This was the most unprofessional experience my husband and I have ever been through. It was extremely difficult having to deal with a house fire, but the stress of going through a house fire was a piece of cake compared to the stress of dealing with Servpro of Fair Oaks, Chantilly! Right after the fire occurred, we were, of course, overwhelmed with everything that was going on. Unfortunately, instead of taking the time to research companies, we went with Servpro of Fair Oaks, Chantilly, primarily because we had heard of it before.
To begin with, our house fire happened in the winter, so all of the water had to be turned off and the pipes treated with anti-freeze. This did not stop one of the Servpro employees from going to the bathroom in one of our toilets…and it wasn't number one, if you know what I mean. We reported this immediately to the owner, Wendy, at the same time we were calling to tell her that her employees had left our garage door/door to house unlocked. Keep in mind that we are not living in our home at this time, but checking in as often as possible and this is the kind of thing we are discovering. The next time I stop by the house to check, I find that another employee is in our kitchen with a number of other people (none of whom have any kind of and quot;Servproand quot; identification)…and they are using our microwave! Obviously, this was HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL, especially, as not only did they do this without having asked our permission, but this occurred before any of our appliances had been inspected and cleared by an electrician!
Less than a week later, we discover that another door has been left unlocked and 3 large extremely heavy construction grade garbage bags full of debris left in our screened in porch. After waiting a couple of weeks to Servpro to haul these bags out to to the dumpster, I ended up having to haul them out myself.
Speaking of the dumpster…Servpro's dumpster company (we have no idea who these people were, as they were contracted with by Servpro) parked their dumpster in our driveway without any boards under it. I guess that was okay in Feb. but by the time they finally hauled it away, we had 4 good sized pits in our driveway.
During this same time, Servpro had to move much of our items to a storage unit so that work could be done in some of our rooms upstairs. I had put our valuable, breakable items out of the way, so that they wouldn't need to be disturbed. While checking in on the move, I discovered that these boxes were getting loaded into their truck. While I was inspecting these boxes, I noticed one that I had packed with very breakable china, glassware. I had packed these items inside a kind of duffle bag, inside a plastic tub. These items were not visible from the outside of the tub. On the outside of the tub, Servpro had used painter's tape and labeled it and quot;Fragile, Glassware.and quot; While I was starting to look into this box to make sure the items were okay, I said something to the Servpro employee like and quot;I really didn't want anyone going through this boxand quot; and he said and quot;We didn't open it.and quot; I stopped and said and quot;then how did you know what was inside it?and quot;…..no reply. I then said, pointing to the painter's tape label, and quot;whose handwriting is this?and quot; After a very, very long and uncomfortable pause, he said and quot;mine.and quot; I called Wendy shortly afterwards to report this incident of blatant lying, as I was very upset and worried about what other things Servpro had lied about. We were trusting these people to be in our house while we were not living there and it was very frustrating to feel like we always had to be double checking everything to make sure our house/items were secure and safe.
When we were finally able to start moving back into our house, we discovered that Servpro broke our bed and closet organizer while taken them out of the house and in addition, while unwrapping our upholstered chair and ottoman that had been covered in plastic, they actually SLICED our furniture with box cutters!! Seriously!! Three other pieces of newly purchased furniture were very noticeably scratched and damaged and we've never actually recovered the lights that had been in our headboard. There are a number of other smaller incidents (such as being billed for services never performed, etc.) but I hope by now you've gotten the idea. We repeated let them know about these issues, either via phone calls or emails (which NEVER got returned until it was time for them to start asking for money). Finally, Wendy and her husband agreed to meet with us so we could discuss our frustration and show them the damaged items, driveway, etc. They had no choice but to acknowledge our complaints as I took photos of EVERYTHING. After having to spend more of our own time getting estimates for repairs and replacements, they agreed to take the replacement and repair costs off our bill…which they were obviously obligated to do. We then very politely asked if Wendy would consider giving us a discount based on everything we had gone through with Servpro…she agreed to think about it. Final insult was that every unprofessional experience we endured at the hands of Servpro of Fair Oaks/Chantilly, Wendy decided to give us $150.00 off of a $16,000 bill. I was, and continue to be speechless that a professional company would treat a client as poorly as Wendy and Servpro of Fair Oaks/Chantilly has treated us.