Oh my goodness, where do I start? Please keep in mind that this is my personal experience with this company and my opinion. If you are the company and would like to reply OR if you are a customer with a similar or different experience and would like  to post a review, I would be happy to post it. Just send me an email at christine@lostartofcustomerservice.com

Let me start by saying that I have avoided writing this review because it is the worst customer service that I have received to date ( the hospital fiasco not included) and I wanted so badly to be very, very fair. I have to write things that are not all positive and I want to make sure that I am not biased. I know no matter how I write this some people are going to feel that I am not being honest or I am exaggerating things. I guess that is why I am avoiding this. Let me assure you, if you believe me, that I will not be exaggerating and I will do my best to be very fair. I am actually afraid that I will not be as hard as I should be so as to save others from making a mistake. But we will see how I do!

I also am going to make this as brief as possible. YES..this is brief! LOL

We interviewed a few different contractors to do a big remodel at our house. Subsequently we hired a company ( if you can call 2 people a company) named Westwood Homes and Remodeling. They are out of Greenwood Indiana. As usual, I will not name names here, if you do some research you will be able to get any answers you want.

When this place was hired they knew we were under certain circumstances that caused this job to need to be done as fast as possible. We had 2 babies being born and without being able to know this would happen one of the babies and mom got very sick and we had a crisis during the end of this construction period. We were really upfront from the start that we needed this done before the first baby was born in April. He promised,per the contract, to be done about 2 weeks after she was due and we accepted that.

I think rather than go over each point and beat it to death, I will just hit the highlights of what happened.

We hired them for work to commence in Feb and end approx April 25th. According to the contract they were to start work approx. 8 am every day  and end no later then 5pm. We were to keep our cars out of the way so that thy could get in the driveway. They would minimize our inconvenience as much as possible while they were there.

Reality-They started the job on time per the contract. The bulk of the job ended in June, but come the 4th of July we were still not able to use our deck and all of the “problems” were not fixed. This was almost 3 months after the date that was on the contract. There was not an extraordinary amount of rainfall this last season to which we could blame this nor were there  major job changes or problems that would cause this delay, we had a bathtub added that was not in the contract but then we canceled portions of the contract, we did not have him put in the retaining wall or finish the stone on the bottom of the house or finish the stairs on the deck. I can not imagine how long they would have been at our house if they had to do the entire job!. They took many days off, they took a week vacation, which they did not tell us about prior to our hiring them. We would not have hired them because of the time issues that we had. They arrived at work between 8:30-9:30am the first few days. After that they arrived no earlier than 10am ( usually closer to 11am) and most days left at 3pm. As it turns out the owner needed to be at home when the kids left in the AM and apparently soon after they got home. They stayed a few days after 4pm and they made a pretty big deal out of it when it happened.  When the owner could not be on the job his assistant was not there either, so the work stopped. During the job his sons school wanted him to do some volunteer work and he went there instead of to our house on a couple of days.

We had a few issues that occurred because the contractor had not measured things correctly. Example: we bought special order mirrors ( yes..they were expensive) when we bought them we called him to verify the measurements and then we bought them. When he went to put them in they would not fit. He did not feel badly or take responsibility for this, it was just the way it was. We still have those mirrors. They were special order and if we returned them we would have taken a hit on the restock because they were special order.  We kept them and decided that we will find a place to use them.

In the end I had to hold onto the last check to get him to come to our house and make things right. We had serious blemishes, actually they were much more then blemishes, on the casements throughout the entire house and he was going to leave them there, saying that that is just the way they are. I had to push him and after much pushing he brought the supplier to look and they agreed it was a problem and had to be replaced or fixed. WHY did I have to push so hard? That should never happen. I can not even begin to explain how poorly they hung drywall in our addition. They were to hang it and my son in law, who is a drywall finisher, was to finish it. My poor son in law had to work so hard to make it work because of the terrible job they did hanging the drywall. He actually had to fabricate parts of the ceiling because when they hung it they tore the drywall up and it didn’t come together in many areas. We talked to the contractor about this but he pretty much ignored us and would not comment. Then the paint throughout the house was wiping off each time we had to clean it. He never fixed that. After much debate he took like $300 off of the $100,000 PLUS bill.  Did I say thank you? That was money off so that WE could repaint the house ourselves.  Can you even imagine paying someone over $100,000 and having to repaint the house yourself? I couldn’t.

I could nit pick this to death but am not going to. I think this is sufficient to show that I should not have hired this contractor. OF course this is my experience and my opinion.   I am in no way telling anyone else what to do. Can I endorse this company? No, but it is as always your decision.  I can say that the assistant made the comment to my husband that this was the largest job they had ever undertaken and that they will never be doing so again. So, maybe they do great work if the job is small? Who knows! Maybe they do. 

As I have said I will not name names but stay tuned and I will have a review on a new company we have hired and how they do. They will be finishing our basement and hopefully I will be hiring them to finish our deck, put an in ground pool in and build a new garage. They have said when the job will start and when it should finish. The job will take 17days!!!!!!  This is to finish a basement. YES, I said SEVENTEEN! OMG!! What a difference a company makes.  Stay tuned.

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