We recently bought our first home - the kitchen was closed off with a very awkward partial wall, which we discovered was hiding a HVAC vent. We had no idea how or if our dream of opening up the kitchen was feasible, or financially attainable. So we definitely needed guidance and an expert opinion. We met with York Enterprises to discuss opening up our kitchen and expanding the layout, which entailed adding a beam, building a partial wall, moving an HVAC vent, and rerouting some electrical. We were explained the work that was required and Tyler recommended a contract based on time and materials in order to save money. (If you don't read any further just know: never do a time and materials contract!) He provided a few opinions of what items would cost and also stated what items weren't included in those figures. But at the end of the email he stated it was "a job likely under 5k." What exactly this included wasn't specified right there in that sentence, but I'm no contractor and had zero idea what anything would cost, so I took his statement at face value and did a happy dance internally that we could actually make this work.
So first let's state the positive: A star for all of the guys that came to do the work. They were prompt, communicative, and funny. The job was finished quickly and turned out beautifully. And the project foreman was very informative, accommodating and very nice.
The less than positive: I was always having to text/email to get a status update or find out when someone was coming out next. In both of my jobs, I'm an over-communicator to my clients, so maybe I'm expecting too much but not having to always ask for status updates would have been much appreciated. We were very surprised one morning to see the guys hired to finish the drywall pull into our driveway before 7am, as we hadn't been notified they were coming. Good thing we wake up early!
Then, just like most contractor horror stories begin, we received the bill.. Yikes. $11,200. Not quite the $5,000 we were initially expecting.
Another positive: the invoices they provide are very detailed and overall it is super transparent. There were minor errors and items billed to us that shouldn't have been and incorrect tax rates, (so double check your invoices) but overall, I can say as an accountant, I appreciated the reports provided. But there was still a massive discrepancy in what was initially communicated to us and what we were billed. We were told the work of the wall did account to 5k and it was all of the extra items that created the "cost creep."
Should we have known better than to think this project was going to be 5k, 7k or 8k? I don't know, perhaps a more sage homeowner is nodding his head reading this. Is a $11,200 bill going to ruin our lives? Not necessarily, we'll survive, I guess we are just recovering from paying off our recent wedding so it stung a little more than it maybe should have. I just wish things had been explained a bit better. When the guy who's last name is the name of the company tells you something is going to cost x dollars, why would you think otherwise? Newsflash Tyler: providing a customer with a numerical figure, however casually, should be done carefully because it's going to hold weight in the customer's eyes. When we raised our concerns with how all of these charges weren't explicitly communicated with us, Tyler's response, to summarize, was "you didn't ask, so we didn't feel the need to say anything." Not exactly how I would handle customer service issues, but hey, what can you do.
My husband and I have both recently become realtors, and are now getting into real estate investing, so in an an effort to see the light in any difficult situation - if nothing else, I guess I can say, thank you Tyler and York Enterprises for the learning experience! read more
