Project: Replace about 250 feet of 30+ year old fencing. I was coordinating with 3 of my four neighbors (the 4th neighbor and I had replaced our mutual fence a few years earlier...) When I met Joe, I took an instant liking to him. He was knowledgeable and passionate. The bid went smoothly and I was looking forward to working with him. After a delay of about a month getting my neighbors in line and dealing with the logistics of all of our family pets not having access to their yards, I decided to proceed. He came out to re-familiarize himself with the project and sign paperwork. He was set to start work two days later on what he claimed to be a "no more than 2 1/2 day" job. The fun stopped basically after I wrote the first check. On Thursday: No Joe. I had taken time off from work and he was a no-show. I called him that afternoon and got some lame excuse as to why he wasn't there and wasn't coming. STRIKE ONE.
On Friday he arrived on time. He was apologetic, but the damage was done. In what I can only suppose to be eagerness to make up time, he started demolition of the almost new section of fence I'd done with above mentioned 4th neighbor. He put nearly half of the relatively new fence on the ground before I could stop him. WTF? The demolition took longer than he expected for various reasons, so they didn't pour concrete on the new posts until late in the day. Because of that, Joe said, he couldn't do any work on Saturday. But what he COULD have done is repair the damage to the section of fence he had destroyed that wasn't part of the job. STRIKE TWO.
They got about half of the job up on Sunday without incident, but it took all of Monday to finish the project. Actual time was twice that of his estimate. STRIKE THREE.
Oh, and I shouldn't neglect to mention that their company truck left massive oil stains on the street in front of my house and a neighbor too. We'll try to forget all the irritated phone calls I had to field from disgruntled neighbors as well.
On the plus side, the fence itself looks to be a good job and they cleaned up the site extremely well. Not nearly enough to counter all the negatives. read more