The Thoughtful Home

Steve, Michael and Dallas did a complete AV install on our new build. We just wrapped up the final additions and couldn't be happier with the system as a whole. The equipment and control4 system are working well. But most importantly, I really appreciate the customer service they provide. All along the way, there was open communication, clear quotes and solid followup. We did have some equipment we provided and they had no issues incorporating it vs pushing their agenda and sales. Thanks Guys!!

Extremely knowledgeable company that exceeded my expectations! They went above and beyond in every aspect. I would highly recommend The Thoughtful Home!

Terrible, terrible experience! I contracted with The Thoughful Home to provide complete home automation. I was told it would be a couple of day job - one week at most and was billed for a two man team. I had only one person doing the job and it took over 6 weeks and it has never truly been completed. He occasionally had another person come in from St. Louis to help but that was only 10-15% of the time he spent in my house. The person who handled the majority of the work - Steve, left my house in shambles...I had to clean up after him constantly. He left huge boxes sitting around the house which I asked over and over for him to remove and he never did. One was the box for the 110 inch screen. Sat in my game room for 3 weeks. I finally had to do it myself. He would track dirt all over the house. He drug heavy boxes up my stairs which left black marks on my carpeting. He would leave cable trimmings all over the floor so my dog would eat them and get sick. He left a huge hole in my bathroom wall for weeks. I finally had to call a contractor to come repair the drywall. He broke my shutter in one room and didn’t say a word about it. I had to confront him on it and he admitted to doing it. He tried to pull the shutter open by yanking on a louver instead of opening it correctly. He wired the electricity in my bathroom improperly so most of the outlets did not work and the other were shorting out – potential fire hazard! Had to request numerous times for them to have a trained electrician come look at the problem and repair it. However, we are still having electrical issues in that area. He would show up randomly and leave randomly for the period of 6 weeks or more. One night he stayed well past 10pm without ever getting my permission to be there that late! I tried to work with him and allow him access to accommodate him but it got hard to come home and never know if I would have someone in my house or not. My fiancé stayed home from the office for weeks to accommodate him but finally had to ask him to please let us know when he was coming. He still didn't not extend us that courtesy and would show up randomly. I contacted the owner and he came from St Louis and met with me. He said he would call me and set an appointment but he did not. Called at the last minute and then told me he had to go back and I had to move around some plans to meet with him. I showed him everything that was not working right and have also subsequently reached out to him for additional items that no longer work over the last couple of months with no results. When he came to collect the final payment, he promised me he was hiring another person in our area and he would take over my job going forward. I had requested that Steve not return to my home since he had been extremely rude and left my house in shambles. The owner, Joe told me he totally understood and that Steve did not have a good personality for dealing with people and he should only be behind the scenes on the jobs and he was taking action to fix that. Since he seemed to understand and spoke so highly of the person he was hiring that would now take over my job, I went ahead and made final payment to him. I now find out that promise of another employee to handle my needs going forward was just to get my final payment - it never happened or maybe never was going to happen. Part of the over $45K price tag of this job would be for unlimited support for any issues going forward. I have no support at this point. I was promised returned call/emails within hours. I'm not getting returned calls/emails within weeks. I have product that does not work in the house...front door keypad no longer works at all, televisions with error messages constantly, Ipad type screen for operating the whole system no longer works due to a button that sticks and you cannot turn it off or on that I was promised would be replaced 2 months ago, front door DoorBird system does not function properly, I was promised cables and a mouse to try to make some of the systems work over 2 months ago, the program used for the thermostats does not function properly - I was told by the Joe that his representative Steve should have never used that program as it's known not to function properly and that he would replace it all with control 4 thermostats when I spoke to him on the phone but when he got to the house to discuss it in person he backed out of that promise and told me to keep trying to use what I had and if it continued to not function properly he would replace them. Steve also used less expensive cameras than he quoted without discussing with us or getting our permission to change. I feel like I was baited and switched. He told us we had to purchase adaptive light dimmers that we would be able to set up to set the alarm, turn off all lights in the house, etc with a push of one button. These have never been programmed to work properly. Follow up on all these items went unanswered. We made one last attempt to contact the owner with a final demand several months ago. He replied and said he would work on it right away and email us back that day with solutions. We never heard back. After posting honest negative reviews about our experience, the owner finally agreed to refund us $4000 if we removed or altered all the reviews. He then sent us a contract to sign for this. However, the contract stated THAT WE WOULD PAY THEM $4000. When we pointed that out to him, he said he didn't even bother to read the contract before sending it to us and didn't realize it said that. What???? Just another attempt to fraud us. We then told him we would only alter the reviews AFTER receiving a cashiers check for $4000, he stopped replying to us again. It appears he never intended to refund the $4000 to us. He was just trying to con us once again. BEWARE OF THIS VENDOR!!! Don't get into the nightmare we did. We have since found another Control 4 dealer that has taken wonderful care of us. Ethical business do still exist today. This just isn't one of them!

When hiring a contractor for any residential work we always look for 4 things. Reliable, knowledgeable, reasonable and honest. We have used other smart home technicians and have not been happy with them until we met Joe with The Thoughtful Home. When we have a problem or something is not working properly, it's not a " schedule an appt. to come out and look at it" , Joe is able to remote in almost immediately.....having a family of 6, this is a huge benefit for us. I would also challenge anyone to find someone more knowledgeable on Control 4 then Joe. He stays on top of all the updates and continuing education for the Control 4 systems. Spending a lot of money on a system and having something go wrong is never ideal, but it happens and when it does, Joe is very aware and creative to find the best cost effective solution. We highly recommend Joe with The Thoughtful Home for all of your smart home / networking solutions. Mike and Talisa

Control4 got me in touch with Joe after my initial dealer did not finish the project successfully. I spent a lot of time going back and forth with Joe about the open items before he ever came on site or received any payment. Other companies wanted a large sum to even look at my project, or refused to quote the work even though they told Control4 they were interested in "rescue" jobs. Joe not only cleaned up the punch list, he came up with solutions for problems that I was previously convinced could not be solved. Joe has since some up with creative solutions for new projects and completed them in a professional manner. Many times he can work remotely, but if he needs to get his hands dirty he is fine with that as well.

Joe Whitaker has got to be one of the most knowledgeable, fastest, and most reasonable of all home automation systems. I can't remember how I ever found him, but he's been a huge help and was such a welcome change from our original installer that I don't know what I'd do without having found him. We'd probably have thrown all the equipment we had purchased away! Since the original work he has been our go-to guy ever since.