The photos of my driveway below speak for themselves. What they don't say is how Kyle reacted when I brought to his attention the 13 spots that were on the driveway immediately after it had dried. Instead of listening and trying to address the obvious black spots at the end of my driveway, he immediately said "that's normal" and "they will go away in a couple days." 10 days later the dark spots were (and are still) there.
Instead of focusing on how to help his customer by addressing the issue, he stood in my driveway and yelled at me about how he wanted to get paid because the job was done. I explained that the job is not done because it was not done correctly and to the satisfaction of what a normal customer would expect. His response "that's just how concrete is - it's unpredictable." After him yelling at me in front of my house for roughly 30 minutes, I told him that if he continues to yell at me instead of having a normal conversation, I am going to have to leave. He did calm down for a while at that point but then he returned to yelling in what continued to be a very surprising and disturbing discussion.
I checked with four different concrete sources (2 concrete guys like Kyle, a concrete mixer/supplier in Lake Geneva, and Concrete Solutions in Lake Geneva) to make sure I wasn't overreacting or expecting too much. Each of them immediately responded saying "that isn't normal" with the guy from the concrete mixer/supplier adding that he has not seen anything like that in his 30 years in the business. If you aren't sure whether to believe me, try for yourself by showing them the pictures in this post and see what sort of reaction you get. The consensus among the four professionals with well over 100 years of combined experience was that the saw used to cut the lines into the concrete after it had dried leaked oil as it was cutting the lines. This was concluded because the mixer/supplier noticed that almost all of the spots were located on or around the cuts. It all made sense to everyone except for Kyle. He just wanted to get paid - for a job not well done.
In the end, I decided that life is too short to continue to engage in such contentious "conversations" with Kyle and decided to pay him and simply get on with enjoying life. The Paid in Full Receipt is included in the photos below. If you hire Kyle and the job goes as planned then likely you'll end up with a nice result and save some $s, but if it does not go as planned, then there's a very good chance that your experience will be more like what I have described above. And, as Kyle reiterated multiple times "concrete is unpredictable." That's why the concrete company you hire is so important. read more