First, I will point out the positives in working with James. He and his workers did fairly good…read morequality work on our ceiling insulation. More importantly, it seems to achieve the objective which was to reduce the indoor temperature during hot balmy 100+ degree days here in the San Fernando Valley. From what we can tell, he does not cut corners. He is a pleasant person with an easy-going personality.
However, there were issues of unreliability and professionalism in dealing with James that we experienced. When we had met with him to discuss and go over the contract terms of the project and our expectations, we had two questions for him: 1) did you have other competing jobs at the time? and his answer was no "we are next in line" and 2) what if you cannot meet our timeline? because we wanted to minimize the inconvenience to our tenants as much as possible since they would not have access to their living room for the duration of the project. His answer was there is no guarantee on how long the project would actually take and that it would just be an estimate of 5-6 days. Being reasonable people, we did not have an issue with that but at no point in our conversation and thereafter, did he ever mention that there would be a possibility that he would take on another/other competing project(s) at the same time as ours which would then make ours not his top priority. In fact, when he was making the mental calculation in his mind of how much time he estimated it would take for our project, we were very certain that the assumption was that there would be no other competing projects. However, as it turned out, that was not the case.
My wife, Diana C, who has given her review, gave explicit details of our experiences and issues and so, I will cover our issues in more general terms.
In addition to his unreliability in not repeatedly showing up on time as promised, he could have demonstrated more professionalism and could have taken a better tone with us, especially under the circumstances. When we continued to question why he was not there as promised which meant that our project would be delayed for another day, he would give his answers in a defensive, inappropriate, and condescending tone such as, if you get "flowers, chocolate just saying" or "I could do it like how I did Reagan's house". At the time, we were all upset with his unreliability. In fact, he would even tell us that he had been working 12-20 hour days and of course, he had only spent a small fraction of that time on our project. So needless to say, it was difficult to offer someone any goodwill under those circumstances when he continued to not make good on his promises. On the first day, that Diana C referenced, he would take a defensive position after his workers told her that he was at Home Depot but later the truth revealed that he was not just at Home Depot for 6 hours but rather also supervising at another project which is when we first found out that he took on another project. This was not divulged to us until he was questioned. Further into the project, we did not appreciate his condescending tone in explaining to us that "construction projects are difficult to predict and unforeseen things is life...issues with his truck transmission". This was his attempt to explain the delays. It really felt like we were being dragged through a saga for what we considered to be not a very complex project which involved foil placement, ceiling insulation, foam board, and drywall. Yes, granted that this is a new area that James did not have any prior experience or expertise in, he certainly did his research beforehand which we appreciated. However, logic would then dictate that for any endeavor of this nature, you would certainly not take on another project so that you can focus on it until completion. He was certainly confident when we asked him if this were a job he can do. While it is true that James does not cut corners as claimed, that would imply a certain dedication to a project until completion and it would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish that if you are trying to be at multiple projects at the same time. As far as we know, James does not have a business partner or a project manager and so, he is the only one to give guidance and direction to his workers on a project.
Lastly, James conveyed to us that he does not leave projects uncompleted or in limbo with his clients (again another reason why we chose him) but truth to be told, we experienced nothing but that very issue with him repeatedly.
So in summary, if my wife had not pressured him repeatedly, our project may still be unfinished while our tenants remain in limbo. It was only the result of that pressure, he rushed to complete the project after delaying it. In fact, on the last day, I had to supervise him to make sure that he would complete the last details of the job which was to put up a small moulding piece and to remove debris from the backyard.
