Founded 1996 • With Angi since March 2011
Angi Certified
Service Provider Response
I agree in part with this customer's complaint, but in my opinion it is somewhat distorted. The gallons of the "Deck Restore" needed to perform this deck job did double. This was an oversight on my estimation due to the second coat of the product needed to get the right coverage of this product per the manufacturer's recommendations. The additional gallons purchased to complete this job was about 12 extra gallons. I offered my customer $100 discount on the final price due to my oversight on the estimated quantity of gallons needed to complete the job (the contracted bid price only included the labor cost, not the materials cost). As far as the labor price is concerned, a proposal was agreed to and signed by my customer which contained a fixed price to clean (powerwash) the deck and the labor to apply the "Deck Restore." This labor price never changed. In addition, there was a fairly large amount of deck repair that needed to be done prior to applying the "Deck Restore." I explained to my customer prior to starting the job, that we perform deck repair work by the hour (time and materials) and spelled out our hourly labor rate in the work agreement. This is a very common business practice (at least in our business region) for repairing decks and replacing deck boards. We did discover about double the original amount of deck boards that needed replacing as we got into the job-the customer verbally told us to do what we felt was reasonable and necessary (to use our best judgement) to put the deck back into good condition, and then they immediately (by next day or so) left for vacation for a week while we were doing the job. So the deck repair labor and materials turned out to be about double my original ballpark estimate-this situation happens in our trade quite frequently by most contractors as it's very difficult to offer a real accurate estimate for repairing decks as bad deck boards are often discovered during the work in progress. ...this is unfortunate, but a common reality. In conclusion, I believe the "work agreement" that our customer agreed to was very clear as to what were fixed fees and what were hourly estimated pricing (including all materials purchased to complete the work). I never desire to charge my customers beyond my best estimate, but as already mentioned, it does happen often in our trade. I believe that its far more important to provide a good quality job even if the cost exceeds the original estimate, because a fixed fee is truly a fixed fee, but a "time and materials" estimate is just that, an estimate only based on initial observation of the job ..With all that said, I feel bad that this customer was not happy with the outcome of the final cost, but I am confident that they received a high quality job along with a fair price. Elliot .Service Provider Response
I believe I deserve an A for quality as [member name removed] was very satisfied with the end result. In agreement, his wiring was on the very difficult side but we got it figured out in short order and completed the work in good time..Roofing, concrete, block and stone work