RICH PRESBERG RJP Custom Contracting

Worst experience ever, BEWARE! Rich was pleasant and persuasive in the beginning of the project, and then became extremely confrontational, hostile and very difficult to work with. He structured the contract so that most of the money was due in the first few phases of the project, and very little was left to be paid later. He said it needed to be that way in order for us to get such a “good deal”, and we foolishly signed it. The project progressed, albeit slowly, until the majority of the money had been paid, but only about 1/3 of the work had been done. At that point, all work/progress dramatically slowed down. After many months of almost no progress, he and his wife came to us with a sob story (literal tears were shed) about how they spent all the money we had paid him to take care of their personal problems so they couldn't afford to buy materials to continue work on our project. We should have cut our losses then, but we continued to try to work with him and purchased materials (which we had already paid him for) so the work could continue. Even with that, the roofing and other materials still sat in our garage for months waiting to be installed (by that point Rich rarely showed up to work, and when he did he worked VERY slowly). His list of excuses for not working was never ending, including things like car trouble, injuries, illness, not having child care, problems with materials, problems with tools, weather (even on sunny days), or often none at all. I’m sure when he disputes this review he will come up with even more excuses! He eventually told us that no one (including him!) could have completed the project for the price HE QUOTED. In my opinion, he underquoted the project to get our money with no intention of actually completing it for that price. This project was contracted to take 8-12 weeks, but was still not completed after 2 ½ years. After we had all we could take, we hired another company to finish the project (they estimated that Rich had completed less than 1/2 of the project at that point). We had to cut corners and change our plans since we had given Rich all the money we had saved and budgeted towards this project. Also, the quality of much of the work performed by Rich was generally poor, and in many cases needed to be redone by the new company. Unfortunately the lesson we learned from all of this is never to try to help a small business, but to always go with the larger companies who will complete and back up their work as promised. Also to be very careful in the way contracts are structured. And to never do business with Rich Presberg / RJP again.

This project was supposed to take 6 weeks and it ended up taking 9 months. Even though he came recommended from the store we bought all the shelves for the cooler from, it turned out he didn't know how to install it so he hired someone else to install it and didn't give him directions on how to put it together. He also walled in the electricity, even though we had also discussed at length how to not to do that and accomplish the goal.