Chris

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 6 Since my original review, I have had two issues come up. The first was an electrical issue. I plugged my cable box into one of my outlets for the first time and within minutes began to smell burning plastic. I unplugged the box and shut the power off. After pulling the outlet our of the wall, I noticed one of the black wires had arced and started to burn, leaving the copper wire exposed. I reported this issue on Monday October 30th and am still waited for it to be resolved. Their in house electrician was supposed tot come last Friday, but he called and asked to switch it to today (Monday November 6) as he would be free most of the day and could spend more time. As of 1pm he still hadn't shown up because he was at another job site and he wouldn't be able to have someone else come for another hour and a half to two hours. I had already take some time off work to be at home and couldn't take the rest of the afternoon, so we rescheduled for Wednesday November 8th. The second issue has to do with my shut off valve for my outside water supply. A few days ago I went to shut the valve off for the winter and realized their HVAC contractor ran a duct line right beside my valve and as a result I cannot fully shut the water off. As of now, I am waiting on a response from Penguin. I shouldn't be surprised given how poorly the execution of the original build went. I will provide another update when these issues are resolved. ORIGINAL POST I have given a lot of thought with this review. While we are generally happy with the result, we were not at all happy with the process. Dealing with this company was an incredibly painful experience. Their attention to detail on our basement reno was very poor. For the amount of money I spent, I expected so much more. It's really disappointing when I read so many great reviews before deciding to sign the contract. I truly thought we were going to be in good hands. While this is just my experience, I simply cannot recommend this company. From the poor customer service, the lack of attention and communication from my site manager to the poor attention to detail, this company completely dropped the ball on my project. I have wasted far too much time getting them to correct their mistakes and listening to excuses and explanations as to why certain things happened. I have been offered apologies from several people, but not once have they admitted any responsibility for the length of time this simple project has taken. This is by no means an exhaustive synopsis of what happened. You get to a certain level of frustration and begin to scrutinize everything, and that has happened with me. I am kind of at a loss for words to convey my disappointment with this company. Here is our experience: TIMELINE We were told by Bruce who came in to do the sales pitch, that our project would take 3-4 weeks. What he failed to mention was, that was the timeline to get to substantial completion – the point in the project where THEY deem the basement to be move in ready, minus any final repairs, paint touch ups etc. that need to be completed. Your site manager will do a “Substantial Completion” list of everything that is left to be done. This list could take several more weeks to complete – in our case it was three. So, when I mentioned that they took 8 weeks to complete my basement, they came back at me with, “we did what we said we would do and substantially completed your basement in 4 weeks.” Which in fact was 6 weeks. I find this to be completely misleading. We were very upfront and clear that this project needed to be competed by the first week of September. Instead, it was completed at the end of the first week of October. So be warned. Manage your own expectations and double whatever timeline they give you. INITIAL IN-HOUSE CONSULTATION First, they will tell you that both people need to be present during this meeting (assuming a husband and wife). Bruce was very adamant and somewhat rude about this. He was very demanding and pushy throughout this THREE hour meeting. In the end, he wouldn’t leave us with a written quote. We were allowed to view it on his laptop, but he would not leave a copy. During this meeting, Bruce told us why they were great and why their materials were great. He even told us at one point that they do things a certain way and if you don’t like it, then find someone else! To be honest, I should have told him to leave at that point. His sales tactics are aggressive and pushy. The struggle I had was that I read so many great reviews and was impressed with the gallery of jobs on their website. But I should have used better judgement and gone with my gut. Bruce went on a diatribe about mold and how they us magnesium board instead of drywall. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want mold in my basement, but this was a hard sell. He made my wife and I feel like terrible people if we chose a contractor that used drywall. It was very condescending. Turns out, they still use drywall on the inner walls and only use the magnesium board along the exterior walls. Bruce completely over sold what they were going to do at the price we were quoted. For example, I asked if the stairs would match the floor colour. He said “absolutely.” He just neglected to tell us it would cost an extra $120 per stair to do so – we found this out after we signed the contract and went for our décor consultation. We opted to go for the standard stair wrap and it turned out okay. DÉCOR CONSULTATION This is much like buying a new house, except you are only picking out items for your basement – doors, door handles, paint colours, vanity and toilet, moulding, floors etc. We met with a girl named Gem who was very sweet but very new. To be honest, she wasn’t ready to be client facing when we met her in July. She admitted to us that we were one of her first clients. It was clear she hadn’t been trained well. I certainly don’t fault her, but there were just too many questions to which she didn’t have the answer. This process also took much longer than what it needed to. Plan to spend 3-4 hours at their office, if not longer. BUILDERTREND APP Oh, the Buildertrend App. This is where you can track the progress of your project; complete with scheduling and photos as progress is made. First, a photo was never taken and uploaded (I didn’t really care as I saw the progress every day when I got home). Second, the app wasn’t updated until sometime in week 4. By that point, they were almost two weeks behind schedule so it didn’t really matter what the schedule said. What the app IS useful for, is being able to send messages to just about anybody in the company, including the GM, and the ability to view your contract should you misplace it and sign off on change orders. COMMUNICATION Zero communication. This seems to be common when you read through a lot of the reviews - even the positive ones. Penguin’s response to that will be that they are growing and are trying to keep up with all of the work and that they are working on improving lines of communication. Growth is great, but it should NEVER come at the expense of customer service and communication. Walter was our site manager. He is a terrific