brandon1

After a recent basement reno, our HVAC guys came in for a regular checkup on furnace and air conditioning. "Everything is fine", he says, "but you REALLY need your ducts cleaned." I called Air Force, and they were great: they came when they promised, were very efficient in setting up, cleaning, and getting their hoses and such back out. Very polite and respectful of our home as well. Did I mention they showed me photos? They have a camera that crawls through the ducts, and boy: the furnace guy wasn't kidding! They got chunks of drywall and concrete, plus tons of drywall dust from the reno. We're happy!

Linda & Steve are amazing! This is a bit repetitive, as so many have reported the same experience. Our 7-year old Whirlpool Duet was non-responsive. Door lock light flashing, drain pump running (but no water in machine), no other lights on, no buttons responsive. On a Saturday, of course. And a new puppy, and renovations to house complicating our lives. We so don't need this. (Do need clean clothes though...) Got through to Linda on first call, and she talked/texted me through getting the door unlocked, getting diagnostics to clear the machine's brain. Took multiple tries, but she (and Steve on the line to her) had patience with me. And right now, the machine is doing a wash! Correctly. Did I mention NO CHARGE? Free. Over an hour's time, on a Saturday, no charge. (HomeStars won't accept free on the form, so I put $1.)

It appears that our contractor hasn't been telling Westview and us the same story. We now are dealing directly and hopefully the problems will be dealt with in the next few weeks: stay tuned for the final review! (when I hope the rating will go up)

We decide to replace our [very] old water tank before it failed, and we wanted to get a model that vented through the basement wall so we could cap and remove the chimney. We bought a new poet vent model from RONA, and Rona's website hooked us up with ABW to do the install. Everybody at ABW was very nice and helpful from getting the estimate, through scheduling the work, and then doing the job itself. The installers came at the promised time and date, listened to what we wanted them to do, and got the job done exactly as we asked in a quick and efficient manner. The job included picking up and delivering the tank from Rona, drilling through the basement wall, installing the pipe for the exhaust - removing and replace some sections of drop ceiling - removing and disposing of the old tank, capping the chimney, and replacing some of the gas piping and a valve. The price I list is ABW's work, not the tank itself.

I chose Coretemp partly because of the great reviews here, although I had several others come and give me a quote. Richard & Janice were great to deal with - especially very quick communications. (Communications with tradesmen is a pet peeve - some just don't want to answer or call back, let alone show up when promised!) The installation went very smoothly, exactly as promised, on schedule, and neat. The equipment is still new of course, but we have had a chance to use both a/c and heat and we're very happy with the product as well as the installation and service.

I contracted with Paramount Landscaping to aerate, top-dress, and overseed my front lawn for a price of $467.14 ($413.40 + HST). The contract was signed and full amount paid April 12, 2012. (The cheque #225 cleared my bank on April 16.) No one came to the property until May 14, when two men from another company arrived at about 4:30pm. (Apparently Paramount had sub-contracted to a third party.) One of the men went over the whole lawn with the aerator. The other hand shovelled top soil onto some small damaged patches along the property line (left over from sewer repairs next door), but 95% of the lawn got no top-soil. Then this second man pushed a spreader around the lawn with grass seed. They finished, loaded the spreader and aerator back in their trucks and left by 5pm. The aeration and overseeding we asked for were done satisfactorily, as was the patch repair (which we hadn't asked for), but the top-dressing was not done at all except for the repaired patches. (Top dressing is the process of applying a thin layer -1/2" to 1" - of topsoil and/or compost over the lawn, and raking it into the existing grass.) No one from Paramount was present during the work, nor did anyone from Paramount inspect the work afterwards. I assumed this was a mis-communication between Paramount and this third party sub-contractor -and called Paramount right away. (My contact at Paramount was Jeff, Sales Manager.) He promised to talk to "his operations person" and get back to me, but didn't call back After a couple of days I called him again, and we repeated this pattern for several weeks: I call, he promises to look into it with the operations manager and get back to me, he doesn't call back, I call again, et cetera. Jeff did stop by after a few calls to look at the lawn, and agreed that there had been no topsoil spread. At no point did the operations manager inspect the subcontracted work, despite my repeated requests he do so. So I paid over $450 for half an hour's work by two men, plus about $20 worth of seed & soil, and the primary part of the job we contracted for was never done at all. UPDATE after Paramount's reply: Note that it took Paramount over two years to reply to my review (August 2013 to September 2015). Perhaps if they had returned my repeated phone calls two years ago, we could have avoided the review entirely. The facts they quote are wrong: The lawn is not 5000 sq. ft. as they claim, but just under 1200 sq. ft. (they only were contracted for the front lawn, and never went into the back). Again, had anyone from Paramount actually been here, they might have noticed the difference in size. And as someone who has had a lawn for many years, I know the difference between Top Dressing and Over-Seeding. (I have a spreader and overseed myself on a regular basis.) The contract was done after long discussion with Paramount's sale man and I specified exactly what I wanted. If it should have cost 4x as much, he should have quoted 4x as much. (Although given that my lawn is only 1/4 the size Paramount claims, I'd guess he did quote correctly.) This is the only negative review of a tradesman I've eve left, but my rating of zero stands.

Our old, heavy, wooden, double garage door had been making a racket for a while. Recently it had lost one wheel, and some others were threatening to come off. Finally it jammed in the open position (fortunately!) and couldn't be moved either manually or with the opener. Dormaster came the same day, at the scheduled time. They got the door working very quickly at the quoted price. I did have them replace the rest of the hardware (springs especially) which accounts for the price listed here. Now we have essentially a brand new door, except for the tracks and wooden panels themselves. Don't recall it ever running this quietly before.

A few years ago our furnace was giving us problems, so we called the gas company; they came out, incorrectly diagnosed the problem, and fixed so it worked for a few hours. It got worse and conked out completely on the weekend. I called the gas company, and got the answering service who promised they'd call back within two hours... of course no one ever called. Finally, Sunday I called Airworks. Again I got a service, but this time I DID get a call right back, and a service tech within a few hours, exactly as promised. They diagnosed the problem correctly, and fixed it so that it has continued to work to this day. Since then we've had them do regular annual checkups on both heating and air con; today I bought a humidifier for our new house. They came and installed it the same day I first called! I'll stay with Airworks for life, and would recommend them to anyone.

We had The Floor Shop do our new house seven years ago... their price was half what the builder wanted, they did excellent work, and finished when they said they would. Great selection of hardwood flooring as well. We've just sold that house, and will have The Floor Shop do the new one before we move in.