We hired RPI to mitigate water damage at our residence. They did not handle the repairs, we ended up hiring someone else.
The good:
1. They responded promptly, and showed up on time the next morning.
2. They knew what they were doing.
3. Lindsey LaBelle was our project manager and she was nice.
The bad:
1. They do not have their act together where paperwork and administrative details are concerned. They said the claims adjuster should have submitted the paperwork to the insurance company, the adjuster said he didn't get the paperwork from RPI. There was much finger pointing. The actual claim was not submitted till I intervened and tracked the paperwork down, 10 days after it should have been submitted.
The reason we did not award RPI the repair contract after the mitigation work was done was because they were insensitive to our needs as a family with two young children. Perhaps the damage at our home was small fry compared to the large cases they handle, but in that case they could have said so upfront and declined the work.
Instead, what they did as a part of the mitigation process was to put a hole in our kitchen ceiling directly above the stove, rip up the flooring completely in one of the two bathrooms in the house, and subsequently left us with an unusable bathroom and kitchen for 2+ weeks after the dry out was complete. When we contacted them to ask when they would start on the repairs, they declined to start until they received payment in full for the mitigation work.
Fine, except how was payment supposed to reach if the claim paperwork hadn't been submitted to the insurance company in the first place? It may have been the adjuster's fault like they claim, but hey, if you are the one wanting to be paid, you should be the one chasing the paperwork to confirm whether the insurance company received the claim. I ended up doing their work for them simply because I needed my house fixed ASAP.
2. Before signing the contract authorizing RPI to do the work, Tristan Moerman the COO, verbally suggested that depending on the cost of repairs, they might be able to help us out with the deductible. We went ahead and signed the contract at this point.
After the mitigation work was complete and payment was due, I wrote to him to ask whether we could subtract our deductible from the total amount owed. The response was unprofessional - he denied what he said, and instead said his offer was only valid if we agreed to have RPI work on both the mitigation and repairs. He said no such thing when he spoke to us when he came out to give us a quote. He merely mentioned that depending on the total cost, he will be able to help us out. It's his word against ours.
Where this got ugly was in the manner in which Tristan handled it. He could have politely explained that the amount billed ($7000+) was not sufficient to offer us a discount, and that would have been that. Instead, he denied what he originally said, and claimed he said something else. This, and the tone of his emails where he went on the offensive was appallingly unprofessional. When I mentioned that I would be talking about our experience on social media, Yelp, and BBB, Tristan went so far as to threaten to sue us for slander! Just the way to treat an unhappy customer and generate goodwill.
I copied the CEO of the company Ryan Peacock on these messages, and he had nothing to say. This would have been a good time for him to step up and do some damage control, but none was forthcoming.
A good way to save this situation and make it a win for all concerned would have been if they had offered us the option to pay for the repairs up front, out of our pockets. They did not do that. Instead, they simply sat on their hands and claimed helplessness. By then, we were so desperate with 2 kids at home, no kitchen and a single working bathroom for 3+ weeks that we would have gladly paid them out of pocket, and then dealt with insurance ourselves later to be reimbursed. When we tried to explain this to Tristan, he went off on a tangent about how we never offered to pay etc. He chose to respond to what he *thought* we wrote, instead of what we actually wrote.
Overall, it was a negative experience with RPI. Maybe there were exceptionally busy with multiple projects when this happened and that's why our paperwork fell through the cracks seeing how the other reviews say RPI did a great job for them, but that is no reason to not step up to the plate and take responsibility for mistakes instead of blaming the customer. The consistent tone of their response to us has been to blame us. It will be interesting to see if their response to this review will be any different. read more