Penguin Basements

So, I saw lots of reviews and I have experienced both sides of it during my basement renovation. I am putting few points from my point of view here.

Design
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As metioned by many in the reviews and accepted by company itself, communication is one part Penguin has to work tremenduously. My design rep who signed the contract with me over-promissed so many things, provided half baked information and did so much poor job in coming up with first design. They were my first contact for basement rennovation and I went with them cosidering their big name that I will get experts to design who will best in their line of work. I was so happy on the day when I signed the contract. My biggest mistake was not to go line by line on the contract as I was told by rep that contract contains everything we discussed. Later on when I started visiting various basements, I realized that my design was so poor and rep wasted so much space so that actual usable and finished area was so small. When I contacted the him, he made adjustement based on my comments and that is when I started getting change orders with additional costs.

Design Interview
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During the desing interview, I came to know about so many surprises by the lady that my original design rep forgot to mention. I had to cancel my whole bar due to miscommunication by the rep. I had to travel 2 hours to their office multiple times to talk to their owner on multiple such over-promised items. I had opted for ethernet cables, 7.1 surrond system and somehow rep formgot to mention that in the original contract and when I reminded him, again I was sent big change order. This rep has so much communication problem that after sending multiple emails, texts, calls, I will get response after days which is also out of context.

I was very satisfied to talk to the owner who was very sensible person and somehow we were come to some conclusion.

Financing
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I dealt with Sergie on my finance and my interaction with him was the best among all the interactions so far. He was so responsive, helpful and patient to deal with all the issues on the road and helped me a lot to keep moving and getting financing done. I have to mention that my design rep overpromised again on the finance and I didn't get all the terms as promised but Sergie did his best to get us to where we are. If this guys would not have put so much efforts, I would have cancelled my contract long back.

Implemenation
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I worked with Walter when actual work started as site manager. I have to give credit to him as he really inherited a mess created by his friends. As I understood, Walter has to work within the boundaries of the documentation passed to him as he was not originally involved in promising to me, he did wonderful jobs in keeping everything afloat. He might not be the best communicator but he was able to work between various problems and help me out to finish my work. He was responsive enough to keep me upto date on what is going on the background and keep me upto date on who is going work next day and so on.

We started work on 5th July. All of my work got completed around 25th August. Due to some problem, I still have to get my stairs but I understand that there are circumstances even they cannot control. As far as they are finishing it in the promised timeframe, I am happy.

Overall, I am happy with how the end product is turned out. I hope, I get good warraty support (I was promised 2 years after completion date and I hope there is no surprise there...:)). I have seen many basements and I can cleary see difference in the work.

I will definitely recommand them to my friends due to quality I got at the end of the job but I will have to make sure that I am there with them when initial contract is being built and design is being finalized as I don't trust anyone coming for first design interview...:)

Thank You,
Hiren