Have you had a situation when you hired a contractor who looked knowledgeable and professional in the beginning but when he would start working you noticed something was not right. You give him a chance again and wait, hoping that he will do it right after but situation only getting worse until you stop the job and ask to start redoing things. That what I felt with Eric mason who was working on my property who caused more harm than helped. I need to hire another mason guy and redo Eric's job.
First of all he is not LICENSED, BONDED OR INSURED!!! Although he said he was licensed in our conversation.
1. NOT CLEAN, MESSY JOB. When you hire a contractor by his job cleanliness, detail oriented and meticulous traits you can tell what his professional ethics are. What I mean he laid the brick on my existing columns and did some prep work of the porch walls. After he left the job all the bricks, ground around columns and porch walls, water pipes, filter housing and pavement left so messy covered in cement. He would never clean after himself. I asked to cover the ground from excessive cement and dirt before starting the job, he agreed but it didn't help due to lack of care. He left the job super nasty everywhere where he worked.
2. NOT PROFESSIONAL EVEN OR LEVELED WORK, POOR QUALITY INSIDE. When he completed laying bricks on my existing columns I noticed that they are not properly leveled, spacing between bricks in different areas were smaller or bigger. I mentioned, but he said not going to redo it. After laying brick he didn't place column caps, I had to do it myself. When placing on the columns I found that his new laid brick walls were 17 inches in one sides while 17.5 in others. My caps are 17 inch, thus his laid brick was sticking out of the cap by half inch. He didn't manage to measure the cap size to adhere the laid column bricks to it.
3. DOESN'T GUARANTEE HIS JOB OR STAY BEHIND HIS PROMISES. After aforementioned issue with his improperly built column walls that were also laid uneven I asked to redo the work so column walls won't stick out over the caps. Unfortunately he said you can put it nicely yourself but I will not redo it.
4. DOESN'T ADHERE TO THE AGREEMENT CHANGING TERMS TO OWN CONVENIENCE. We agreed that he will get $1000 cash deposit to start the job and get another $2000 cash upon finishing building bricks on top of my columns and some prep work for porch walls. He received $1000 but didn't finish with columns and prep work for walls when he said I need $3000 cash now instead of $2000 and will come back in 10 days to finish what we agreed earlier. I demanded to stick to our initial agreement, he decided to leave the job in the middle with nothing completed.
5. DOESN'T GIVE RECEIPTS OR ANY WRITTEN CONFIRMATIONS. I would be ok with that knowing that he is honest man and does what he said will do. He offered to do cash deal to make a cheaper work but was not comfortable to get into paperwork, even to get a check instead of cash. As a result I made a mistake giving him $1000 cash but not getting a receipt as now I have to redo his work and it will cost me even more.
6. NOT CONSISTENT WITH THE JOB PROCESS. He started early May 2022 and never worked consistently day after day. He was coming to the job site for 2-4 hours only when he wanted to work, that was dragging 3 day work (as he said that ahead of time) to 9 days. As I was not home during day time he was coming around 1-2pm working for 2-4 hours while I was away. By the time I was getting home he was not there anymore. While patiently waiting it all turned out to give him too much freedom to work on his own rules.
If you think of getting a good mason contractor for your project try to avoid these issues and particularly Eric's services.
I will update this review if anything will change in a good way or worse. read more
