Farrell Hannah in Coquitlam

ATC Landscaping provided excellent service for our residential property. Steve's cost-estimate was competitive for the one-day project. Our 2016 winter snowstorm-damaged hedge and our 15 other shrubs, bushes, and small trees were trimmed to our full satisfaction by Brady and Riley. The staff was very friendly, accommodating, and efficient. We will retain ATC Landscaping again as needed and we will recommend them without reservation to others.

Last year (2012) we contracted with CertaPro Painters to paint the exterior of our house. We thought they were a reputable company. The painting crew they sent to do the job arrived on September 18, 2012. They were careless, unskilled, and unprofessional. It was a nightmare. We were told that the job would take 3 days; after 10 days of painting, re-painting, and re-re-painting there are – to this day nearly 6 months later- areas of our house that don’t have a drop of new paint on them. We have a multitude of photos that document the continual omissions, mistakes, and poor workmanship of the painting crew. What we can’t document is the attitude of the crew. They made nasty remarks about each other and about the company. In one instance the remarks bordered on being threatening. They also told us continually that jobs were finished when only a portion of the area was done and what had been done was unacceptable. Here is a sampling of what we experienced: - Back wall of the house spray painted brown we were told it was finished. On inspection, the whole wall was streaked and had to be re-done. It had been painted in hot sunshine. - Brown paint was over-sprayed onto the white soffit and onto our gray fiberglass deck floor. We were told the soffit had been repainted and the deck floor had been cleaned. On inspection only half of each area had been touched and what had been done was unacceptable and had to be redone. - While repainting the soffit, the white paint was allowed to run down onto the brown siding, and the edge where the 2 colours met was uniformly ragged around the entire house. The brown over-spray was still visible through the patchy white paint job and had to be redone. - A brick facing which had been white was painted a mid-brown and was supposedly finished. On inspection, the grooves between the bricks were still white. In re-painting, we found them using the darker brown of the siding instead of the mid-brown. They repainted the part that they did dark brown but didn’t finish painting the rest of the white grooves they had left between the bricks. - Numerous areas around the windows, back stairs, and deck railings were missed entirely and the previous green paint was blatantly visible. - While painting the fascia, the carport ceiling, and surrounding walls, they painted almost to the edges or the corners, but stopped short of completing the whole area. One area on the fascia was bare wood that was left unpainted. Some of these “inconsistencies” were called to their attention 3 to 4 times, and in one case 8 times before they were rectified. Although we repeatedly informed the company owner and the sales representative about the problems we were facing, they allowed this incompetent crew to continue attempting to paint our house for 7 days before they sent a more competent painter to take over. He worked for an additional 3 days to try to correct the mistakes and omissions of the crew. Two weeks after everything was supposedly finished, the paint on the back wall of the house started to peel and we found new areas of the house that had not been painted at all. By then, the weather was changing to colder and damp and it wasn’t possible to do anything more to rectify these problems. The company says they will return in the Spring to take care of these issues and we have withheld a portion of their payment until that is done to our full satisfaction, which they repeatedly have pledged as their company’s policy. On another note, we have 2 steel doors that were supposed to be painted as part of the job. Part way through this fiasco, the job site supervisor advised us not to paint them because they had the baked on, manufacturer’s finish. We notified the sales rep and told him to modify the contract price to reflect removal of the 2 doors from the work order. We assumed he had done this although he never forwarded a copy of the amended contract to us. When he arrived to pick up the payment for the job, he had the amended contract at that time. In this contract he had reimbursed us for only one door because he had suddenly noticed in his calculations for the price that he had only included one door. He had never mentioned this before. We had discussed both doors with him when he was giving us the quote for the job. In the original contract there are a number of items listed as exclusions, for example, back stairs, fence. The kitchen steel door is not listed anywhere as an exclusion. We have pointed these and other facts out to him but this issue still is not resolved. Aside from the incompetent workmanship of the painting crew there was the issue of their neglecting to clean up at the end of the day. In a glossy brochure from the company and written into the contract are specifics set out for daily cleanup. This crew left open cans of paint on our deck and in our yard. Soiled paint rags were left by our front door, on our deck, in the carport, and back yard. Brown paper used for masking windows was left by the front door and crumpled up and thrown into the front shrubs for our neighbours to see. Lunch garbage was thrown on the lawn for our dog to get into along with burnt matches and a cigarette butt. Believe it or not, one of our window screens was knocked off and for some reason was thrown up onto our roof, hanging over the edge. We complained to the company about these issues and sent photos, but it didn’t do any good. The job site supervisor apparently spoke to the crew but he was only around for short periods of time and therefore couldn’t enforce the cleanup specifics or anything else for that matter. What we have outlined is just a portion of the problems we were faced with day after day. The glossy brochure from the company highlights their “Certainty Service System”. This system is supposed to Consistently Deliver Extraordinary Experiences. The experiences they delivered to us were extraordinary to be sure, but in a consistently negative way. Farrell & Audrey Hannah.

