First Priority Restoration

Description of Work: Replaced kitchen cabinets, extracted water from slight water damage from a leaking pipe in the kitchen. Replaced dry wall in the kitchen. They were supposed to replace the tiles, which were damaged and paint the kitchen. They did neither, however the insurance company gave them $44,000.00.

Description of Work: What I am about to describe happened not only to us but dozens of other elderly victims in a 55 and older condominium community in South Florida. For us it began with a leak into a condo unit from an upstairs unit but in most of the cases it begins with a small leak in the bathroom or kitchen of a condo unit. 1st Priority Restoration (now goes by the name Titan Restoration-you'll see why they changed their name in a minute) was called by the master Association insurance Committee Chairman (the inside man who prepped all of the owners ahead of time tearing each Association's annual meeting by telling them to call him whenever they had a leak). Before insurance adjuster could arrive to make assessment and take pictures, 1st Priority/Titan Restoration sent an army of non-English speaking workers into the unit with mold blowers (there was no evidence of mold in many cases). The leader of the pack (the VP of the company), pressured the president or owner to sign the contract (which was a mistake, but when people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are pressured through coercion, intimidation, and scare tactics, they tend to sign the documents put before them). The following comprised the contract in a nutshell - once the contract is signed, all the money that the insurance company pays out must be signed over to 1st Priority within three days of receipt. That was the extent of the contract - no scope of work, no estimated time of completion, no breakdown or percentage of payments during stages of completion, etc. They then proceeded to completely completely gut our owners unit, removing all appliances, fixtures, toilets, sinks, baseboards, drywall, etc. The only thing remaining were studs. They would then leave the unit and not complete the work until the money arrived in the hands of the public adjuster, who made sure the check went into the hands of the restoration company officials instead of the owners of the policy. Then the vice president of 1st Priority would once again pressure the owner using the above tactics (and in many cases the Association as well, if both had insurance policies. In those cases, they received a two-for-one deal!) to endorse the checks directly to 1st Priority even though the work was not done or incomplete. In many cases the restoration company would take many months to come back in and do the work, if they did it all, and when they did, their workmanship was shoddy, unprofessional, and they used materials from other condos that they destroyed in some cases. In our particular case, it took them a month to get started and they never finished the work once the place was gutted. We had to hire another company to finish the job. And the sad part was, they received every penny of the insurance money minus the amount that was needed to pay for the other contractor to finish the job. The work they did - removing everything from the unit down to the wall studs and treated for mold and left the unit totally gutted. Payment for work completed - they received approximately $20,000. Unfortunately, dozens of other victims' stories are much worse than ours. The reason I know about so many other victims stories - I conducted first-hand interviews with many of the victims, took their statements, took pictures of all of the handiwork done by 1st Priority, and have copies of all of the documentation from all of the victims I interviewed. They also had a public adjuster working with them that maximized the claims for them and received not the national average of 10% but double that amount, not to mention whatever the restoration company may have paid him under the table. Long story short, they went to dozens of homes just like ours and turned a small $1000 to $5000 claim into a $20,000, $30,000, and as high as a $57,000 claim. The public adjuster received 20% of the total claim as part of his contract (again this was the part that we knew about). Once I found out that many, many owners had been victimized, I started up a victims' rights group and quickly spread the word to all of the owners in the community about the scammers. Within two months their name was mud in our community and no one would do business with them any longer. However, they continue to victimize other communities in the South Florida area under the name Titan Restoration, and they still use the 1st Priority Restoration name as well, but when you call they won't use the name. As a matter of fact, they won't use either name if you call them. They simply say, "Customer service. Can I help you." If you see these people coming, run for the hills or better yet, call your master Association and tell them this story. You can find much more detail on the activities of these despicable people by going to the following website: http://century-village-wpb.blogspot.com/search?q=1st+Priority or http://century-village-wpb.blogspot.com/. Then, if you don't see writeups about them right away, at the top of the webpage do a search for either "Titan Restoration" or "1st Priority". You can then get all of the names of the individuals involved as well as more detail regarding how they destroyed the lives of so many victims in that community.