College Pro Painters

How'd it go?  In a word:  Disaster.

We signed a contract with College Pro in April 2014.  They let us know that their work typically starts up in May/June, after the students have completed school for the year.  We were told to expect contact at the end of May to schedule work in early June.

Mid-June we had not heard anything.  We attempted contacting our student manger/representative, but emails and phone calls were not returned.  We eventually were able to contact a supervisor via corporate, and he finally tracked down our rep to schedule work.  Our "beginning of June" quote turned into June 26th by the time arrangements were made.

On the scheduled start date (6/26) the painters were a no-show.  The rep did not respond to phone calls for several days.  It turned out that the worker she had scheduled was injured - not her fault, but she still should have communicated early and often.  On the next scheduled work date, we faced another no-show.  This time the reason was a death in the family of the worker scheduled for our job.  Again - not her fault, but should have communicated early and often.

We faced many excuses (car vandalism, car accidents) that kept mounting up and became more and more suspicious.  There was absolutely no communication about when they would be working in our home (remember we have pet care to coordinate).

Eventually, we had to depart for family plans for the 4th of July holiday.  We told the crew (including the manger/rep) to call and lock up when they were done.  They never called, but responded to a text message late that night saying they had wrapped up.

We came home to a nightmare:

There was paint EVERYWHERE:  All over our kitchen sink, all over the floors, color bleeding from walls to ceiling to trim.  Dirty equipment was strewn about the entire house.  Paper, tape, and drop cloths were everywhere around the house.

The paint that actually made it on the walls was atrocious.  No attempt was made to "cut in" with clean edges. The ceiling were an absolute disaster; only half-painted and clearly only one coat.  In many places we could tell the trim was not painted at all.

We were livid when we go home.  We immediately called corporate, but since it was a holiday weekend there was nothing they could do.  We still had the supervisor's phone number from our scheduling fiasco, so we called him.  We left a voicemail summarizing the information above.

We heard back the next day from the supervisor.  We must not have been the only customers complaining because he immediately offered a full refund, sight unseen, and told us the crew had been removed from production. We received a refund check for our deposit a few weeks later.  Kudos to corporate for their management of the situation.

It was quite a shame that we had such a poor experience.  When I was in college, I had many friends that worked for College Pro and they had incredible learning experiences.  We were hoping to be able to provide a opportunity for aspiring young professionals, but were ultimately burned.

I thought they were more than what we paid when we had our other people paint years ago. The job was fabulous. They cleaned up everything. It was worth every penny. I had no complaints. I would use them in the future. They were very good.

My husband and I found the quality of the painting poor.  To quote my husband, "What, are they finger painting?"  You could see the clumped brush strokes at the end of each house board; they weren't smooth but smeared almost.  I had to point this out to the manager, he did not notice on his own or see anything wrong with it.  This was frustrating.  The trim and gutters were blotchy and uneven.  There were parts of the gutters that were missed altogether.  Again, I had to point this out!  The painters came unprepared with old brushes that had dry paint in them from previous jobs.  When I mentioned this concern to the painters they never got new brushes and I actually ended up giving them two of my own brushes (which I never got back).  They would attempt to paint small areas of trim with a 4" brush...this was so frustrating to watch.  The painter got paint all along the side of my chimney and when I pointed this out, the manger actually asked me what I wanted him to do.  Writing negative comments or telling it as it is (when not positive) is difficult for me so I will say when I pointed these issues out the manager did try to remedy the problems but the fact that it wasn't a smooth process, I felt I constantly had to be inspecting the work and the end product was not good is why I would never use College Pro again.  I read some negative comments on-line before hiring them and foolish me for thinking my experience would be different.  I believe in giving people a chance, especially young college kids.  It's too bad this didn't work out  because the price was right.....but as the old saying goes, "you get what you pay for!"