SERV PRO OF PORTSMOUTH

The laziness, inconsiderateness, and sheer incompetence of Servpro of Portsmouth was so astounding that I feel obliged to share our experience. My wife and I had severe water damage to our home after a pipe burst, requiring an extensive remodel. I will caveat this review by saying that Servpro’s damage mitigation crew was timely and effective. We thought this professionalism would carry over to their restoration division. We could not have been more wrong. • Terrible planning and management of subcontractors. Servpro repeatedly demonstrated that their management skills were worse than a four year old with a clipboard. Examples include: o It became expected that the first iteration of their materials order would be incorrect. They ordered custom cabinets that did not fit our kitchen (which they had every opportunity to accurately measure). This required multiple re-orders, extending our timeline by months. o They installed the kitchen backsplash prematurely. This caused issues with re-installing our bar countertop, requiring a total re-work of the bar and backsplash. Again, grossly extending the timeline. o They ran out of flooring material and took weeks to re-order new flooring. You would think that with a measuring tape and notepad, they could avoid this issue. Again, we were fascinated by Servpro’s ability to extend their timeline at every opportunity. o Servpro allowed their subcontractors to treat our home like a frat house. We repeatedly found cigarette butts inside, drinks missing from our fridge, and unflushed turds in our toilet. These problems persisted, even after we brought them up to the project manager. • Abysmal communication. o Our project manager consistently no-showed to prior-arranged meetings without even the courtesy of a phone call. Subcontractors consistently failed to arrive for days in a row, extending jobs that would have taken a few days to weeks or months. • Timelines not met. o Our initial project manager quoted 6-8 weeks for the rebuild job. Here I am, 8 months later, writing this review as our job just concluded (incomplete at that). o My wife and I ended up doing a significant amount of the work that Servpro assured us that they would complete. Some examples include:  Moving our furniture into storage.  Cleaning up the drywall, insulation, and other mess left by the initial water damage.  Taking material trash and destroyed furniture to the dump.  Re-installing misaligned trim.  Re-installing misaligned cabinet doors and pulls. • Shoddy workmanship. If Servpro advertises themselves as remodel professionals, I can assure you firsthand that this could not be further from the truth. Examples of their inability to correctly complete even the most basic construction tasks include: o Baseboards poorly joined when one piece should have been used. Even after their third try, they still got it wrong. o Nicked, scratched, dented, paint splattered, and otherwise damaged furniture, requiring that we hire an outside professional. o Broke our granite countertop after they removed it from the kitchen. o Gouged new flooring just days after it was installed. o Cabinet doors not level, and cabinet pulls visibly misaligned. It appears that they hung cabinets and installed the doors and pulls without taking a single measurement. Which brings me to my next point… o Did not erase pencil marks on cabinets. This one impressed me, since it was evidence that they at least attempted to correctly line up and level cabinet pulls. The untrained human eye quickly revealed that these marks were, indeed, misaligned. We had them re-order new cabinet doors so that I could correctly install them. After 7 months of dealing with these folks, we called it quits and negotiated a bill that subtracted from our initial itemized quite any work that was not done, done incorrectly (requiring that we redo it), or done by us as the customer. If you are considering hiring Servpro for your remodel, I suggest that you try a class of middle schoolers instead – you’ll probably have better luck.

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unknown

Horribly.  The first individual that they sent to our home was downright rude, enough so that I requested that he be removed from handling our business.  The second guy that came out actually told us how they know he is rude, and that he doesn't know why he is still there. When the work was started, things changed and nothing was as easy as they portrayed it in the beginning.  What was to be a "simple" job turned into a major pain. That the fact that it was largly covered under the homeowner insurance is *not* an excuse to drag a process out, state that they will be there to do work and when we come by to check there is no-one there or do a job that requires multiple returns. After they supposedly completed the job, we paid a professional contractor to come in and do the necessary repairs in the tune of over $5K.  They never followed up to see if there was an issue, until almost a year later, to advise if we didn't pay the difference they were going to send it to their attorneys.  When questioned why they waited so long before letting us know that there was an issue, the response was that they had only received payment from the insurance company a couple of months ago, and that it happens that way sometimes and now we better pay or its going to their attorney.  The customer service was absolutely rude, condesending and disrespectful toward their customers.  After chastising me like a child because I questioned their tactics, the customer service individual hung up advising me that they will just turn it over to their attorney.  I would never recommend this company to anyone that I liked.

They did a very torough job. They made very thing look a lot better. My insureence is with Progressive and they have a contrat with them.

They were here for a long time. We had put some Christmas decorations up in the attics after Christmas 2009. Everything was fine. Then around February or March we had several heavy snowstorms. The end of February or beginning of March we had a few other items we had to up in the attic. That is when I saw the mold. I contacted my insurance company. They looked at it and they picked Servpro to remediate it. Servpro did an excellent job. There are different Servpros and even though they do the regular remediation for floods and stuff like that, not all of them are qualified for specific things like mold remediation. Even though we live in Hampton, which is right next door to Newport News, the insurance company picked Servpro in Portsmouth because they had used them before and they had a lot of experience with mold. I didn't have to pay a penny. I was really lucky. They were fantastic. The one guy that was in charge of the project, a really young kid, was just like a family member. He knew everything that was going on and he was constantly supervising. They had sub-contracted another company to put the roof back on. Our house is like a Cape Cod. In 1967 they built an extension on to the roof. That's where the upstairs bedrooms are. They didn't slope it properly. There is a slope going to the gutters, but it's not what is strictly required nowadays by code. Servpro, instead of putting regular shingles on top, put a rubber roof on there. I used to work for a Public Utilities treatment plant and all the roofs there were done with the exact same thing. It's like a white plastic and it's glued on. I didn't have to say anything. They put it on there because they knew that the slope wasn't enough to keep it draining properly. That was something I didn't ask for, but they did above and beyond. They could have just slapped shingles back on it again. It took a long time for them to finish because if they got called out for an emergency like a flood or something, they couldn't come by. But they would always give me a call and let me know. They wouldn't just leave you hanging there. Most of it was due to that one guy but I can't remember his name.