So far, I can't say I'm impressed.
We had a water heater leak that caused the inner surfaces of a wall to get soaked. Another company came out to do the mitigation work, and then HP was sent out by my insurance company. John arrived on 4/6 to do the initial estimate for repairs, and said he'd have the estimate completed that day or at latest, the next.
Here we are a full week later and so far, no estimate completed. Nothing submitted to the insurance team, no scheduling done for getting the large hole in my home repaired.
My father was in this line of work for years, and there is absolutely no reason for an estimate of this nature to take more than a day or so. When I called this in, their receptionist stated "well, to be honest with you, there are a lot of estimates for him to do".
Not to be rude, but that is so NOT my problem. You're here to do a job...is it too much to ask to get it done? Get the estimate done (XActimate can do this in about an hour, tops...), get it over to my insurance guys for approval, and pick up the phone to schedule a date and time for your team to start! Failing that, call me to keep me appraised of the status of the claim or what is delaying getting it done! BASIC BUSINESS AND COMMUNICATION PRACTICES!
We'll see how this plays out. For now I wouldn't recommend this company to anyone.
UPDATE: 4/16
Well today I had to chase them once again to get scheduled, even though they said they'd be calling me once all of the documents were signed and submitted. (Another lie.) Not only were they ducking me, but also ignoring calls from my insurance adjuster! So, back into project management mode I go to get things moving forward....
Spoke to my adjuster John, and he actually stated I could have signed on the spot (before my estimate was even completed, which is definitely in the gray area of legality) - essentially blaming all of the delay on me.
But even after that point, he couldn't quote a date to get a team out to my house. All he'd say is "roughly two weeks, we're busy after all". I pushed for a date, not a nebulous time at some rough point in the future. He said "well, I don't quote dates, because if something happens on one of the other jobs we'll just have to back you off anyway. Instead we just call you 3-4 days before we plan to be there and make sure that works for you."
So here's how HP apparently does business:
1.) Take your time getting the estimate done, even though you've told the homeowner you'll have it in 24 hours.
2.) Don't count any of that time toward getting a team together or getting things scheduled.
3.) Don't communicate with the homeowner. Transparency is obviously not a priority.
4.) Don't communicate with the insurance team either.
5.) Let them to the gruntwork involved, and then they can reward your entire lack of attention to the project by paying you.
I've never had to work so hard to pay someone! WOW!
How it should be done:
1.) You use XActimate for estimates. This can spit out the estimate in hours, not days. Use it. If you're busy, have other staff trained on completing your estimates for you, or take less clients in a single day to get the paperwork portion completed when you say you'll have it completed. Submit copies of the estimate to the insurance company and provide a copy to the homeowner as a courtesy.
2.) Be clear about what needs to be signed, and make it easy! This is the 21st century. Use a software like DocuSign or something like that so that the homeowner can legally sign documents without printing something out, signing it, scanning it, and re-submitting.
3.) Once you have everything signed, schedule them. Put a caveat out there that says "hey, sometimes things may go wrong that will require us to move your date...but if that happens we'll notify you as soon as possible and do our best to keep this from happening. We'll work with you as much as we can and keep you in the loop every step of the way!"
By not communicating with me properly, this company just lost out on my entire claim (several thousand dollars, and it's a small claim), and also any business I might have sent their way for being a happy customer.
Do yourselves a favor and stay as far away from this company as possible, unless you like to manage your own projects and do all of the coordination work (and headaches) yourself. read more
