Reno nightmare, Do Not Use Slotegraaf
If you're thinking of doing a reno, do not use Slotegraaf Construction. We had a terrible experience with Slotegraaf and we want to help others avoid a similar situation.
After almost two years of planning our lives for around a reno, saving money, budgeting, signing a contract with them, making selections, Slotegraaf just canceled our project right before the planned start date. From what it looks like they dropped us so that they could chase more money on another project and they're using the reno craze as an opportunity to price gouge customers.
Before the project, we thoroughly vetted Slotegraaf, checked references, obtained multiple contractors' quotes to compare them, signed our contract, and paid our deposit 8 months in advance. When they canceled on us, they didn't even give us the courtesy of calling us to explain, they just emailed us nonchalantly.
From the vetting we did, it looks like at one time Slotegraaf used to be one of the good companies in the industry. We read the good reviews you're probably reading as well. Now it looks like they've taken a turn and become one of the bad ones.
Slotegraaf misled us when they told us that our project price and start date would be "locked-in" if we signed a contract with them and sent them a deposit. However, as the project was a month away from starting they then told us that the price is going up. We didn't make any scope changes on the project so price change was puzzling to us.
Slotegraaf wanted to raise the price of our project by $54K - a blind increase - because "sub-trade costs" have gone up. We realize that materials and sub-trade costs can fluctuate, all we wanted was for Slotegraaf to show us how they arrived at the $54K number. Instead of having an honest and reasonable conversation about the price increase, they ignored our request and canceled the project on us. This makes us feel that they were just trying to take advantage of us because they knew we couldn't easily switch to another reno company while they could easily replace us with a higher-paying project.
Making matters worse, Slotegraaf did not make it easy for us to get our full deposit back after they canceled. We had to get our lawyer involved in order to get our deposit back.
Our experience with Slotegraaf was so significantly bad The Record did an article on it.
There's no sense risking it, this situation could happen to you. Use a different company for your home reno. Save yourself from a nightmare and don't use Slotegraaf.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $375,000.00
- Company Response
At Slotegraaf our commitment to our clients is of the utmost importance to us. The cornerstone of that commitment is showing respect in all interactions with our clients. For this reason, we have chosen not to comment on the specifics of this issue on a public forum like social media as it does not lend itself to a meaningful discussion of critical information; we are unable to continue without sharing information that we deem confidential to the client and their contract with Slotegraaf. We do however want to apologize publicly to our client as terminating a contract is a difficult, but sometimes necessary decision to prevent more serious consequences during the course of construction. Should anyone wish to better understand our contracts, the safety measures built in to protect the client, and how deposits would be refunded, please contact us directly and we would be more than willing to discuss this with you. We are providing no further comment but do commit to continuing to work with the utmost respect, even in difficult decisions.