Short version: A cowboy builder…read more
Long version: The directors of this company are Bogdan Marian Hulei and Stan Hulei, both Romanian nationals. In reality, the owner and the only person who deals in the name of the company is Robert Sutton.
Robert worked for us before in 2016; it was a good value for money and so we engaged him again for a new job which involved some internal remodelling and construction of a front extension.
However, the work was marred with delays, the quality poor, cost of the internal works was approx. 50% more than quoted and communication difficult; Robert became upset and started shouting at us on a few occasions when we dared to point out problems. It was quite a list, just a few: toilet and shower installed too low, window in the bathroom doesn't open, dimming lights don't dim, floor boards in the kitchen bend because the floor underneath is not supported, atrocious quality of tiling, missing silicon, big gaps between floorboards in the hall, gap under internal door, poor quality of pointing, cracked and leaking toilet etc. In retrospect we should have been more assertive and demanded immediate rectification but this all happened gradually, so we kept paying Robert's invoices, resigned on the quality of work and only wished that the whole thing was over. The most significant issue was that Robert failed to properly support the ceiling of the kitchen and lounge during construction of the open plan living space. A part of the first floor of the house dropped which led to huge cracks in the plaster of two bedrooms, landing and bathroom upstairs. Robert explained the cracks by vibrations which was obviously nonsense (later refuted by a structural engineer) but we didn't argue with him because we wished to maintain a good relationship with him and we foolishly agreed that we would pay him to repair the damage, which he himself caused, when he finishes the extension.
Robert stopped working for four weeks in the middle of summer because of his planned and unplanned holiday while it was dry and conditions ideal for works on the roof. When he finally started working on the extension he behaved again erratically, on one occasion built a corner of the wall in the wrong place and tried to convince us that it was architect's fault. Then he built an opening for a window in the wrong place. In the meantime we were not able to use bathroom because the toilet that he installed was leaking. The quality of tiling in the bathroom was so atrocious that we decided to get new tiles instead of material that he ruined and then we paid for another tiler to redo the bathroom properly; we only asked Robert to finish the extension asap. He was in no hurry (surprise, surprise, it was September and raining!), requested the second of three instalments for the front extension - and promptly walked off.
He has not done some of the work that he charged for, the cost of rectifying the problems with internal works is several thousand pounds but the main issue was that he left us with half-finished extension, opened roof and unsecured property. He refused to honour our contract and didn't even want to give us contact details for the company that he hired scaffolding from. The roof immediately started leaking, we had to take time off work to make the house watertight. We then spent considerable time and money hiring a reputable builder to finish the job and rectify problems that Robert caused. As you can imagine, most good builders are booked for some time in advance and a leaking roof in the middle of rainy September didn't help our negotiating position.
We are now fine, just a bit poorer in material possessions but richer in experience.