The two trees bordering on our front yard and City property were recently “thinned” by Larry Robinson of Paul Bunyan Tree Service, Port Coquitlam. It was an all-day job to thin the 46-year-old trees as they each appear to be over 100 feet tall, one being a Douglas Fir (mainly on our property) and the other being a Norwegian Spruce (mainly on City property). The work was done in a timely and neat manner. The result is that the trees look more beautiful than before they were thinned, and the wind passes through them much more easily now. We would recommend Larry to do such skilled and obviously dangerous work on tall trees and perhaps for other work required for lower level trees and shrubs.

We’ve had good service in the past years from Roto-Rooter. This time when the service person (“plumber”?) arrived on a Saturday afternoon, about 6 hours after our request during a rainstorm, he worked on clearing the drain between our perimeter sump at the bottom of our driveway to the City’s storm drain about 40 feet away at the top of our driveway. After about a half hour he declared that our drainpipe under the driveway was fully cleared and draining, but that the City’s needed cleaned as well. We paid our $230 or so for the job we thought was completed. The City (Coquitlam) crew attended promptly when called, cleaned their part of the system at the roadway level, and said we needed to call a plumber to clean our part of the drainage from the bottom of our driveway to their storm drain at the top! I told them that had already been done a couple of hours before, but they pointed to a visible net of fine roots hanging out of the end of our drainpipe and that we should call the plumber back as it was an incomplete plumbing job. So we did that. While making several desperate calls in the following hours up to 11 PM to have Roto-rooter return to complete the job, we siphoned and bailed water from our sump area up to the street level to avoid it backing up into our finished basement. We finally had to detach a downpipe and dig a trench in the back yard to divert water from the sump and onto a far point in our back lawn. This wasn’t an easy task for two 73-year-olds to do during a cold rainstorm and wondering whether we would get proper help from Roto-Rooter before our basement flooded. After talking a few times with a very clear and helpful woman at the call desk, we were connected with a worker who was on his way from Vancouver to a job in Abbotsford but couldn’t stop by in Coquitlam along the way to complete the job they had started in the afternoon. Instead, he said he would connect us to the plumber who had done the work already as he was also on call that night, too, and he would call us back. After waiting awhile with no call back, we phoned reception again and she made the connection, saying that the original plumber would call us soon. He didn’t, but finally and suddenly arrived at our house around 11:30 PM, in a rather grumpy, negative mood. He casually looked at the situation and stated that he couldn’t use his belt driven auger in a rainstorm because it would just “slip”, and that it would have to wait until the rain stopped, which was unlikely to be soon according to the forecast, and I informed him that then our basement would flood if he didn’t complete the job as noted by the City crew. He wasn’t interested in looking at the visible roots hanging from the end of our drain he had supposedly cleared a few hours earlier. When I directed him with a flashlight to take a look, and asked him if he thought it might help to pull them out, his reply was plainly: “I doubt it.” I then withdrew my assistance and any further suggestions for him while he stood looking confused. He finally decided to bring out the auger machine and cover it with a plastic tarp to keep the mechanism drier while working. Eventually he perked up and announced that he had loosened a plug of dirt from the drain and it was at last running smoothly. The hanging net of fine roots was no longer seen. The water levels returned to their normal state and we were relieved at last, 14 hours after our initial call to Roto-Rooter that Saturday morning and after much physical and emotional stress for us. The following day, Sunday, City staff returned to check the situation and found that even though the water was running sufficiently through the system there were still some small roots in the drain (seen clearly via video) that Roto-Rooter had reportedly (twice) declared as “all clear now”! Those remaining roots were finally removed but not by Roto-Rooter. We used to have confidence in Roto-Rooter, using the company a few times during our 46 years living at this house. We are no longer confident and will likely call an alternative service in future and not recommend Roto-Rooter.

I waited 3 months from the time of our “low slope, mop-on seamless” roof replacement to do this review after many heavy rainfalls and winds since the reroofing was completed in the Spring. I also inspected our roof today and it looks great. Here are several comments about the Penfolds workmanship: quick and thorough replies to requests and questions; clear and patient explanations about options for products and services; unpressured suggestions about alternative methods and scheduling; thorough review of contract terms (the most professional response among 3 bids obtained); immediate attention to deal with a leak prior to the start of re-roofing; clear outlining of steps at the outset and throughout the whole procedure; friendly attitudes of all workers during the entire length of the project; regard for protecting property and good daily cleanup; diligent workers, no slacking, no excess noise; neighbours observed and remarked twice about the apparently good job underway and then completed; obvious pride in doing a good job, which was completed in a timely manner and at estimated cost; no surprises except it being a stark contrast to the poor customer service provided by another roofing company in the mid-1990’s. Once underway with us, we recommended Penfolds for re-roofing our children’s house nearby and Penfolds was retained by them also. Thank you to Shaun; Dave; Frank & Roofing Crew; Danny the flashing crew; and Dave and team for the downpipes part… to all of you for your excellent customer service. In 45 years of owning our house, we judge Penfolds to be tops in customer service compared with other contractors we’ve retained for various jobs. Farrell Hannah, Coquitlam.