Our experience with Hoxie's Painting was a nightmare…read more
Everything seemed great at first, then everything went downhill fast as the project neared "completion". The only thing that seemed important was for the foreman to be "done" and to have his payment, and he was relentless about getting out of there. After a couple walkarounds having to point out glaringly obvious issues, we gave in and wrote a check.
Later that day we realized the interior of our porch was not painted - this had been discussed multiple times and was part of the contract. Seeing this, we canceled the check because the contract had not been respected. Two calls and texts to Hoxie's to let them know of this issue with no response. Despite this notice and outreach, the company still tried to deposit our check.
In the meantime, we realized the full scope of disregard for us as customers. In addition to the unpainted porch (which I ended up painting myself), most of the house appears to have a single coat of paint on it with poor coverage - not the contractually agreed-upon 2 coats we paid for. Damage in the form of excessive paint smears and drips on brick facade. Everywhere we look, there is a complete lack of commitment to quality. As a professional painter, the foreman 100% had to know this was the case, and we realized that we had been taken for a ride.
Instead of contacting me, Hoxie's enlisted the same foreman who had cheated us to fix the problem. If the owner had ever responded, we would have been clear that this person was not welcome back. He first called my wife who could not speak at the time, then showed up unannounced and uninvited the next morning. By the end of the day, we had ignored 13 phone calls - calling, calling repeatedly. Extremely unprofessional.
As this was happening, I left a voicemail and sent the owner a text saying this was not ok, please leave our house, and call me back immediately. When the owner responded 7 hours later, I let him know that we were now done with Hoxie's Painting and would not welcome the company back to complete the job. We would pay for what had been done, but would not pay for what had not been done. The owner offered to discount about 8% from the original fee, and I proposed to pay approximately 33% less than the original fee - based on my feeling that about 2/3 of the project had been completed. The owner agreed to my figure and I sent a text summarizing our conversation asking him to respond in agreement before I would send payment.
He responded that night by threatening to sue me for nonpayment plus legal fees.
To be fair, I invited the owner over to look at the house because he had not seen the issues in person. We had an honest conversation as I showed him the issues, incomplete work, and damage. He offered again to send somebody over to fix the issues, and I told him we were not open to that option. The owner said it would take a single painter "a few hours" to fix everything. I completely disagree with that assessment - for starters we feel the house needs another full coat of paint.
The owner would not budge from his 8% reduction and implied that I was in the wrong because we refused to allow the company back to our home. In my view, it's a privilege to have paying customers. And when we are misled, subjected to unprofessional behavior, and threatened legally, a company loses that privilege because we no longer trust that we will be treated with respect.
In the end, we paid the owner his requested fee in exchange for a receipt indicating we had paid in full - making it clear that we were very unhappy. We likely lost a significant amount of money and will have to hire somebody to complete the work next year. At the end of the day, the legal threats, stress and headaches were simply not worth the trouble and we paid to make it go away.
That's our experience.