in the process with a repaint and extend their life. He said he would be back with the shutters by Wednesday of the following week. Wednesday rolled around and there was no communication. I messaged him and he told me they were still working on it and that he would bring them on Friday. Eventually, he showed up on Saturday with the 3 panels. When he brought them in, I noticed that one of the rollers was not properly secured, a nail was missing. He said it must have fallen off while carrying the panel into the house and insisted that's the case in a patronizing manner. I told him there is not even a nail hole to begin with and at that point he backpedaled and started criticizing the design of these shutters and how they were prone to cracking due to the nails. He also brought a small container of touch up paint and sand paper. I didn't quite understand the purpose at the beginning. My assumption was that he was going to paint all the panels he took along with him with the gallon of paint he bought. Well, when I inquired about why he didn't paint the panels with all the paint, he got all defensive. He said he has all the paint at his shop. My inquiry was not about whether he bought the paint or not to begin with. I was just surprised he did not get the panels painted given all the conversation between us about giving the shutters a face lift at his first visit. We then took half an hour putting a nail into the roller that was not properly secured. In the process, he was criticizing the shutter design and not very tactful at all. At the end of it, I paid him the $500 and was happy to see him leave. After he left, I examined the shutters and noticed several things. For one, the nails were not all properly secured so I had to push them all in. Also, there were scratches on the rollers which most likely occurred during transportation and while they were being worked on at the shop. There were some spots they clearly tried to cover up with the touch up paint but it didn't look great. At that point, it downed on me why he brought along the extra touch up paint.
I may be unique in my experience with M3 and Mike. If I was buying brand new shutters, perhaps things could have been different. However, I can definitively say based solely on my personal judgement of character and business dealings since my early adulthood, Mike did not leave a good impression of a person I would like to deal with in the future at any price.
