Ack! -- I hate to give any business 5 stars! I mean, if a place or person is good enough to be that worthy, then i don't want them to get so much business that they won't be available to me when i need them! But what the hell -- Bakari already has a solid 5 stars from others, so i might as well add my experience.
I needed several different small jobs done here, so of course a handyman was what i needed. (i'm not rich enough to hire several different people, one for each type of repair, & pay the kind of rates licensed contractors charge; & quite frankly i don't want to deal with all that -- it's hard enough to find one contractor who's both honest & competent.... Yeah, i've had some pretty nasty experiences with contractors. But that's not why i'm writing this, except that hiring Bakari was such a relief from all that nonsense, those haughty attitudes & bad work.)
I contacted about 1/2 dozen handymen who were highly rated. Seems most folks who get high enough ratings to get a lot of work lose their sense of courtesy, not even bothering to reply unless you're offering to pay them for a big enough job to keep them fat & happy for a while ...at least that's the only reason i can figure why the majority just didn't even bother to respond; only a couple said they were too busy to get to me or mine was too small a job for them now that they got big jobs. Even the guy who was the highest rated when i needed some work a few years ago didn't respond at all. Bakari did, & he was very straightforward & professional.
But much as lack of courtesy irks me, doing good work in a timely manner is what's most important when one needs repairs. Here too Bakari was excellent.
I'm writing this a while after i hired him, so i'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but i do remember that he seemed to really know his stuff (for a wide variety of repairs & questions about possible future repairs), did all the work efficiently, & his work was well done.
His hourly rate, while higher than some of the reviews from earlier, is still, from what i know, below the other highly-rated people. However, he does charge both time & mileage for getting to & from the work-site, which was new to me, in the limited experience i've had hiring a handyman (in one instance) & getting quotes from others. Since i'm in central Oakland & didn't have any huge jobs, that meant i paid an effective rate significantly higher than his stated hourly rate, for the amount of time spent working here. However, while i'm loath to give five-star reviews to ANY business unless i consider it unusually good in EVERY respect, i'm still willing to give Bakari the 5 stars, both because the bottom line still wasn't more than i would've paid someone with a higher hourly rate and (hopefully) his charging mileage & travel time perhaps means it allows him to still be of service to those of us who don't have all-day jobs, since he doesn't lose any money by going to several places in one day. If so, i'm willing to pay the extra to get his good work & good attitude (& support his approach to business & green-thinking, if you will).
Unfortunately, it also means that for someone like me, who's trying to live on a very slim Social Security "retirement" (never planned on retiring; one might say the big banks driving the whole economy off the cliff a few years ago retired me -- left me with no market for my skills, it seems, so i've been limited to volunteer work), i'll have to keep putting off some of the big repairs & have to hold off hiring Bakari until i have a long enough list of smaller items to do that the travel expense is a less significant part of his total bill. But if he's still around & still available to those of us who need to limit our repairs as much as possible, i'll have no hesitancy in looking to him before even considering others. He's worth it.
...But if all of you out there, after reading how pleased i was with his work, hire him for enough long jobs to take him effectively off the market for small repairs that folks like i can afford, then i'll deny i ever said any of this. read more