Let me start by saying: the job was finished at the end, it was alright, not exceptional. However, the experience was no less than painful. The only thing professional about this company was their quoting and invoicing process, which gave us the illusion he would be just as professional with his work. Here are a few things that happened during the process.
- the day he came to remove the existing tiles and carpet, he left our apartment front door open made our staircase full of dust. He was also working into the evening hours. We received noise and dust complaints from Body Corporate and we had to go over to the site and clean the staircase that evening. He also left the tiles in a green bin in our parking garage, which was not meant for construction waste. We also got a notice about that.
- he was not very communicative during the process, often times we wouldn't hear from him for days. - he's careless with our belongings, he threw his tools on our carpet, which stained it. We had to hire a professional steam cleaner to clean up after him. He also left his garbage behind often. - he originally told us in his email that he could do skirting and caulking for us, but when the time came, he kept pushing the work to one of our other contractors on site because "it's a carpenter and caulker's job". He did the skirting at the end, but the job was substandard and the caulking was terrible. We had to hire someone else to rectify that job.
- We had to get all the materials, including skirting for him, and all we got from him was "who's the cheap a** that only got 4 planks? get me the rest asap please!" We live on the third floor with no stairs, the skirting was 6m long, it was not easy to move them up.
- when questioned about a few areas that either had uneven skirting or gaps, he raised his voice at me and told me "this was the Australian standard and I could take it up to the association of some sorts". Sure… He also asked me "how many floors have you installed?" Well, none, that's why we hired you, but how we regret this decision now. It was not a pleasant exchange, though he did apologise for his behaviour afterwards, I would have preferred to work with someone truly professional, decent, and less defensive. Plus he didn't rectify the gaps he left between the floor and our kitchen, just deducted 30 bucks off our bill..
- He then sent two emails to us saying he didn't appreciate his professionalism being questioned and felt like we looked at him like a "mo**n". Well, that's an interesting perspective. Let's just agree to disagree. It took him a day to put skirting in our small living room and one box of flooring, suffice to say he’s neither fast nor exceptional at his job.
All in all, despite all the pain, the job was done and I guess we got what we paid for. We are just glad we will never cross paths again.