Avoid this company at all costs.
What was quoted as a simple 8-10 day permit drawing project became a 3 month nightmare where Amr, the owner would vanish from communication for a week at a time, this happened on multiple occasions and got more and more frequent as time went on.
Though asked for, I never received more than a simple plan drawing of where our bathroom fixtures would be going.
After months of excuses Amr informed me he was submitting the plans to the city, I had asked to see a copy but was ignored.
The city rejected his drawings several times this first round. I was told it was due to the city being picky and more stringent than others and that they were guaranteed to be approved so we should start building, but in the end found out it was due to sloppy work and missing information.
Finally, he delivered drawings and they were approved by the city - briefly. The day following the permit issuance I was informed via a call from the city that they were revoking the permits because Amr received a 1 year suspension of his BCIN license a week prior for conduct issues and unlawful practices - and they were now in the process of revoking all of his submissions. - you can read more about it here:
http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page18809.aspx?DateTime=636610364400000000&PageMode=View
The city gave a simple set of instructions on how to get the drawings approved - that if Amr would have the drawings stamped by a licensed engineer, and all of his information removed they would accept the drawings.
He initially refused, saying his suspension was due to not paying his dues and that all would be fine in 5 days when he could then resubmit. I requested repeatedly that since we were already this far behind, he could go out of pocket and pay an engineer to stamp and we'd be on our way, he agreed to do this.
I still was not given our drawings - I requested to meet him and submit together, but was ignored. He resubmitted, and the drawings were revoked as the engineer's stamp was not signed or dated. I called Amr repeatedly and he claimed it all was fine and it was the city who was causing the problems. The city tried to get ahold of the engineer, but were never called back.
Over the course of the next two weeks we were forced to charge back payments to his company to get him to respond. What came back were threats of a house lien if we didn't pay him immediately - before successful drawings were even submitted to the city.
When we finally saw the drawings, they were missing skylight details and structural elements, the latter of which he had claimed to have submitted. Again, it was only through threats on our end of charging back all payments and calling his attention to our emails and contract that he decided to submit the finished drawings.
In the end, I received another call from the city requesting details and cross sections of the skylights, which I had to have drawn at additional expense with another engineer.
Permits were ultimately issued, but the journey to get them was perhaps the worst experience I've ever had with a person or company in my life.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $4,000.00