Prior to choosing Duncan to do the work, I thoroughly researched his company, read all his reviews, and met with him to review the specifics of our project. After completing that, I was very excited about working with this company. The job included a water feature and 4 areas where we were using techo block graphix stone, which is more complicated and technically challenging to install than regular stones. Duncan showed me that he had experience with this type of work by showing me pictures of a job he did last year using techno blocks and told me he knew what he was doing. Based on that experience and his reviews, I hired him to do the work for us. Up front, he told us the job would take 3-4 weeks from start to finish, which seemed reasonable based on other estimates we had received. At our initial meeting, Duncan & I decided to change the original design of the water feature, I showed him a picture of what I would like to have built and he liked the change, agreed to it, and quoted the job based on that new design.
Immediately on commencing the work, we realized that the team that Duncan assigned to our job was inexperienced, untrained, unsafe, and unprofessional. We complained EVERYDAY to Duncan about their quality of work, terrible safety practices, and lack of progress. We also regularly reviewed quality, safety, and lack of progress of the work, but Duncan refused to give us another team. It was obvious that the foreman had never run a job before and had never worked with the techo block product. One wall had to be rebuilt 4 times and there was a lot of wasted material and time due to lack of knowledge, not asking for guidance, and bullheadedness of his team. Our biggest frustration was that Duncan chose to continue to try to work with that team to do our work even though things were going sideways and we requested a change, even if it ended up delaying the completion.
In addition to the horrible experience with the crew he had working for us, we also found out as we went that he had never built a water feature like the one he quoted for us before. As a result, hadn't factored in several factors which resulted in him underbidding for the cost of the water feature. That was not the only area he ended up claiming that he underbid. He also came back and requested additional money to complete the electrical work needed for the landscape lights and water feature. In addition, his inexperienced foreman removed way too much soil and ripped out all the existing sprinkler system. So at the end of the job, which was an awful experience, Duncan came back to us with a new bill with a lot of extra charges. Some were reasonable, like adding a valve to the sprinkler system, but many were for things he could have and should have known up front and factored into his quote or the result of issues with his inexperience crew.
After 7 stressful weeks & continual mistakes and rework, Duncan finally fired the foreman & completed the job himself. The end result was 9 exasperating weeks.
Needless to say I would NEVER recommend this company to anyone.