Based on other reviews here, looks like my experience is the norm.
The scheduling process should have been the first red flag. I called on Monday and spoke with a scheduler, who offered me a 10am appt Tuesday morning. I said I had a meeting at 10 that I couldn't miss, could we do noon instead? She kind of hemmed and hawed but finally said yes, noon would work. Later that evening, David called me to confirm his appt and hear my description of the job. He said, "Just to confirm, 10am tomorrow, right?" I said, "No, your scheduler wanted to do 10 but I explained to her I have an appointment at that time and can't get to the property until noon. Is noon still okay?" Yes it was, he assured me, noon Tuesday, confirmed.
On Tuesday at 10:10 I was in my appointment (a doctor's appointment btw, not like a work thing I could just walk away from), and my phone rang - his number. Oh no. I couldn't answer, and 30 seconds later my Fitbit buzzed with a text, "Are you home???" I told the doctor someone was at my home and I needed to step out and call him, which I did, telling him AGAIN that I was in an appointment which he had interrupted and that I'd be there at noon as discussed.
Once I finally met him at noon, we walked the property and I explained our needs, and he discussed different options. His first suggested layout of the replacement deck would have blocked the entrance to our basement, which I pointed out. "Oh, oh yeah, guess we can't do that then." We talked about a few different options, and I explained that we needed the quote provided with one part of the project as an optional add-on, because there was one part that for sure needed to be finished immediately and the other part was an "if we can afford to do this now as well" option. He assured me that he would break the quote down in that way.
I spoke with two of his competitors that afternoon, and one of them suggested an option that we liked even better than the one he had suggested. David texted me with a question a couple hours later, and at that same time I told him about his competitor's suggestion and gave him the opportunity to bid on that option as well, since that's the direction we were likely going to go. He eagerly agreed that the option was a good one, and said he would bid on that option instead.
When I got the bid the next day, it lumped everything into one big sum, no breakdown whatsoever. I texted him to ask about the breakdown of the optional add-on. And this is where things started to get weird. He texted a very curt response about me changing my mind about what we wanted. I explained that no, we just wanted him to be bidding on the same thing as everyone else, but that the request to break the project down into the two parts had never changed. His texts got increasingly belligerent so I finally got him on the phone. I apologized if there had been any confusion, and he yelled at me that there was no confusion, I was just wasting his time and changing my mind. He said that I couldn't just have him make all the quotes I wanted just because it was a free estimate... even though he had only provided me one quote and it hadn't even covered the job as requested. And I'm sorry, I not only have 90% of the conversation in writing via those texts, but after the mixup with the scheduled appt time, I don't exactly have faith in his ability to listen and retain information from his clients.
Anyway, he screamed at me that he didn't want my business, I told him I'd be leaving a negative review, and he hung up on me. So I left a review on Google. Oddly enough, a few hours later I received a nasty message through my website. If you Google my name from my review, the first thing you'll find is the website for my work as an actor. Due to the pandemic I haven't done any acting work in over a year, so there is zero reason anyone would be stumbling across my site right now. And yet, through the contact form on my site, from an IP address that looks suspiciously associated with someone from this company, a "Rod Stiffington" (so clever and original) sent me this: "I recommend you give up acting because you suck. Your facial expressions look ridiculous. You need to realize that all you'll ever be is a failed actress..." (oh no I'm so hurt, how will I ever recover from this scathing professional review of my work)
Reading reviews here, it seems like lashing out at people after they dare to give negative reviews is kind of his MO. Anyway. All around a horrible experience, and I happily signed with one of his competitors. read more