As a busy professional and father to a newborn baby, I was happy to hire out the work of decorating our house for Christmas, to try to reclaim any small bit of free time I could over the holidays. Boy do I wish I had checked Yelp prior to hiring Dennis Heinreich of D-Lighted to install my holiday lights. Nothing that new to add to the below 1-star reviews as he had the same M.O. for me, but here's my data point:
I got his nice flyer in the mail (he spammed all of Seven Hills with it apparently), called him at the end of November, and he came out promptly to give me an estimate for the work. He took a four-figure check as a deposit at that time. He stated he was too busy to start that week, but would install all my lights Thursday, December 9. I was already on the fence as this would barely give us two weeks of lights prior to Christmas for such a high cost, but he reassuringly said this would be the latest date, and that he likely would be able to come out even earlier to set up the lights.
So, of course, no one came earlier. His employees (without Dennis) came in the late afternoon on December 9 (he wouldn't give me a time, just at some point that day, a theme which would repeat throughout our interaction) to install a tiny strip of lights on about 1/8th of the roofline, a cheesy wreath on my front gate (don't pay him extra for the wreaths, trust me guys), and wrapped lights around two palm trees (out of five trees he was supposed to light). They then stopped at sunset but promised to return the next day to finish. They no showed the next day without any contact. I texted Dennis that evening and he promised they'd come back on Saturday to finish. The guys (different crew) that came early Saturday morning rang my doorbell and told me they couldn't do any work that day as they had not brought any light bulbs with them, only the string light holders. I found it rather odd that a holiday light decorating company wouldn't have brought light bulbs to a jobsite, but what do I know? They promised to return the next day, Sunday, to finish the job, despite them having plenty of time to go get the bulbs and come back to my home. Unfortunately, this would be the last time I ever saw anyone from D-Lighted.
They of course no-showed Sunday, with no word from Dennis. Given it was a Sunday, I didn't make a stink about it and hoped they would come Monday, which they did not. I called and texted him Tuesday, no response or reply. It then rained and their shoddy workmanship immediately caused a short circuit, resulting in all but the tiny strip on my roofline to power off. These geniuses used indoor extension cords and splitters not rated for outdoor use, and then wrapped a couple strands of electrical tape around it to hold connections together. (Not even all the way around the plugs, which still wouldn't be good, but would at least show an attempt to actually seal it off. Here they just did one loop or two and said "good enough"). They had daisy chained all the tree lights and wreath together with multiple splitters and indoor extension cords sitting on the ground, soaking in puddles. After not hearing from him for a few more days, I reached out again with pictures of his blacked out lights and asked him to go ahead and take down his lights at his convenience and refund my deposit. No response to my text. I finally managed to speak to Dennis on Friday, December 17. He offered to have someone come out "over the weekend" to "fix the lights", and I reminded him that I was still waiting for him to actually _finish_ the lights in the first place. Given his track record, and the fact that we were a week from Christmas, I declined his offer and repeated my request for a refund. He explicitly agreed to mail me back my check and apologized for the horrible service I had received. Great result, right?
I have neither received my check back nor heard from Dennis despite multiple texts and phone calls following up with him the last two months regarding my refund and his lights. I've had to take down all his lights, extension cords, and the chintzy wreath myself. I'm now storing it for him for free in the hopes he ever reaches out to come collect his garbage. If I continue to not hear from him, I'll have no choice but to continue to escalate this further.
If there are any government lawyers or regulators out there, I suggest looking into his corporate compliance and tax history. He instructed me to make out the check to "D Lighted" despite this company apparently having had its license revoked years ago. "DAH Enterprises LLC" seems to be his current operating entity, which I assume stands for Dennis. A. Heinreich. See pictures, which are publicly available information I found with a quick search.
If he indeed cashed my check made out to D Lighted, when that entity does not validly exist to transact business in Nevada, I feel like that could be a case of check fraud too, depending on the circumstances. Call people back, Dennis! read more