My previous review was not complete as I hit submit button by mistake.
My house is 1900 sq ft (only 2 yrs old) and we were looking to get whole house painted (walls+crown moulding+doors+baseboards+trims).
We hired this company after reading reviews on home star assuming that they will do a nice job as mentioned by previous reviewers.
I am due soon and we hired them so that we can get reasonable nice job without my husband spending time on this.
But we are very disappointed after this job. With this review my desire to save other people from all this hassle and not fall for any false promises.
This review is definately long as I want to put what all we went through with this company.
1. Punctuality -
Before starting job we asked Sohail(Franchise owner) about daily working hours for crew. This was important for us as I have 3 yr child and we don't want to have any work done when she is back (6 PM).
Sohail confirmed us they work between 9-6 PM and this job will take 2 days of time + 1 additional day( he was kind of sure that most probably this won't be needed but still I said let's keep an extra
day as we won't be able to accommodate last minute changes and we prefer to get work done in our presence and I am glad we did that else this job would have been even big disaster.
I took time off for 3 days and my husband for 2 days based on his words
These guys didn't start till 11 am on first 2 days. Then they stretched every day after 7 PM though I reminded them that this is not right as we told Sohail about this before job.
But that was of no use. We still accommodated that though we know how difficult was it for us and we couldn't prepare any dinner those days because of this.
Last day which was supposed to be for touch ups and small tasks they came on 9 am because still so much was left (whole master bedroom, couple of doors, bathroom etc. ). They started wrapping
up in hurry doing worst job on last day because they have to do another job in afternoon.
Crew men mentioned many times during the job it's not the first time when Sohail doesn't estimate accurately for amount of time.
So, there is nothing called punctuality and its just get job , do work and move on without considering quality of your work and inconvenience of your customer.
2. No honour of anything mentioned in contract. Contract is just to grab the job from customer by doing false promises.
a. Contract clearly states that they cover floors to catch peeled paint. In our home they are many places on hard wood floors or tiles where paint was dropped and crew never bothered to clean
before final leaving. We have cleaned couple of them in last month but they are not easy to come off.
See attached pic1. My house was full of such things when they left.
b. Contract says they prepare for nail holes, patch and sand obvious bumps. In our home as I was at home I tried to point these when they were doing the job but crew was quite reluctant to fill them.
They mentioned if they start preparing like this they will never finish the job. To give accurate picture once they entered home they just picked up brushes and start painting.
No prep was done at all.
c. Quality finish
At many places you can see brush marks left, white from crown moulding or trims is flowing on to walls. No care has been taken to finish nicely.
When they were doing the job crew mentioned that they do these touch ups/ finished at end but when inspection time came they want to leave in 30 mins. So, as customer you are badly screwed up.
d. proper drying time
Crew just want to finish the job in 2.5 days without having value for quality. Many places like back of fridge and gas stove was not done though I reminded them when they were doing kitchen.
Sohail mentioned they are professionals and customer doesn't need to be home. After seeing their work I can't imagine what would these guys would have done in our absence.
e. Through clean up at end of job
As I will be mentioning below what kind of crap inspection they did in my house (30 mins) and then left in middle. No clean up was done on last day. Rather once I raised my concern about this they start banging my floors with ladder, brushes etc. No respect for others property.
f. Rolling is even
Many places on walls we can see uneven rolling marks.
g. Good cuts
This is also joke. They don't put any tape while doing baseboards or crowm moulding considering they are professionals. I don't mind if you don't do but at end don't tell customer that now
finish is not good because its a manual work. At end its really nasty finish and anyone can notice that by standing in that area. Later Sohail mentioned that they look fine from distance. I believe
he was just trying to be smart by covering up this. I was not spending thousands on a job to get this low grade finish.
h. Previous color not visible
Sohail mentioned that we should trust that they will do enough coats to make sure no color is visible. This is another false promise. My home at many places especially doors and trims previous
color is visible (cream). Some of the areas even not one coat was done. I was pointing this to crew when they were doing job. First they themselves didn't remember which area they did 1 or 2 coats and second they mentioned this will need more coats (Sohail doesn't know this technicalities and his job is just to get business , he is just a manager) and if they do more coats they will lose money.
See attached Pic2. You can see near door trim cream color is visible (area where even not single coat done). There are many like this in my home.
