Phoenix Restorations is a misnomer. I suggest Vulture Restorations.
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We are the owners of a 650 square feet condo, located in Burnaby, Greater Vancouver, B.C, Canada and we would like to detail our experience with Phoenix Restorations. On the "date of loss", two Phoenix Restorations employees entered our unit for half hour. During this time, they taped the ceiling (which did not require taping since the damage was isolated to the floor) placed dehumidifying machines and they charged $4,056.53. Their bill for one hour of labor amounted to $4056.53 There is a surcharge is for their after hours/emergency hours. This was the first invoice. More details regarding grossly inflated material costs and the performance of unnecessary work are documented in the following paragraphs.
Our water damage incident happened at March 17, 2020 around 7:40 pm. We phoned 911 immediately, and firemen arrived in 15 minutes, around 7:55 pm. Before they entered, we had already turned off the water for the entire unit. My neighbour, my husband and I focused on wiping water from the flooring surface and the firemen focused on vacuuming the water from the floor with their special equipment. During the time, the onsite property caretaker phoned the emergency number for Phoenix Restorations. With the help of firemen and our neighbours, the water damage was contained quickly. They left after major work being done around 8:30 pm. My husband and I continued to do further cleaning.
Around 10pm, two workers from Phoenix finally arrived, performed a simple inspection and stated the water damage was "not bad at all" since we have already done the work. They did a bit of taping, brought in two 1200 dehumidifier and 6 air dryers to our home and left the building around 10:30 pm. That is 30 minutes of work.
The day after incident, three Phoenix workers came into our home around 9:30am and did simple tests and claimed the water damage was "very bad" and even taped our ceiling. This was contradictory to the comments made just 12 hours ago by Phoenix.
After I repeated asked how does the water damage on floor travel up my ceiling, Phoenix Restorations employees cancelled the plan to tape off my celling. (Why is unnecessary work being performed?!) We requested the removal of all 8 machines from our property since our unit is small and the scope of work does not justify 8 machines. After the machines from our home were removed, they went down to the commercial properties underneath our unit to claim the water damage needed to be fixed.
The commercial owner who has first hand knowledge that the scope of damages are very very limited refused Phoenix Restoration's intrusions. (We went down the commercial owners and apologize for the incident the same day, and changed two ceiling boards for the owner at the cost of $30 and supplied them with a brand new dehumidifier for $299 for their use. The commercial properties were well maintained after our limited efforts. After Phoenix Restorations was rejected by the commercial owner, they proceeded to the common area ( which had no signs of visible damage) removed a base board, and hollowed out the partial wall to fan the inside without any communication with us to confirm this was necessary.
In addition, they went to our adjacent same sized unit and claim that the adjacent unit was affected, and placed two dehumidifiers and an unidentified number of fans in the kitchen area of unit (we are unable to determine the number of machines used for the adjacent unit from the billing invoice). Even though our washroom is adjacent to our neighbour's kitchen, the water damage in our washroom was very limited. Our vanity was completely dry without any signs of damage. We then wonder how it is possible that Phoenix Restorations claims water seeped to our neighbour's unit when our unit's epicenter was not at all impacted.
All claims were unilaterally made by Phoenix Restorations and we were left completely in the dark at all times . They never consulted with us before work was performed. After few weeks, the strata forward a bill totalling $12,000 for 4 days of service for our 650 square feet unit and minimal common area.
They then asked strata to permit them to approve more work, at additional costs. After we received the bill, and carefully went over the all items, we strongly believe the bill was very highly inflated and all the itemized costs were "unclean" so to speak. We immediately emailed the strata to notify them of issue and advised them not to pay any money before the Phoenix Restorations made the correct adjustments. We also asked the strata to not sign off on any further work forms that would give Phoenix the go ahead to deem the work complete.
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