PENINSULA ENGINEERING CO

Contacted Matt Jones at Peninsula Engineering to provide a structural engineering review of a retaining wall in my back yard. Matt said the review would take 3 hours at $170 per hour and he would do a thorough review, prepare a detailed 1-2 page report and provide detailed pictures with his recommendation. He showed up and immediately said "this will be easy" He spent less than 10 minutes looking at the wall and we spend 20 minutes in discussion, most of the 20 minutes being about his invoice. He wanted payment at that time of the full $510. I paid $260 and told him when I received the written report including pictures I would pay the remainder. He was not happy about this. I said he could email the report and pictures and he said he could not because the pictures would be too large. About a week later I received a 1 1/2 page report that could have been written by a 12 year old and no pictures. The report stated "wood showing signs of rot" and "top soil is fill" All very obvious items. His recommendation was to consult with another consultant!! This is not what he represented I would receive so I placed 4 calls over the next week to him to discuss. I received no reply to any of my calls so I wrote him a letter indicating my dissatisfaction with the lack of promised information and suggested that the $260 covered 1 1/2 hours of his time which was more that was spend on this. Yesterday I received a demand letter from his attorney threatening to sue me over this. His attorney indicated that he provided what was agreed and he spend more than three hours on this. Conclusion Misrepresented what he would do. Provided no expert opinion or pictures as promised. Refused to discuss the issue Threatened to sue There are a lot of reputable and professional contractors out there with business ethics. I will let you be the judge if you think Mark and Peninsula Engineering fall into this category.