Ben's Better Construction & Landscaping

We hired Ben’s Better Construction and Landscaping after reading reviews and receiving a recommendation from a neighbor at the end of February 2021. It is November 2021 now and BBCL is still not done. After high hopes and lots of talk from the owner, Ben Stokes, we felt comfortable at the beginning. Then work failed. They told us they did water damage remediation and could do what we were about to hire Servicemaster to do. We found out from their own people there had never done water damaged homes before. After the initial flood cuts from floor to half way up the wall and removal of walls from four broken pipes, they were waiting for the rooms to dry out. One month later we realized they never cut out the ceiling where the pipes broke. Now we had a mold problem. We told them to hire movers and have the damaged rooms packed up and moved out to a climate control facility and they did not. BBCL did not put up and plastic wrap, cover furniture or pack up any of our items. BBCL assured us they would order PODs to store our house in. They never called or made arrangements. Our family was living with three pets and three adults in one hotel room while no work was being completed on our home. I ended up ordering a POD for the contractors to pack our items in. The contractors managed to break furniture while loading the POD. The rest they left in random places in our garage. They broke a lamp and left it with glass shards on the garage floor. No one would fess up. They unplugged our wine fridge and left it in the sun and ruined the wine. They refused to pay for the damaged wine unless they got to take it home. It ruined so they can take it. We still are not paid for it. They have lost our grand piano. They cannot remember who they hired to take it. They had damaged it to. We have approximately $9000 in damage to furniture which we have asked to file a claim through their insurance. They told us to file it through our insurance as it was damaged by them while working at our home. We still have not seen a dime for damages. We eventually told them at the end of July we would be moving back end of September as we finally had another contractor install carpeting and they hired a subcontractor to do our wood floors. We thought sixty days would be enough to finish the rest. By August 31 they managed to make the master bedroom and bathroom livable but nothing else. It is now Nov 5 and never know when they will arrive or do the work. We gave them until Nov 10 to finish everything. But when we found they took towels from our linen closet to clean up their grout and caulking, we fired BBCL We have had enough. We have so much dust in our house even after we tried cleaning it. Our brand new floors are scraped and we have to hire someone to complete the stairs that they have damaged. We still have not found our grand piano after multiple requests and asking for it to be delivered. The workmanship has been shoddy. We had their plumber out three times to fix the same problem. The electrician isn’t even a certified electrician. I ended up in the ER from tripping over a caulking tube they left randomly sitting out. They used cheap, grainy plywood to replace the thick pine baseboards we once had. After four coats of paint you can still see the grain and it feels rough. They sprayed orange peel texture over a custom valance and a Hunter Douglass Window Silloette sheer covering and have made no attempt to replace or care. They have damaged our glass chandelier even after we complained for them to cover it, store it carefully, BBCL did not and now we have many missing pieces. Our new wood floor is covered with paint and grout stains that cannot be simply mopped up. I would never hire them again.