Endless frustration with decks
Dealing with Royal Decks has been an endlessly frustrating experience. We had 4 quotes for decks and we picked them because they were the most expensive and had good reviews on Homestars and Miro seems like a genuinely nice guy. You pay a hefty deposit ($5000) up front to save the dates 2 months in advance. What was quoted as a 7-10 day job took 2.5 months...always caught up in other jobs. They just disappear for weeks and really don't seem to care. The weather was fine so that wasn't an excuse. You pick out your material months before but they keep having to order it (sorry don't have the plants, and sorry don't have the railings) etc which leads to delays again and again. They made some big mistakes and gave us poor options to fix them. Some of their problems were related to their poor communication with other tradespeople who all were upset by Royal Decks behaviour. What should have been a straightforward relatively small but expensive job has been headache after headache. Problem is once you've spent the money what recourse do you have? Would never recommend them.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $25,000.00
- What could this company do to improve their services?
- Any advice to offer fellow homeowners facing a similar project?
- Company Response
Dear Amanda and Kieran, I apologise that we weren’t able to fulfill your expectations. This year was quite different from any other year. We had extreme rain in spring time, effects of which carried on for the rest of the year. We started on your project 3 weeks after what we initially agreed to.
However, there are few things in your review that are not accurate. We never disappeared from your project to go to a different project. We started on your deck first week of September and we were finished with both of your decks within 2 weeks. There were a few days within these 2 weeks we weren’t there because we were short on few boards which have to be ordered in. Railings are always ordered after the deck is framed up, as we use custom railings for every project and it must fit 100%. This is explained to every customer ahead of time. The result is that there is a 2-4 week time frame when we are not working on your project. Railing was completed second week of October.
To address the “big mistakes” you speak of in your review, there were three mistakes. Downspout was wrongly directed. Lights transformer was installed at a different outlet than you wanted. And lastly, there was the temporary staircase. We explained to you on a couple of occasions that we cannot install a proper staircase until you have a retaining wall rebuilt, because your waterproofing contractor destroyed the retaining wall and stairs had to land on retaining wall. Temporary stairs were installed so you can still use your deck. After your landscaper fixed the retaining wall, we came and rebuilt stairs with proper finishes. The other two issues were corrected as they were very simple fixes.
When I picked up final payment, Kieran said that he was very happy with the work that we’ve done. Hope you and your family will enjoy decks we built for you.