BUYER BEWARE! HGB provided a quote for granite to us November 3rd 2012. On 5 November they called to ask for over an extra 11% because they said they forgot to include something on the quote for the special type of honed finish, which being nice people we agreed to. The terms called for a “high quality finish” and full payment by installation (our bad for agreeing to this), which we completed. The installation went ok, the cuts were fairly accurate but left something to be desired, the rough edge on one side looks good, but the surface of the counters had some sort of sealer applied that left streaks all over the counters and marks on our freshly painted walls too. This terribly poor quality finish we're left with looks like the counters were wiped clean with greasy fried chicken) and they don't wipe clean even with any type of household cleaner and a lot of scrubbing. SIX months later, more than a dozen emails and a number of phone calls asking for their help to get it resolved and it still looks terrible. They tried to blame their supplier, the tried to blame us, they tried to get us to take time off work to go back to their store to talk to them about it. Tried to get them to call us on the phone instead or come resolve the problem to no avail. The BBB complaint was filed this morning and if that's unsuccessful our next stop is small claims court. Andy has weaseled his way around blaming everyone else. They're on their 4th customer service/receptionist in 6 months so they can't keep staff. Even after we researched the problem ourselves and sent Andy/HGB instructions on how to solve it they've ignored it. BUYER BEWARE! POOR PRODUCT FINISH! POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE! TOOK THE MONEY LEFT JOB UNFINISHED!
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Update in response to company reply below. 6 months of chasing, a BBB complaint, me posting online reviews of the experience, and a 5th service person and finally they say they want to get this resolved. They did let us know the honed finish would take more maintenance, they also said (and the contract specified) they would give us a quality installation to start from... still waiting on that. They've offered to cover labour to replace the counters with a different type (not the kind we contracted for and paid for) or to resolve or to strip and refinish -------------------------- the issue of an incorrect installation with streaks currently remains (19Jun2013) and the new person who seems to have started last week is the most responsive yet - this is promising. Apparently Andy has now committed to getting this resolved. To the "no responses", it's I who have spent 6 months chasing HGB, we go away for a long weekend and come back to accusations that now WE'RE the ones not responding after not replying to an email while we're away for 4 days. Truly a laughable, unprofessional, and unhelpful accusation. We have again asked that the streaks be removed - we again forwarded tips from other granite companies on how to resolve this correctly (the specific type of stripper required, and the correct type of sealer to use for this stone/finish). This review will be updated to reflect the ultimate resolution of this one way or the other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------UPDATE 20JUN2013: The new staff member at HGB has been good, and has now promised to have the counters replaced (full replacement, not just labour). Looking forward to having this resolved. will continue to update this.
