Tri-state Restoration Services

This is not only a review, but it is a serious warning to homeowners who will get swindled, as we and many others did, by the company known today as Tri-state Restoration Services. I will start by providing the names of the individuals you should be wary of: Ray Muccioli and Ken Janz. The reason I am providing names is because I have discovered variations on the company name: Tri-state Restoration Services, Tri-state Restorations, Tri-state Restoration Services, Tri-State Restoration Services, LLC. They also change their address: 7 Ruby Street, Norwalk, CT 06850 is one, 5 River Rd Suite 113, Wilton, CT, 06897 is another. Ray owns other companies: RPK Construction, The Press Agency LLC, Ken's other companies include: Performance Restorations LLC., and Rock Ridge Construction. As of October 2018, we are aware of 3 lawsuits filed against them by both home owners and supply companies. This situation we are in was the result of burst pipes from the January 2018 Bomb Cyclone. Our kitchen floor and cabinets were saturated by water from a pipe under the sink, our daughter's room was soaked by the water from the baseboard heat, the downstairs living room's ceiling collapsed, the downstairs bedroom ceiling collapsed, and our basement was flooded. We worked through our insurance company to secure the funds necessary to repair our home and get our lives back. Clean up began shortly after our first call to the insurance company. Tri-state Restoration was recommended by a Mark Mastropietro of Crystal Restoration in Southington CT whose team was responsible for cleaning up after the first cleaning company, ServePro, caused damage to our already ruined home. This is how Tri-state works. They do not to the work themselves, no one works directly for them EVERYTHING is done by sub-contractors. Red flag number 1. That said, there were a couple of people who were gems. Excellent workers, who did amazing work--the only problem is Ray and Ken never paid them. Everything seems on the up and up at first. Ray and Ken were very attentive; they come to our house to look at the damage, we told them what we want was needed to satisfy the mortgage company. In our situation we needed primarily insurance work done, but while they were working on it there were additional things we wanted to get done that would make the house better for us and our two young children. It made sense to do it at the same time. An estimate was written to cover the insurance work. A separate estimate was written that would be covered by my husband and I. Looking back at the documentation after all of this we noticed that Ken did not sign the document at all, and Ray's signature was only on the first version of the insurance estimate. Neither of them brought this to our attention. However, apparently not having a signature on the estimate of contract will not stop an insurance company from distributing the funds. Because we have young children we asked that the work be completed over the summer. We asked what it would take to get that done and were told if we gave them the insurance money ($40K) that they would have people in there 5 days a week to "bang it out." The completion would be June 30. Red flag number 2. In hindsight this was our biggest mistake, this was our naiveté--we should have only given them a partial payment. That would have been the right way to do it: DON'T PAY until the work gets done. Wisdom in hindsight. My fear of the work not getting done by the time school started was my downfall and I own that decision. I may have made a dumb move, but at least I am not a snake. It takes vile, unscrupulous lowlifes like Ken and Ray to take advantage of homeowners who are living in the ruins of their homes. Honest, hard-working people who have have the misfortune of living through a disaster and only want the ordeal to be over. Now it's May. Once they had the money, the work supposedly began...kind of. I can say with all honesty that they were not there 5 days a week as was promised. We may have gotten workers 1-2 days a week, sometime for only a few hours. Every text, email, call or inquiry as to why no one was there came with an excuse: my guy is on another job, your husband asked for something else, this soundproof barrier is tricky, someone will be there at 4pm (and they didn't show until 8pm), I have to go to a funeral (both Ray and Ken used that one. It was a running joke with the sub-contractors because they were told that too when they asked to be paid.) You get the idea. Anything but what was promised. We did have change orders. My husband wanted sound proofing in the living room to cut down on noise disbursal from the television. Apparently, that was such a bear of a request that it took over a month for the people Ray and Ken hired to figure out how to do it. Because our rooms are so small, we wanted to take advantage of an old staircase and have some built-in shelves made. Ray insisted that we pay for these change orders