Hanley Carpentry is a perfect example of a general contractor that puts getting paid and moving on…read moreto the next job ahead of his reputation and having pride in his work. Niall comes off as a nice guy and is undoubtedly a good salesman, but once the work begins things change fast, especially when issues and challenges come up, with which any decent size remodel, they usually do.
Here is a top ten list of things that I had to deal with while working with Niall.
1. Niall sold himself as a "premier renovator of Boston Back Bay condos", but it turns out Niall was not even aware of the fact that many condo associations have by-laws that relate to qualifying or restricting renovations. It was his assumption that I could do whatever I wanted in my condo without getting permission from anyone. In fact, after work began and complaints began to roll in, he told me to tell the trustee of the condo association to f*** off and to mind their own business. He also threatened to pull his team out if things got difficult for him. To make matters worse, the trustee is an elderly women that lives right below me, who happens to be recovering from cancer, all of which Niall knew, and didn't care, about.
2. Niall has absolutely ZERO project management skills. The project lasted three months and Niall showed up on the job site at most 8 times, four of which were only to pick up checks. In fact, the first three weeks of the job, which I considered the most important, Niall was laying on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. Niall conveniently forgot to tell me about this planned vacation before the job started. Niall also promised weekly status reports along with a weekly invoice. This promise was not kept.
3. During the course of the engagement, FOUR of his employees literally walked off the job, just got up and quit midday. Despite that, Niall expected me to pay their day rates as if they worked a full day.
4. Most of Niall's workers are capable and hard-working. However they are given virtually ZERO direction on what needs to be done. Not surprisingly this resulted in quite a few mistakes, which naturally require redoing the work twice and sometimes three times, all of which Niall expects you to pay for.
5. Niall refused to pay for significant damage that his crew caused to a neighbor's apartment, so those repairs ended up being my responsibility which I had to pay for.
6. Whenever something would go wrong, which was quite often, Niall was quick to blame the other contractors that were working on the project. Niall never once accepted responsibility for a mistake that he or his crew made.
7. Niall conveniently and consistently forgot agreed to scope of work. He then tries billing you extra for things that are already included in a project based fee.
8. Niall does not treat his workers well. This manifests itself with some workers moping around, kicking boards, and generally being inefficient. Regardless, Niall expects you to pay for these inefficiencies.
9. Shortly after receiving the last payment from me, which totaled over $70,000, I emailed Niall a punch list of things that I expected to be fixed. Not surprisingly, Niall never responded to that email, never called, never texted, in fact I never heard from him again. Essentially he took the money and ran without finishing the job.
10. I had to call in additional contractors to fix his shoddy work. Each of them commented on the poor craftsmanship and could not believe that another GC could act so irresponsibly. Fortunately I was able to find a few qualified contractors that were able to repair his sloppy work and loose ends.
This is the first review I have written in my life. I am normally so busy with work that I wouldn't take the time to go through the trouble of writing something like this, but I think people need to know that there are some really bad, disingenuous contractors out there. I will be posting this review on Angie's list and Yelp. Hopefully it helps spare someone all the trouble that I went through.
