FERNANDO GUERRERO

We had been talking to Fernando about doing some work at our house and asked whether he could do mold testing and abatement. He said yes. He took a bulk sample from our wall (which, we learned later, is absolutely the wrong thing to do, because it causes the spores to release into the air). He called two days later and gave us the "all clear." I had to call him about five times to get him to give me the report. When he gave it to me, it didn't say anything about mold - the lab had tested the sample for asbestos. He tried to convince me that they had also tested it for mold and it was fine, but I said I wanted another report. Again, I got the verbal "all clear," and again I had to chase him to get the report. (I also confirmed with the company that they had not tested for mold the first time around, although that was the lab's fault, not his.) When he handed me the report, he said, "This is all normal mold, painting over it took care of the problem, you're fine." I looked-up the mold that had been identified and discovered it was actually toxic mold. When I called a company that specializes in mold, they confirmed that what we had was very dangerous and simply painting over it was absolutely not adequate to contain it. (We ended up with a containment unit and three air scrubbers in our house for the removal.) While it was certainly my mistake not to go with a specialist for this job, I very much hold Fernando responsible for telling us everything was okay. I don't know if he didn't know, or was afraid to tell us how bad it was after having previously told us that we had no problems, but regardless I would caution other homeowners from hiring him for anything. Interestingly, when he handed me the mold report (before I had looked online to double-check what he was telling me about the species of mold), he also gave me my money back, saying he felt really badly about the delay.