David Grant in Vancouver

Extremely disappointed. Was given a $50 gift card as a present. That's enough for 2 hours at a special rate because it was also a referral. The cleaning lady (Nelly) came over and was instructed to focus on the downstairs (dining room, kitchen, living room, 1 bathroom) as we were having a dinner party that night. If there was any more time, she could do upstairs. I gave clear instructions on how to use the Miele vacuum and demonstrated how to use it. I could tell that things weren't going to go well, because as I was leaving for work, I saw Nelly dusting the top of the TV! When my wife came home, the dining room floor was not cleaned and was visibly dirty (we have 2 children, which makes it very obvious when cleaning has NOT been done). It looked like the carpets had been vacuumed but the one bathroom downstairs had been poorly done. The kitchen counters were dirty. In fact, there was very little evidence that she had been there. In contrast to when we have had any other cleaning person come over: you know they've been there because everything is clean. To top it off the vacuum was broken! The power brush/power bar was stuck in the upright position which made it unusable, and the mechanical foot activated pedal to lower it from the upright position did not work. Also the power brush would no longer turn on at all. We were extremely disappointed that they never informed us that they had broken the vacuum. It had to be taken in for repair which took 2 weeks, and luckily they covered it under warranty, even though technically this type of damage (ie. misuse) is not covered. The worst thing was their response: -When we told the owner Pauline that the floors were not done and the bathroom done poorly, Pauline's response was that they only had 2 hours. We were aware they only had 2 hours (that's what we were paying for), and this is exactly why we told them to only focus on dining room, living room, 1 bathroom, and that we were having a diner party. Apparently, "for a home cleaning we need at least 4 hours to do a really good job including steam mopping and deep cleaning." Cleaning the floor, vacuuming one room, and cleaning one bathroom should take less than two hours. -When we informed Pauline that the vacuum was broken, Pauline said "Nelly mentioned that your vacuum was not in good shape.thanks." Wow, so Nelly's version of events is that it was broken to begin. Or that's her way of letting Pauline know she broke it. Wow. They did offer to redo the service at no charge, but after they did almost nothing the first time, failed to own up to their mistakes and went on the defensive, broke our vacuum and didn't own up to it--NO THANKS.

We paid $388 for cleaning our duct system which has 15 vents, as well as a dryer duct cleaning and a new filter for the furnace. Kevin was very helpful in explaining everything he was doing and seemed very experienced and knew what he was doing. My only complaint was that I wanted to have the vents scrubbed with some sort of scrubber-thingy but he said it wasn't necessary and I didn't really understand his explanation. I didn't feel like going on and on about it and I'm not an expert which is why I hired them in the first place. He had a huge vacuum attached to the main duct though, and blew compressed air into the vents as well, and it seemed like that would do something.

We hired Randy to paint the entire interior of our home. 2000+ sq. ft, including new trims on all windows and doors. The trims require a lot of work, sanding and priming, filling holes, etc... He spray painted all the trims and they look beautiful, no brush marks whatsoever. He also spray painted the ceiling. The walls were in pretty bad shape but after Randy was finished with them they look amazing. He filled all holes very well and did lots of sanding to make the walls nice and smooth. Randy cares about his work very much and did an excellent job. He rates may seem high, but we got quotes from 2 other painters and actually they were all about the same for this large job. We highly recommend Randy.

