Kemmerer & Sons

He came out and scheduled the appointment to start the work on May 7th. He had an employee come out on May 24th, he ripped the aluminum siding off with his bare hands and insulation is just hanging out. No one ever came out again. This is shotty work, no communication, and he makes a lot of false promises.

Mr. Kemmerer was doing work on my next door neighbor's house. I went out to talk to Mr. Kemmerer and told him what I needed done. We discussed price (very fair) and he and his two employees did the work the same day.

He delayed starting the roof but after we complained several times, he sent a sub-contractor to do the job. We thought everything was fine until Hurricane Sandy hit. We lost many, many shingles on the 75% of the roof that he had installed only 14 months prior. The 25% of the roof was replaced approx 6 yrs ago when we put on an addition; that part sustained no damage. Our insurance company authorized the repairs but then sent us a letter saying that our 14 month old roof was damaged due to "faulty installation" and needed to be completely replaced by 12/14/12 or they would cancel our policy. That created even more problems: 1)we would be classified as a high risk and pay an extremely high premium, if in fact we could even find someone to insure our home. 2)Our bank would be notified that our home was not insured and they could demand full payment of our equity loan. When we received the cancellation letter we called Mr. K. Not knowing our situation, he answered the phone. Some of his comments are as follows: 1)"There is nothing wrong with your roof, remember this was a hurricane." He did not respond when I told him the addition had no storm damage. 2)"What do you want me to do about it?" No response again went I said I wanted the roof replaced at his expense. 3)"You need to contact the sub-contractor." no reponse to our comment that the agreement was signed with him. 4)When we threatened to sue him he said "Go ahead, I don't have anything, everything is in my wife's name." We have since found out that he did not pay for the Borough permit which we could be liable for; he was not licensed under HICPA state law; and to the best of our knowledge he had no liability insurance. When I read things like this about other people I think "why arn't people more careful". It's nice to be a trusting person but there is no room for it in a business agreement! Don't be foolish like us, ask for copies of everything and don't let a contractor make you feel bad about asking. At this point, he will not take or or retunr our calls. We have since received a time extention from our insurance company (after about 20-30 calls), but the cost will probably fall back on us.

See above.

I hired Harold Kemmerer because his sons were going around my neighborhood with flyers looking for work. They do general contracting, and I needed both my room silvercoated and a step repaired, and they listed both among their services. I knew about the bad BBB rating (if you look it up there are two complaints, one resolved, one not) but decided to take a chance because I needed the work done, it was not complex, and the price was reasonable. Harold came by on a Wednesday to give me an estimate and the work was done on Friday. He gave me a quote of $700 for the roof, and originally wanted to cut out the step with the crumbling patch and replace it, but I asked if he could just repair the crack instead. He said that he could but could not then guarantee the work. I decided that just repairing the step was enough for now and he said that he would throw that in for free. He & his crew were here early Friday morning. I didn't see anything about the roof silvercoating other than view his assistant going up & down the ladder since I was running errands at the time, but I did watch Harold repair the step. He did a careful and thorough job on the step, clearing out the crumbled concrete, cutting out a wire mesh patch so the new concrete would have something to adhere to, and then patching the step. He spent about 90 minutes on the job that he threw in "for free." He even put a concrete wash over the other steps so that the newly patched part would not stand out. I gave him a "B" on this part of the work because he missed two of the risers. I think he would have come back and fixed that if I'd called him but I was preoccupied with other things and never did. It's been 3 months since the step and the roof were done and everything is holding up fine.