CertaPro Painters® of Midlothian and NW Richmond

"This customer has a beautiful new deck at a home in a beautiful neighborhood. They seem like nice people. We wish them well in getting the deck stained. That being said, I am surprised they think any business owner would allow their employees to work on a job where they were treated the way my employees were treated. Even if the facts were what they said they were, which they are not, nobody should ever be treated like that. After they ran my crew off, I made a decision to not allow another crew to have the chance of being subjected to the same treatment. Respect is one of our core values, one reason why we have the staff loyalty that proves time and time again to deliver a quality product. This crew had just come off a five week job working around the elderly in a retirement facility, receiving rave reviews. They communicate well, are highly skilled and they are proud of the work they do for our customers. They were actually sanding some of the mill marks the customer mentions when they were run off. We do not walk away from projects. If the project had been really started we would have finished it. Having time now to investigate the sequence of events and to talk with all involved, this outcome was the only reasonable outcome. The little bit of stain that is on the railing will be covered up with the new stain, so no sanding will be needed. Since there was nothing left to undo, shaking hands and wishing each other well was a good outcome. It is interesting that the same crew moved on to the next homeowner who received similar communications as this customer, and were welcomed with open arms."

"The customer paints an emotional and slightly exaggerated picture of the issues that went wrong during her project. Understandably, she was concerned about the health of the cats. To that end, I recommended and we used a Low-VOC paint that would create fewer respiratory issues for her cats. After getting a call from the customer late on the first day, I volunteered to return to her house at that moment to clean-up the dust. She refused my offer. I returned with my crew the following day to do nothing but clean. The "paint everywhere" she describes was remedied with a few minutes of clean-up. When the painting was completed, the customer told me she was happy with the painting itself. It was the clean-up issues that had her upset. A part of the story that was not told is that the customer was in the process of trying to put her home on the market for sale. As her husband had already moved to Ohio, most of the burden of that effort fell on her. I think anyone in that situation, while working a full-time job, would feel additional stress. That said, I take responsibility for not fully meeting my customer's expectations. As the customer stated, I sent her a gift card and I paid for a professional cleaning service to clean her home after the project was complete."