We hired them to do 3 things for us: 1. Create a transition between carpet in a garage that was turned into a family room and a hallway that had laminate flooring. 2. Repair some drywall damage near the carpet in a stairwell 3. Install pinboard-style shelving in an L-shaped awkward closet They came over to our house first to talk about everything and then prepared a quote. All were done to our satisfaction. I'd like to make a few comments about the transition issue. The carpet people had failed to come up with a solution to the problem (they sort of just ignored it actually). The flooring contractor who hired the carpet guys was somewhat helpful but didn't make us want to have his laminate flooring guys come in. Our previous general contractor who had done other work in the house had offered to take care of the transition and what we got was a disaster. The worker (who admitted he hated transitions) glued a T type transition to the laminate and the carpet. So half of the T-transition was hanging over onto the transition. It was sure to break eventually. It also created a raised area in the floor. The second solution brought forth by the contractor was to put a raised threshold transition. We said "no way". Paul and Paul from Clever Investments came over and it was great to see them trying to come up with a solution for the transition that would work and that would look and feel good. He ended up coming up with a great solution. The transition area was very tricky as the concrete was raised there only in the transition area, compared to the areas under the carpet and laminate. So he had to chip away at the concrete for a long time so that he could then put a piece of wood into the transition area. He made it flush with the laminate so it feels great when you walk over it. The piece of wood later bent upwards a bit but he came over and sanded it down for us so that it was flat again (for free). The pinboard shelving in the closets was awesome and there was wall repair work in the stairwell was great, you can't even tell it was patched and touched up with paint. They are very nice and are great at communicating and listening and figuring out what you want. I would recommend them to anyone looking at hiring someone for home renovation on handy-man services.

Our heat pump and furnace was installed by another company in April of 2011. In the fall 2011, the heat pump seemed to have stopped working for some reason. The previous company was extremely unhelpful and refused to come on-site to look at the problem. I found Riroxs on Craigslist and after e-emailing late one evening to see if they could have a look, I received a nice e-mail reply the next morning from Roxana saying that they could definitely help me out and would be glad to assist in any way. She told me their availability for that week. I had a few more questions for them over email and they answered promptly. I had also e-mailed a few other companies that I found on Craigslist, and after mulling them over for a few weeks, I e-mailed Riroxs and booked an appointment. Ricardo and Roxana came over and the first thing Ricardo did was show me his certification. I was a bit surprised because I had never seen one before (the previous installers never showed me anything like that or mentioned their credentials). They investigated the problem and determined there was a leak in the system. Their basic minimum charge for the call-out and diagnosing the problem in order to provide a more detailed quote was $123.20 including taxes. They gave me a detailed quote for about one day's work to find exactly where the leak was, then to fix it, and refilling the pipes with gas, etc... They came over either the next day or the day after and worked all day and into the evening trying to find the leak. They found the leak (which was tough to find, it was just near the point where the pipe entered the house so they missed it initially as it was just before the point where he cut the pipe to isolate the in-house section). Throughout the process they explained everything that they were seeing and explained to me what they were doing. After repairing the leak they performed lots of testing on the pipes and heat pump to ensure that there was no more leak both with vacuum and with pressurized air. Then even tested carefully the operation of the system with the thermostat and discovered another problem: the heat pump was going on at the same time as the auxiliary heat (gas furnace). This is a big problem as it caused very high pressure in the pipes, over and above what they are rated for (they measured this high pressure as well). They suspected that this was the root cause for the heat pump pipe leak. They left the heat pump off to protect the pipes, and said they would come and have a look at the thermostat another day to see what the problem was. They came a couple days later to look at the thermostat wiring. The original installer had wired it incorrectly! Or at the very least, had wired it correctly, but the particular thermostat they used was not capable of only using the heat pump OR the gas furnace at a time in heat mode. My understanding from reading the internet is that our thermostat indeed can't do this, and I need a better thermostat or a "fossil fuel kit" hooked up between the furnace and the thermostat in order for this to work properly and not cause high pressure in the pipes. They fixed the wiring, and basically made it so that my thermostat would only use the heat pump and would only use the gas furnace (ONLY) when in emergency mode. The last thing they did was help me select a new thermostat when I said that I wasn't happy with having to turn the emergency mode on manually all the time if the heat pump couldn't keep up. I've also had a few more issues with the heat pump and they have provided me with free warranty service to look at the problem. Ricardo is very helpful over e-mail and always responds on the same day. Their per hour labour rates are reasonable and they gave me a 10% discount on the labour for the big job, charged me for only 9 hours instead of 10 and waived the call-out fee. I highly recommend Ricardo and Roxana and I'm so glad I found them.