guy and I truly like him. However, he doesn’t communicate very well, sometimes not at all. At two different points during the build, I waited 4 days for a response to an email or text message. A lot of the time I only got partial answers and nothing was ever concrete. I repeatedly asked when my mirror and cabinets (more on this later) would be delivered without reply. Other reviews seem to give glowing remarks for their site manager. Unfortunately, I cannot in my case. In any event, stay on your site manager and be relentless in your pursuit for answers. Here are two examples of the poor communication with Penguin Basements: Site handoff meeting – this is where the project manager and site manager show up prior to the build and go through everything so the site manager is aware of what is being done. I was told over the phone, on the Buildertrend App and via email that this appointment was for 12:30. Both guys showed up at 1:00. Not a good start. Their excuse was that they were told 1:00 by whoever does the scheduling. First Day of the Build – I called Penguin’s office on Tuesday the 15th and spoke with Maria. I asked her to tell me specifically what is being done that week. She told me the build was starting on Thursday the 17th. Which is what the Buildertrend App said. Great. So I take Thursday morning off work to meet the site manager and framers to sign off on where all of the walls and doors are going to be. Nobody showed up. I ended up being off work the entire day. No phone call. No text or email. So, the next day comes and Walter and the framers show up. I questioned him about where he was the previous day, he had no idea what I was talking about. HIS schedule had the build starting on the Friday. The explanation I eventually got was there was a mix-up on their Excel spreadsheet. It said Thursday August 18th. Maria assumed Thursday, and Walter assumed Friday the 18th. Unacceptable for a company that has completed hundreds of basement renos and a typo in Microsoft Excel tripped them up on the start date. TRADES This is by far the best part. Most trades that came through our house were great. Very polite and asked if it was okay if they stayed late or if they could come back on Saturday to finish. However, on 3 separate occasions, my basement windows were left wide open and the screen taken off. Even after I brought this to the attention of my site manager each time it happened. They also treated our bathroom like it was a playground and left a mess each day. ATTENTION TO DETAIL - Near the end of the project, they have a cleaning crew come in. Three people spent a total of 45 minutes cleaning my basement which was a construction site. They didn’t vacuum. They didn’t’ clean my bathroom vanity or the toilet. They didn’t wipe the baseboards or the outlet covers where there was visible drywall dust. They didn’t clean the paint off my windows and there was still paint clearly visible on my floors. After I emailed to complain, they sent the crew back in. Unbelievably, they did just as poor a job the second time. The areas that I specifically called out – the bathroom, windows, floors and door handles, still weren’t done. There is still paint on my windows, floors and door handles. And my bathroom wasn’t even touched. There was dust on my counter top, toilet and ledge that runs along the bottom of the mirror. See pictures attached to this review. In the end, they did offer to reimburse the cost to have my own cleaning company come in and do a proper job, however I turned it down and cleaned it myself. - During my substantial completion list walk through with Walter, I noted specifically that one of my doors didn’t catch properly when closed. I was home the day the handyman came back in to fix it and I made sure to show him which door he needed to fix. When he left, I went to check the door and it STILL wasn’t fixed. I ended up fixing it myself. - Penguin Basements will only level your floors if you request and pay for it. Something else that wasn’t mentioned during the initial consultation. As a result, I have a few soft spots in my floor. - Even after the painter came back in to do touch ups, there were several areas I had marked with tape that he missed. Not to mention more paint on the floor and ceiling. - Make sure they use dust curtains to seal in as much dust as possible. They mention this on their website. But it was never done during our project. In fact, I came home one day to the plumber breaking up concrete to run the plumbing for my bathroom – and my basement door was in my garage. Leaving the doorway wide open for dust to migrate upstairs. When I brought this up with Walter, his response was, “oh, I forgot to put the door back on.” CABINETS On July 11th, we attended our décor consultation. During that meeting we selected floating cabinets that would be installed underneath the TV. There were a lot of materials and colours to choose from. We were told that we needed to decide what we wanted before we left because the cabinets sometimes take 8-10 weeks for delivery. Around the middle of September, I began to ask about the cabinets and when they would be delivered. After several attempts to get an answer from Walter, I emailed Jon, my project manager. He eventually turned me on to Joe who looks after all cabinet orders. On September 22nd, Joe emailed me saying the high gloss finish we chose is on back order and delivery wouldn’t take place until October 6th. On October 3rd, I sent a follow up email to make sure we were still on track for the 6th. Joe called me on the 4th and informed me that the high gloss finish was no longer available as it had been discontinued by the manufacturer. Joe did offer me alternatives, but they weren’t to our liking. At the end of the day, it isn’t our fault or our problem that the high gloss was discontinued. Especially after we placed our order almost three months prior. At the beginning, I was certain Penguin would be better than everyone else we had quote on our project. I will say that it is entirely possible that they do good work. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the best of them. I truly feel like we were squeezed into their schedule and our project was never a priority for them. I certainly feel like at a certain point throughout the project, Walter stopped coming around to check on things. Whether he didn't care or had too many other projects to manage, is irrelevant to me. The fact is, my wife and I felt like the forgotten client for the last half of the project. This company will expect about 90% of the payment by the end of week 3 but will take far longer than 3 additional weeks to complete the job. Do not, under any circumstance adhere to their payment schedule. If they don’t deviate from their payment terms, find someone else. I would like to call out Jon Reece, one of their Project Managers. He is the one person that I trusted and anytime I had issues with Walter, I went straight to Jon to get answers. He’s a professional and very personable. I want to thank Jon for all of his work. Whoever monitors and responds to these reviews, please stop apologizing for the communication issues. Just fix them. At some point, you have to stop the excuses and just fix the issues.