I had a very strange experience with Gabriel Mena. For the vast majority of my interactions with him, I would rate him as professional, helpful and competent. However, when I asked for a small document several months after the work, he completely and willfully ignored me. This was incredibly aggravating, unprofessional, and I warn all potential clients to be aware that he may ignore you entirely after the work of a project is over. The full story is below: I had a water leak from my washing machine on my condo on the fourth floor. After a very poor experience with the mold remediation/air testing teams, I need a contractor to re-install floors and walls. After contacting two other contractors who didn’t return any of my calls, I found Gabriel Mena on HomeAdvisor.com. He called me after I left a message for him, and said he could look at my condo that evening after work. During this period, he was relatively responsive and was helpful when I got a chance to talk to him face-to-face. He quoted me a price within a week, and I gave that price to my insurance provider, USAA. They said that the estimate was high, and so they sent an adjuster to inspect the unit. After another few days, the estimate was revised down from ~$60,000 to ~$40,000. Other than this small delay, I found Gabriel’s communication to be good. My insurance company was giving me a hard time, so I decided to pay out-of-pocket for all the repairs, and Gabriel required that I pay him in installments for the work. This was a slight hassle for me having to come up with the money every couple of days, but not a big deal. During the work, he did a good job scheduling around my and my tenant/roommate’s schedule, given that all the furniture needed to be out of the room while putting in the floors. The work itself was of high quality, and 4 months later, all the floors and walls are still in good-as-new condition. The only issue at this time was in paying him my second to last installment: I was cobbling together the $$ to pay him, and so a $13,000 installment check bounced. He said it bounced, and so I wrote him a new check a few days later. However, his bank tried to *re*-withdraw the original check 5 days later, which charged me an overdraft fee, and then the second check cashed, and so I had overpaid. We spent about a week trying to figure out the payment, but eventually both checks cashed into his account, and he paid me the remainder. Up until this point, I would rate Gabriel 5/5 stars. He did the work efficiently and with great care towards my schedule, and when there were issues, we resolved them in a reasonable way. Things went downhill several months later. Because I had paid out-of-pocket, my insurance company was reimbursing me directly. After a long battle with my insurance, they finally wrote me a check in mid August (for money I had paid in May). However, federal insurance regulation mandates that the check be written out to the homeowner AND the mortgage company. To get the mortgage company to sign the check, they require an adjuster’s worksheet from insurance and a *certificate of payment and completion* from the contractor. I had not received this document from Gabriel after the project, so I texted him, asking if he could send that my way. He responded promptly “Yes”, and when I asked when I could expect the document, he said “By today.”. Three days later, I had not received the certificate. I texted him on Monday for an update, and got no response. I texted him (politely) for the next few days, and received no response. I finally called him two weeks after the original text, and he responded “Can I call you later?”. I said “Yes please! Have you been getting my texts?”. This was the last time I heard anything from Gabriel Mena. I tried texting him and calling him every day for about two weeks, and didn’t receive even a single word of response. I thought maybe it was an issue with his phone, so tried e-mailing him, and submitting a request through his website. I assumed he was actively choosing not to respond to me at this point, but just to test, a few weeks later, I had my girlfriend call and text him, without referencing me. Just like that, he calls her back the same day. She was uncomfortable picking up and asking about my certificate, so I had her text him to call my number. At this point he begins ignoring her as well. Keep in mind that all of this was to get a simple signed document saying I had paid all the money and his signature. It wouldn’t have taken him more than 10 minutes to produce. Finally, I just submitted a partial receipt I had gotten early in the project, and it turns out my mortgage company didn’t check enough to even notice it was partial and that it didn’t say “work is complete on it”, so it turned out I didn’t need the document at all, but that doesn’t change the fact that a contractor I had pleasantly worked with for a month, willfully ignored my repeated requests for a simple document for a month and a half. I will not be working with Gabriel Mena again, and I recommend to anyone reading this that they avoid him as well.
