Mildew Busters

I called Mildew Busters September of 2014 to discuss doing
the mold cleaning and pressure washing on the siding, upper, lower decks and
retaining walls. Some wood repair, sanding of the decks and staining of the
siding and decks. Bill Smith was the person who gave me the proposal, he said I
am not sure we can get to it this year. I asked if he could not do the full job,
could they come and spray to kill the mold on all of the wood areas to not have
so much mold around the house over the winter. He agreed. He sent his son Ben
and a helper who did all 3 of their cleaning steps on only two sides of the
houses siding for 1 day and then didn?t come back. I called Ben to ask if they
would come back to spray the rest of the wood, he said ?we can definitely get
back to finish your house this week but, you have to call my father.? I called
Bill but he never sent Ben back, then it got too cold to work. I never heard
back from bill regarding restarting the job, so I scheduled to meet with him
April, 30th 2015. I had to get some of the wood repair done before
the winter to make the deck safe. I printed up a list, and we went over each
detail then I gave him a copy of the list and he said he would get me an up
dated proposal and that they were 3 weeks out before they could start. We went
back and forth multiple times on the contract, because Bill could not get the
details straight, even though I gave him a printed list, so in the end I just
added my list that he and I were in agreement on when we met on the April, 30th
to his contract and we both signed to that affect, then had a complete
proposal. After 5 missed restart dates in 2015, Bill did not send his son Ben
until August 5th to start. Both Ben and Bill admitted to starting
new jobs in 2015 and completing them before coming back to finish our job that
was started in 2014. They didn?t have any explanation for that. Ben and his
helper showed up to work in the morning, I went over the full contract details
with Ben by phone to make sure we were on the same page so there was no
confusion like when Bill gets involved. Everything was fine, Ben and his helper
started working, then Bill shows up. Starts yelling about the details on the
contract, that he signed and wants to change major details, if not he
walking off the job. (He just got there after 9 months of pushing the job off.)
1) He wanted more deposit money. I wrote on the contract,
that we have $3000. On account with Mildew Busters and can make progress
payments after the job starts. This is the contract we both signed previously.
I was not comfortable giving him more money after so many missed restart
appointments by Ben.
2) He wanted to switch the Benjamin Moore stains/ sealer we
picked to his brand. We ordered samples of his brand, which only comes in a few
colors and did some samples on spare shingles and a spare deck board we had and
did not like the color at all. We explained that we couldn?t have the entire
shingle area of the exterior of the house and both decks a color we do not
like. He understood this the first time we spoke but not the day he started.
3) He argued about the detail that was on his contract,
where he said he would brush the deck, he now wanted to spray it instead. I
reminded him the reason he put that on his contract was due to
myself explaining to him that the pressure treated framing of the upper deck is
visible from the lower deck. In the past I always cut the seams of the upper
deck by brush so the stain would not drip down and run all over the beams that
are in full view and were always left natural for the contrast. The decking is
a cedar brown color.
 
After Ben and his helper worked for 3 days, Ben stated they
have to let the house dry for 10 days before coming back to do anymore work.
This makes no sense, they have ½ the job left to do and plenty of it is
pressure washing and brightening of the decks. This was not acceptable to us
because I knew they were just delaying to go to another job, which when I
emailed Bill last night to go over this situation, he accidentally admitted.
 
Bill likes to play games as you see, and can?t for the life
of him respond to the actual topic at hand during email conversations or in
person. I have the record of the email thread of our conversations if it needed
to be proven. I have contacted Angie?s List to have them get involved to see if
they can help Bill through this job a little. Usually in this situation when
two adults sign a contract it is to help document what the job details are. If
you don?t agree on the details, why sign the contract? I explained to Bill I
did not think we should get involved in a breach of contract issue at this
point, I am just trying to get the job done that we both agreed on in person
and on the signed contract. Ben or Bill did not show up again to work. So far
they have wasted the majority of the summer season where my mother would have
likes to use her deck a little. We could have just hired someone else had Mildew
Busters just been more up front with us instead of stringing us along like
this.

Ben and Derrick showed up at our house on time. They were very
professional and gave us company information and their cards. We'd
called them because we read that they'd won 10 "Best of the Best" Awards
in a local paper and after our experience with them it was easy to see
why.
They went through our basement, found the troubled areas and
pointed them out to us, measured the space and told us that we'd have a
proposal the next day, which we did in our email. They showed up the
week they said that they would and while we were there did the entire
job in 5 days with their crew. They were professional, neat, courteous
and they solved a long standing problem for us. It was well worth the
cost, which BTW was not the least expensive.
We highly recommend them and have to our friends

They said I had to send them $3000 before they would start. I did so. At that point it became like a game of tag. They would show up and dissapeared at their convenience. They would come for an hour and not show up for weeks. When I complained to the owner, Bill Smith, about this he got very nasty on the phone with me several times.

They pumped the water out once and said it contained sewage. They then took the filthy hose that they had used and left in in the front yard of the second cottage on my property. When my tenant came home that night she nearly tripped over the hose and called me, hysterical. The next day I asked Bill why a contaminated hose had been left in front of a house. He did not have an adequate explanation, just offered to buy me a new hose.

Bill claimed that when they pumped out the crawl space water, it would refill. I told him I had hired him to fix that problem, but he couldn't. Bill had all sorts of theories about that, but basically he had no idea what was going on. He should have given me my money back then, since he could not solve the problem.

At one point Bill installed several clear plastic vent covers over the vents opening into the crawl space. He never consulted me on that or asked if I wanted them. I had to remove them because, after doing internet research, I learned that covering up the vents in that way cuts down on ventilation and makes the mold worse. I should not have been charged for those vent covers.

I know they cleaned some trash out of the crawl space, but I don't think they did anything else. Eventually Bill told me he had done all he could for $3000 and I would have to give more money. I asked him several times for an itemized receipt, but he never gave me one. He claimed he did more than $3000 of work but never gave me any proof of that.

He was thorough and insisted on seeing all parts of the house to do a thorough inspection.  I highly recommend.