After I had a great deal of frustration in finding a company to remove hard water deposits from the walls and floor of my ceramic tile shower, Home Advisor recommended Hamptons, telling me that the company had good ratings. Matt Hampton came out to discuss the job and gave me a bid for cleaning and sealing. The price seemed high for the amount of time that he was planning to spend, but given the shortage of candidates, I agreed.
He came with a helper and did a decent job on the upper part of the walls, which were foggy looking from the deposits when he started. However, when Matt and his helper left after doing their cleaning and sealing, there were still white encrustations at the bottom of the wall as well as here and there on the floor. There were still deposits on the glazed ceramic soap dishes. Matt wanted me to pay him in full for the work before he left. I told him that I would pay him later. I wanted to see what the job looked like after the sealer had dried.
The next day, the water deposits were still as obvious as they had been earlier. When I called Matt and asked him to come back and finish the cleaning he became quite unpleasant, telling me that he had already made two trips (counting the day of the bid!), that he had hired another person, bought materials and didn't want to come back again. I remained very calm and told him that the agreement was that he would clean the water deposits from the shower, and since this had not been done, it was only reasonable for him to come back and finish the work. He kept repeating what he had said, but with more animosity. I told him that this was the way it sometimes goes in businesses, a person sometimes overbids, sometimes underbids. When one underbids, one sucks it up! I told him that I felt that he had a choice, either to come back and complete the job or to abandon it. I wanted him to tell me which it would be. He told me that I would hear from his lawyer! I ignored that remark. A friend of mine who has been a general contractor for forty years happened to be with me that day, so I had him talk with Matt. The final upshot of a couple of conversations was that Matt and his helper would be back to complete the work, as per the agreement.
That morning, I came back to the house and found my contractor friend and Matt in discussion. Matt was suddenly very mild and cooperative. I asked my friend later what had happened, and he told me that he had gotten mad (which is very uncharacteristic of him!) and used language which it was better that I didn't hear. He also had told Matt that if this was the way that he did business, he wouldn't be in business very long!
When Matt left, some but not all of the water deposits had been removed. My friend said that it still was not an acceptable piece of work and spent a quarter of an hour down on his hands and knees showing me exactly what was needed to do the cleaning (elbow grease!)! At his suggestion I called Matt and told him that I could understand that he wouldn't want to come out again, that I knew that the job could be completed in about an hour by someone who knew what to do. I offered to pay him a certain amount less than his agreed upon price to cover the cost of that work. He agreed, and I had yet another person come in and spend the necessary time to finish the job.
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