3. Inspection
This is the thing which Sohail brags about it in his appointments. In our case it was joke. On last day they finished up in hurry around 1 pm. We started inspection with the hope they will fix those
nasty finishes before they leave. At 1:30 PM foreman says he has to leave in 15 mins for another job and be hurry up. What a heck???? We were shocked. I was telling them from day 1 please do
nice job from beginning and don't leave everything for end but crew was keep on saying we will fix these issues in inspection. Now was it my problem that you book another job?
Shouldn't Sohail have planned better? Anyway I called Sohail right away and said I am not here to get this attitude. He said he will talk to them.
Result - out of 4 guys 3 left everything in middle
and went outside and told 4th guy to work and keep on calling him every few minutes to hurry up. Finally he also left in few minutes. Now these guys were standing outside my home till 3:30 PM (smoking, on phone) but didn't bother to finish inspection.
We were waiting for Sohail to come as we don't want to pay full without these concerns addressed.
During inspection main issues were related to coverage( it was really poor at many places), holes and patches on walls , brush marks visible etc (all because no time was spent on prep work),
baseboards seams were open ( we didn't paint closets walls but we paid extra money just to paint baseboards on top of whole job so that we can get good quality work). Is this called a professional job?
So, if Sohail talks about his inspection then it's just a strategy to get the job.
4. No honor of words or commitments
a. Damage to floors
Before starting job I mentioned very clearly to Sohail that whole house (complete main floor and 2 bedrooms upstairs) except 2 bedrooms will be available for paint when crew will
come( we will move our stuff before that). They should be organised well and make sure my two bedrooms are ready so that during night we will vacate other 2 rooms.
But shockingly either no message was passed to them or they don't honour that. Once they came I explained this again and showed them rooms not to touch. But still after few minutes I found that 2 people moved bed in one of the bedrooms without bothering to inform me as I mentioned that I don't want any damage.
They didn't bother to lift mattress and just pulled bed on hardwood floor.
Result one of the screws at bottom of bed got broken because its not designed to move with that heavy mattress. It damaged the floor below with scracthes. I showed it to Foeman and he has no answer and simply said they can't pay for damages. If so then who gave them the right to damage customer stuff.
b. I mentioned Sohail that these guys should be careful with floors since these are maple floors and get dents very easily which are quite visible. But crew never bothered to respect that.
All the time they bang floors with their buckets,brushes etc. At many places they have caused extra dent marks on my floors.
c. Damage to Garage door
This job includes painting our garage door exterior. These so called professionals have painted it in such a way that now it makes so much of noise while opening (they have painted areas which was not supposed to be painted, someone has to remove the paint now) and we are afraid this issue while cause our automatic garage door opener motor to burn soon.
d. Damage to door handles
We recently changed all door handles to expensive ones. But these guys didn't protect them during painting nor bothered to clean them before leaving.
Now, at many places paint marks are visible on them.
e. Painting and patching behind bathrooms mirrors was already part of job. Sohail agreed (I have in email) that his crew will help in removing mirrors from bathrooms but if this caused any major damage on dry wall then they won't be responsible and we agreed for that. In beginning Foeman mentioned that they can't do this. I said ok can you find someone who can do it and we will pay him. Then next day he said he will do it and we pay to him.
We paid extra but question is that it's all about getting extra money from customer. It took max 30 mins to remove all 3 mirrors.
5. Color Selection
Pascale was good and helped us in color selection but nothing else was good in this whole job.
All this time crew was unhappy about money they get from Sohail. They mentioned they get only half of money and they can't do more in that budget. As a customer I was shocked, I paid what I was
asked and its there internal problems but sadly we suffered the most.
As a customer it's not my problem how these guys distribute money. But my learning is that don't hire this company or people which just act like managers and get job on false promises. At end customer
suffers when you pay full amount for job and get poor quality.
Sohail says in previous response that they left happily. Please ask him to show signed inspection form from us which he brags about when go to get new job.
We didn't want to pay in full but kind of force to do that as he was not willing to leave our door with out that. As I am doing well health wise and my husband didn't want to create a scene in our house
we paid him reluctantly on that day.
Sohail did tell reluctantly about sending service guy later. But after seeing more crap and issues once they left we are not sure that should we really allow them again. We couldn't see everything at that time as they didn't do any formal inspection with us.
After this nasty job atleast they have lost the opportunity to get business for our new home (which will be ready next year) and from out friends and family.
I have given this detailed review so that people can decide for themselves.
