Choosing The Right Contractor

Today we hear from a homeowner in San Jose who had an extremely bad experience with the same Shoddy Contractor that we had dealings with. 

This gal had left a bad review on City Search in Santa Cruz area.

This is what this homeowner had posted about this contractor:

I had tile work done in my bathrooms and laundry room and the tiles were not leveled at all. I think they just placed the tiles down without bothering to make sure they lay flat. When I mentioned that the tiles were flat, the contractor says that I must have stepped on them (even the ones near the corners of the room?) Additionally, I had SS to put in skylights, which the contractor assured me that she had done before, the skylights leaked in the first rain. When I hired a roofer to patch around the skylight, I was told that SS had installed it incorrectly and cheaply. What a disaster! By the way, never trust her to go on a hourly basis. She quotes a competitive price but end up doubling the cost. Another thing is that she will create work where not needed. Avoid this company or you will end up paying someone else to fix up their mess.

• Cons: Bad workmanship , overcharges for work

This section talks about how CSLB addresses complaints and the procedures that CSLB follows.

We contacted The Contractors State License Board.  You can go here to File A Complaint.

This is something that we never in a million years that we would have to do, however we had a home that was distroyed by This Shoddy Contractor from Amador County and we needed some help!

To my surprise The Shoddy Contractor from Amador County shows up before 8:00 a/m!  He has never showed up this early in the morning to start work on our home.  I go outside as I do not see his truck blocking my driveway like he used to do each day he was here not letting people come up on our property and be able to turn around.  He would tell them that they needed to back down.  OMG!  We live on a dirt windy road about 1/4 of a mile from the highway.  Just not very professional at all!

Anyway, I see that him and his girlfriend have their little trailer full of all their tools and supplies loaded up and ready to leave our property.  I couldn't have asked for a better out come!  This means that they are leaving our property.

I ask, "Are you leaving"?  No answer!  So I ask again!  He says YES!  OK now I'm doing the Happy Dance inside my heart thinking better days ahead for us now.  Well he starts getting hostile and moves very angrily and fast towards his pickup which scared me.  All of a sudden his girlfriend runs to him grabbing both of his arms so that she can restrain him and yells his name, and "DONT".  I'm really freighted by what I'm seeing as I see her hands holding on to his arms to the point where they are sinking into him to restrain him and make hime stop.

Today is the first day for the contractor to start tearing off the dry rot so that he can repair it.  First thing he cuts into my electrical lines in our home and the power shuts off.  I go outside to see what happens and he blames it on us having brittle electrical lines.  WHAT????  We have a new home and this should not be happening. 

Then a few short moments later I hear some yelling to turn off the main water line.  I go running outside and I have a WaterFall coming out of the side of my home!  As I'm running down the steps to turn off the water I notice that the contractor is talking to his girlfriend.  When I get back to the porch this contractor tells me that that water leak was the cause of our dry rot!  OMG!  This is rediculious!!!  If I had a water leak that bad pouring out of my home for all these months and years, don't you think that my home and property would have been flooded by now?  Don't you think that I would have a huge water bill each month?

Of course I didn't buy this story so I called my husband to let him know and that I wasn't feeling good about this construction company working on our home and that he was telling me something that I knew wasn't true.  Well later that evening he decides that he better tell the truth, so he tells my husband that it was him that cut through the water pipe; however once again we now have brittle water pipes he tells my husband.

No Way.  I'm not buying this story.

I was outside talking with them when I had to run in the house and as I was looking out the kitchen window I noticed that they had gotten in their truck and they were leaving.  They left my yard a total mess with all their tools scattered all about and not to mention all over our front deck.  We were missing part of our front deck because they cut it off and did not put a board over it to keep us safe.  They had taken off the front porch light so we didn't have any light out front either.   

Well now today the big truck pulls up to our home and the word "Excitement" isn't strong enough for how I felt.  I was over come with joy as I have never had a Designer Kitchen before.  I was about to be the proud owner of a beautiful kitchen!  What more could I want.

Andrew McGuirk shows up along with the cabinet installers wife to go through the cabinets and make sure that they are all here and that everything is just as it should be.  If there was a cabinet with a scratch, they sent it back and had a new one made and sent back to us. 

Well this is an exciting day for us!  We have been wanting a brand new kitchen for the longest time and had looked around to find the right designer for us.  We have been working with an awesome cabinet designer named Andrew McGuirk whom is the Cabinet Sales Specialist at Lowes in Jackson California.  Just so happens that Andrew and I worked together years back and we are like family.  So I knew that I would be in the best of hands.

We had just a couple of months earlier purchased our Stainless Steel Appliances and are very happy with them.   They just make our kitchen look so rich and I couldn't love them more.

Andrew from Lowes in Jackson, California was very patient with us as we kept changing our minds on our cabinet style and designs.  We finally let Andrew McGuirk know which direction we were going and let him know the things we wanted and the things we didn't and put the task of designing in his hands. 

What my husband and I decided on was a contemporary kitchen.  We wanted something with clean lines and very elegant looking.  We decided on the Cherry Wood with Chocolate Glaze cabinets with the long handle pulls.

Well we paid for everything today and now is the wait until our designer kitchen cabinets arrive.

Thank You Andrew (Andy) McGuirk for being so kind and patient with us!