I had to give myself some time to cool off before I wrote this review... I wanted it to be sober, and not an emotional knee jerk response.
It all started when he arrived for our appointment. I was in my office when the doorbell rang. It was a hot day in the summer and I took a few seconds to put on my shirt. I opened the door and he impatiently asked, "We had an appointment, right?" I was taken aback, but shrugged the rudeness off.
We walked into the kitchen where I needed the light installed. I had it partially out of the box on our dining table. (It was a West Elm Mobile Chandelier, Large, Antique Brass) He instantly said, "I don't put things together." And "I'm pretty expensive per hour, you don't want to pay me to put it together anyway." If he would have taken two seconds to look at it, he would have seen there is no assembly required, everything is on swivels that you tighten into place with a small hex key. Ok, fine, I told him I would configure it. I showed him the recessed light above the table where I needed the light to be hardwired. He said, "I don't do drywall work." I'm not an electrician, that's why I hired him. I was confused why he would say that because he just needed to take the can out and the top/base of the light was wide enough it would cover the hole in the ceiling. He told me he could rig it up without removing the can but wanted to do it properly. Sounded good. I went back into my office to work. I could hear him humming and singing (?) which sounded a little creepy, but whatever.
When I came out he had torn large gashes around the hole in the ceiling to remove the can and had done a horrible spackling job. This blew my mind because, if he would have asked me, there is a large attic space above it, large enough for a person to stand in, that he could have just removed the can from instead of tearing/pulling it down through the ceiling from below. He asked me when I wanted him to come back and finish the job. Baffled, I asked him to come back as soon as possible later in the week.
Two weeks later, at 7:00am on a Saturday morning, I was awoken by a text message from him demanding payment. I responded saying I was happy to pay him, but we needed to get the job done first. Earlier that week, I had sanded and painted the damage he did to my ceiling. The damage was so bad I had to design, and find a fabricator to make, a custom ceiling medallion to hide it.
About a week and a half later he finally showed to do the final wiring. He didn't even make the ceiling medallion flush with the ceiling. He left about a 1 inch gap. He said something to the effect that it was ok because it looked like it was floating. Then he stared at the ceiling and said, "I like light." Yeah, I think we all do.
This all cost me roughly $200+ dollars when all was said and done.
I should also state I initially mentioned that I had other small jobs that I needed him to do, but he didn't seem interested at all. As if they weren't worth his time.
This guy is the product of having no yearly performance reviews, no manager or boss checking quality of work, for many, many years. Well, today he gets a long overdue review.
He also referred to me as "buddy". I'm a 40 year old man... read more
