Just to clarify comments I've seen elsewhere:
"The Brothers that just do Gutters" is a national franchise, like Roto-Rooter, but the contractor outfits working under that brand in different cities are indeed local businesses, "Doing Business As" Brothers Gutters. It's just a regular franchise. Don't get worked up about it.
We have a house with the lame "Dutch Gutter" style, which allows water to pool on our mostly flat roof if the downspouts aren't running freely.
Most of the downspouts are severely clogged, and we asked for an estimate to replace all the downspouts - except for the one in the center back of the house, which is the only one that stays clear and works fine.
Rich came out to do the estimate. He was very friendly and personable, and we received the estimate by email mail a little later and approved it.
The messaging around the estimate made it clear that a 50% down payment was required in order to get the job scheduled on the calendar. This was also mentioned verbally during the estimate visit.
I emailed him back and said we approved the estimate, and asked how to go about making the down payment so we could get the work scheduled. He said never mind the deposit, he'd collect payment in full when the job was completed.
We were eventually told that we'd been scheduled, so we put that date on our calendar.
The day before the job, I received a text from Charles to confirm our color selection for the downspouts.
Color options hadn't been mentioned during the estimate, so I asked what the options were. He said white and brown were in stock, but other colors would add $200 to the estimate, and sent me a photo of color samples.
Then I received a call from the installation crew, telling me that they were going to come that afternoon instead of the next day, but by that point, my wife indicated to me that we wanted to select a particular color and we would be agreeable to the additional $200 cost.
So I texted Charles back and explained to him that color hadn't come up in the estimate, but we'd actually like to go with grey, and so they had to put in an order for the materials and reschedule our job.
Eventually Rich texted me again to let me know that we were rescheduled for another day, and to reiterate that there was an upcharge for the color selection which he said he sent to me
I texted back to say that I hadn't received any revised estimate document to approve, but as long as we were on the same page about the upcharge being $200 on top of the original estimate, I was okay with that. Rich gave a thumbs-up response on my text message.
The morning before the expected installation day, I got a phone call from the crew saying that we were on their list for today and they'd be here in a few minutes.
I texted Rich just to express my surprise, and he said its like that sometimes; sometimes you're ahead of schedule and sometimes you're behind, and I get that.
He apologized and said he was going to call everyone to let them know, as soon as he got out of his meeting.
I apologized for jumping the gun in contacting him.
When the crew arrived, I met them outside and we did a walkthrough to point out all the downspouts in the job.
Later, I noticed a fellow on the balcony, dismantling the one downspout that wasn't part of the job. I opened the window and advised him that this one wasn't supposed to get replaced, and he apologized and politely reconnected it (it hadn't come very far off yet).
I sent Rich an amused comment about this, and he said 'They should get a clear scope of the work', where I then observed that I'd already done the walkthough with crew foreman and Rich said "It happens".
They got the work done really quick though! It was just a couple hours. They did a nice neat job, and the downspouts look good. We're pleased with the color choice, as it matches the house better.
So when we went to make payment, the crew foreman indicated that the invoice was about $200 more than we were expecting.
He pulled up the invoice on his phone where it showed the itemization (which isn't normally shown on the customer's copy of the estimate/invoice) and it showed a $400 charge for the color.
I went back to text Rich and let him know I was confused by the price, because it seemed we were being charged rather more than we were told to expect. Rich apologized and generated a new estimate/invoice and emailed it to me.
Then he called me and we spoke on the phone to close the transaction.
The new revised number was still more than just "the original estimate plus $200", and I asked why that was, and he said during the job, one of the guys had to run back to get some more materials which hadn't been estimated, so that bumped the cost a little, but he said they should have mentioned it at the time. They didn't, but okay...
so, that was kind of an unexpected cost add-on for about 80 bucks.
Rich took my payment over the phone, and sent a new closed invoice. read more