before any work could continue. Red flag number 3. You don't need to pay change orders, you only need to sign them. I did not pay them because I told him that I had paid him enough to cover them and with all the items in the original estimate that we chose not to do, I knew it would cancel out. I had the estimate, I did the math. So, the summer trudges on, and some of the work we needed to get done, that we told them about, required plans. Like from an architect. Do you think Ray and Ken accounted for one? No of course not. Red flag number 4. So when the guy comes to draw up plans, Ray tries to hit me up for $2,000.00. I said "no" of course and told him that was something that she should have known to do at the BEGINNING of a project. Ray doesn't even know his own business. Red flag number 5. The summer continues like this. Work is done in dribs and drabs and when all is said and done we have 2 small rooms almost done. That's right, it took Tri-state Restorations almost 5 months to do 2 rooms. So much for the June 30 deadline. Let's just call this Red flag number 6. It probably doesn't matter where we are with red flags by this point because all you smart people will know to stay far, far away from these guys. And the best is yet to come (queue sarcastic delivery of that line.) It's now October 2018 and no one had worked on my house in over a month; 2 rooms still almost done. Lo and behold we hear on the grapevine that one of the people who worked on our house wants to put a mechanical lien on our house because he hasn't been paid by Ray and Ken. He was even told by Ray that he wasn't paid because I hadn't paid them. What a liar! THEN we find out that that the carting company whose dumpster was in our driveway was planning on going around an dumping the contents of the dumpster onto to the yards of homeowners who Ray and Ken were "doing work for." They hadn't been paid EITHER, so they wanted their dumpsters back. I ended up paying the dumpster company to prevent an embarrassing event from happening. Most, if not all, of the sub contractors have not been paid for the work they did. Thousands of dollars worth of work. They resorted to sending me the invoices to pay them, and when I called Ray about it he basically said, 'it's a mistake, I paid it." Red flag number (what number where we up to?) oh yeah, 7! Lucky number 7. It probably should be 7, 8, 9. Needless to say, it's October, we have already had 45 degree nights and we have no heat in our downstairs zone. Lack of heat was what got us into this mess. This was the final straw. My husband and I crafted a letter outlining all these facts. This is how it goes: "We are no longer confident that you are reliable enough to complete the work on our home. The misappropriation of funds we paid is a clear breach of trust. Your failure to manage our project efficiently, meet promised deadlines, use provided funds to pay sub-contractors, follow state and local regulations or communicate with us in a clear and timely manner are grounds for your immediate dismissal as our general contractor. We are done with Tri-State Restorations. You will be compensated fairly for the work you have done on the first floor of our house. By our best estimate, this work is worth $16,465.59 for the downstairs living room and the front bedroom. This includes change order number 1 in the amount of $4,945 minus money we paid sub-contractors out of our own pocket. It further credits us with money in the estimate that would have been used for items in either of the two rooms that were not worked on, such as the bay window, exterior siding, and plywood underlayment. You will return the remainder of the money to us. This is what remains of the money we paid you up front, $48,912.35 minus the $16,465.59 worth of work that was completed." In the documentation Ray signed at the beginning of the project, it says we are allowed to fire them if we have just cause. I think we more than do, don't you? Even if they were doing a good job, we still have the option to fire them, but with a penalty of something like 15%. You want to know what Ray's response was? "Talk to my lawyer". You want to know Ken's? Nothing. That, homeowners, is the type of people Ray Muccioli and Ken Janz are. Ray and Ken don't care about you, they don't care about your family or your young children, they don't care that you've been through a disaster. They'll tell you they do, but they don't. They only care about taking your money from you and shafting the suppliers, and the people who they hired to do the work. Ray Muccioli and Ken Janz are miscreants. Our family is suffering as a result and I'm the one who made the mistake of hiring Tri-state Restorations. One of the worst decisions I ever made. Regrettably, they took advantage of us, but it doesn't have to be you too. Ray and Ken are so unprofessional that there isn't a rating low enough on this site to apply to them. Remember their names and take heed and for your own good, stay away!