Beware of using this company. It appears they are jumping between Florida and South/North Carolina (not licensed in South Carolina or North Carolina) and are listed as Bug Out Screen Enclosures, Inc. and Bug Out Screen Enclosures, LLC. Not sure how I have been missing the review by Mr. Gillispie (maybe the Inc. vs. LLC issue) but based on his comments and the photos it is obvious he has had a very similar experience to ours and that this is the same company. It was funny reading the review as the response to the review attacked Mr. Gillispie personally and stated that he (the owner) no longer lived in Florida and had moved to SC, yet I was told that they had traveled all the way from Florida to do our job.
He and his foreman had a falling out a couple of days into the project and the foreman left the job. A few days later, we stated that we had issues with handrails that were being installed (pictures attached) and wanted him to know about it before he traveled up from Florida and needed additional material to get them installed properly. This triggered a series of VERY LONG rambling text messages about how he was a Christian and a single father and that his foreman was an alcoholic, addicted to gambling, and was divorced because of this (not sure why a responsible owner would choose someone like that to represent their company and be in charge of his crew) and that the entire reason we were having problems with the railing was because his foreman and I had spoken before he left and that I had no business speaking with him.
We were told that we were being picky and attacking him and that we didn't understand how the handrail assembly worked. He then claimed that his foreman had taken $1,000 that he paid him for housing and asked that we pay $1,000 for the crew's accommodations (this is in addition to the money we had already paid). We declined and stated that we were sorry he was having trouble, but we were not going to pay any additional money until the job was completed as we had all agreed. He then said he was going to have his crew pack up, take the materials, and come back at a later date, but we would need to pay an additional $15,000 more down on the job because he had "a bad taste" about this job and that we were trying get rid of him and hire the foreman to finish the job.
He pulled his crew and took the materials that had not been installed (I imagine that some poor customers after us got the used material) and us with partially constructed walls, gutters installed with no drain holes or downspouts, and poorly installed hand rails (he claims he was doing the handrails for free but as this was an insurance claim I told him as long as it looked like it did before the damage I didn't care if he installed new or reused the existing).
He claims in a response to another review that we tried to kick the crew off of the property (we did not...we actually tried to get them to stay and finish the job but were not going to pay additional upfront money) and take the material (the police were called by his crew, which we agreed was a good idea, as none of knew the legality of removing materials from a construction site). He additionally claims in his response that if we "would just pay them properly" (we paid 1/2 up front as agreed but would not pay any additional money), sign the "contract" (he is referring to an invoice which I had not signed as it didn't seem to be a contract but did sign and send when he made it a big issue), and now is talking about putting money in escrow (first time I have heard anything about this) because he can't put a lien on our property as it's a farm (far from it...we have pet farm animals). He also asked in the other reply to the review that I "come clean to all my customers", that is the reason I have decided to write these reviews with the hope of keeping others from going through this. read more