Monroe Contracting

This rating is for Monroe Contracting and Remodeling located at 77 Hickory Manor Drive Rochester, NY 14606, not Monroe Contracting located at 56 Simmons Street Rochester, NY. The Angies List software will not allow me to add a contractor not listed on Angies List, apparently. A chimney inspection was contracted before a purchase of a house in Brighton, NY a few days before Thanksgiving 2018. Mr. McGill took the job on short notice. I immediate left my home in Avon,Ny and drove to Brighton, a 25 minute journey to attend the inspection. When I arrived the owner stated Mr. McGill had left 10 minutes before. I tried to contact Mr. McGill the next day (the day before Thanksgiving) for the results of the inspection. His phone went to messaging and he would not return my calls. Emails were ignored. He did contact the Realtor handling the transaction and verbally stated "everything was okay and I'll send a report". Repeated calls and emails were not answered. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, our Realtor stated the owners were going to re-list the house on Monday if we didn't have progress on the chimney inspection. More calls and emails to Mr. McGill went unanswered. Finally on late Sunday night our Realtor got an email with the chimney inspection results. Mr. McGill stated he was out of cell and internet service service areas. Really? Both services not covered? Extraordinary that we almost lost the purchase of a house and could have been held responsible for breach of contract because Mr. McGill was out of complete contact from civilization!? Not attentive to his customers needs. Not communicative. Uncooperative. And how could he have performed a though inspection in 15 minutes? Granted it was close to Thanksgiving, but if could not have performed a though inspection and followed up with a report why not refuse the job and let us find someone who would? Extremely unprofessional.

We thought that the work had been completed. It took several months, because Matt does not respond to calls or show up when promised. His excuses are "he very busy or he has no phone signal". Finally, after we thought the work was complete, when we had our first fire upstairs, it filled the downstairs with smoke. We immediately called Matt - who stated "it is your flu and an easy fix" and he would be right over to fix it. He did come, but didn't fix it... That was almost 2 months ago. He does not answer calls and we cannot use our fireplaces. We will soon be escalating this to a legal level. Do NOT hire him!!!

He came out for the estimate right on time and was very professional. Honestly I own several houses around the city of Rochester and when home and told my wife that this would be our guy moving forward. He said he would get an estimate right over to me. It never came. I then called several times on different days, he never called back. Honestly if he just called to say he could not do the job I would have been happy. Instead I just waited around and wasted time while a dangerous issue got worse. Now Im back to square one. This guys is super knowledgeable on these repairs. Its too bad service was so poor.

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Estimated charge was $175 to $225. Actual bill was $289.75. Fireplace still had same problem after "repair". I called back within a day & left a message that gas log still wasn't fixed. Nobody ever returned my call.

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He came to do some work for my mother (who is in her mid-70s).  Her brother recently passed away and she has been fixing up his estate to put it on the market.  My mother needed some small repair work done to the chimney, which took him about 15 minutes to do.  She informed me "the owner named Matt McGill was unprofessional, belligerent, and made threats of retaliation when his charge of $125 for a 15 minute repair was questioned. He also wanted payment without a receipt (he said he would mail it later).  I could not recommend him to anyone."  Over a month later, she received a bill and it was higher than the original quote by about $25.  She thought about challenging this but she was so unhappy with him that she just wanted to be rid of him.  She told me about how he had made threats towards her, which I found very unprofessional.  I would not want anyone I cared about to do business with this man, especially elderly relatives.

Matt was very pleasant even though the inspection was a bit awkward with buyer, seller and family present. He inspected the chimney inside and out and discussed the findings with me right then and there. He followed up with a report and estimate for work that would need to be done. There was no pressure to do the work right away, the inspection was thorough and professional. I would definitely use Monroe again.