Lesson learned, get the verbal agreements in writing!…read more
Lesson 1: Retainer and Accountability
After handing over $5,000 retainer to Richard it's basically gone.
We would periodically ask "How much of the $5,000 have we used", with a response "Don't worry, you're far away, I'll tell you as you approach".
And then one day, apparently we're past $5,000, no notice like he said.
We spent many occasions asking for a warranty for a custom cabinet he ordered for us, this was a bad idea, because adding a middleman to the process just made it difficult, lots of chasing things through Richard vs the convenience of direct, a few weeks for a response, which is fine as he was overseas, but that's why you shouldn't have a middleman for such things. Ultimately when there was a problem with the cabinet quality we felt the middleman pain.
And for the invoice, a few hundred dollars for an email here, items there, if we had transparency as we hit $500, $1,000 we might have been more careful.
Lesson 2: Disagreeing with Richard
Richard's preferred contractor operates on a blank check system, no detail, just hand over thousands, and he'll bill by the hour, had no idea if the project would be $5,000, $50,000 for $500,000, I guess we can always abandon it as we go. Richard sells this as "This way you're flexible to change and add things".
After wanting upfront estimates, we decided to chose our own contractor, at this point the relationship with Richard felt different, comments with an undertone of "That's what you get when you don't use my contractor".
But to be fair, the good: (Why it's 1 star and not 0)
* Richard had some interesting ideas
* He toured us his home which doubles as a showroom of ideas
* He suggested a detailed floor plan, which whilst expensive, was nice to have and has had use since then
In Summary I think there's a certain type of client who will be happy with Richard, and it's largely someone/couple who are very busy and wants to hand over a blank check and see what happens, and I'm sure some amazing remodels do happen as a result, but this isn't the service suited for ourselves, and a lot of people we know.
Suggestions:
* Transparency upfront about how the preferred contractor works before asking for money from customers
* Continuous disclosure on retainer costs, Richard enters the costs likely the day of it, on a tool, give access to that tool so we can immediately see our balance OR a weekly email OR an email when we hit every $1,000 milestone at least.
