They repainted (poorly) our flat and replaced our bathrooms, the latter through another company, I…read morebelieve. Happy with the bathrooms.
I must first say, we have used them several times in the past for odd repair jobs and they have been professional, polite and produced good work. So they would be good for a call out for say a leak, etc (but do check the work always). So, stuff that would take max a few hours.
Sadly, the team for painting/decorating (I think these were Darren, Ricky and Mauritz and maybe others - I believe they have many teams so perhaps we were unfortunate with this one, to give LPS the benefit of the doubt), who took around two months to 'complete' the job, clearly did a poor job and we did our best to manage our disappointment. How can you 'undo' an entire bad repaint? We have had several repaints from other companies in the past, no issues, and we know what a professional repaint looks like. We had to ask LPS back many, many times to fix things they had omitted or damaged. I lost days of valuable work time trying to resolve issues. They painted over many of our sash windows so they couldn't open, and then later charged us extra to re-open them, maintaining they were already painted over previously. We are talking a lot of windows. Serious fire hazard - not good for a second floor flat with young children... I emailed our last tenants who told us three windows had never opened and LPS stated that three could not open as they had been painted from the outside (not by them) so I thought this correlated and was gobsmacked when they had the audacity to charge us for opening all the rest that they had clearly painted over. I had stayed at the flat before renting to our outgoing tenants and I know for sure that windows in the bedroom had opened, too. They basically lied to us, or at least one of their team did, probably to cover their shoddy work. They charged us for other work they did not complete. The boss David also threatened me (a female) (interestingly not my husband, though). They refused to produce invoices for larger costs.
I would say, if you employ them, be on site every day to supervise and insist on knowing the cost for everything - i.e. that you will want costs itemised throughout, and costs supplied and agreed before doing any work. Costs of items and costs of labour. And clarify throughout what is considered by them to be part of the job and what is not so that you are not surprised by extra costs at the end. Basically, be anal the whole way through and manage them, daily. If you ask them to fix something they have done wrong, get it in writing that they are not going to charge you for their mistake.
Other teams they have may be absolutely fine. We had asked for them to start the works quickly, and were pleased they did/could, but maybe they did not give us their best or maybe they took on people who don't usually work for them, I don't know. We tried our best to remain as polite as possible throughout but it became ridiculous towards the end.
They threatened us with legal action for not paying according to the deadline even though they had not completed work they had said they would as per their spec. We had paid them on time regularly throughout and this was for the final 5% of the outstanding amount, with incomplete work! For example, I had asked why had they not installed an air vent in the bathroom and they maintained it had not been on the final spec. I asked their boss David in an email and he asserted the same. It was only when I decided to look more carefully into their invoice later on that I noticed on the final spec that they were supposed to have installed this air vent and they were billing us for this. When I had queried it in the first place, they told me it would be very costly to do subsequently. They were lying through their teeth. Their boss ultimately gave me a low estimate (not 'costly'!) of how much buying and installing an air vent would cost and said he would deduct this sum from the invoice.
They lied to us on other points and contradicted themselves. When I queried why a simple thermostat head would cost 180 pounds ( they cost 6.76 online), I got a story about having to bleed the rads, etc which would take hours, etc, and that I could not expect a "Mary Poppins" job but a quick check on Youtube showed me how you do the job in 2 minutes. Anyway, it's wonderful if they did indeed bleed down the rads, and this is what they have now said, etc, as now I have a total 12 month guarantee on that work, so it the rad doesn't work they will have to come and fix at their cost.
I will happily repost if there are further issues in the next 12 months which they resolve quickly and efficiently.
That said, I pray there won't be any so I don't have to put their guarantee to the test.
