I contracted The Post Hole Company to dig 11 holes including pouring concrete in my backyard in August 2017. In short, their scheduling was a mess, their customer service was a joke (I am talking about Marlene's professionalism in taking care of customer request and the owner, Andy's ignorance of such issues), and the quality of the holes are so bad that I have to dig out the post hole they poured and re-do it myself.
Scheduling seemed always to be a hassle, and we'd settle on a time but the crew did not show, this happened for at least several times. After many attempts, they finally came and dig all the holes. The crew was quite friendly but the owner who operated the digging machine seems a bit impatient. The worst thing is they did not carry enough portland so I actually offered to use my own car and took one of their crew members to buy 3 bags from a nearby home centre. Little did I noticed that this shortage of portland would make such a pain for me.
First I noticed the concrete start to scale and sink in the post form, then I recall when pouring concrete they did not compact the concrete at all, just pour it in and that's it. So after some time the concrete started to settle and the structural strength was greatly compromised. I was hoping this would not post a problem for my deck. However, in Jun 2018, when we are ready to put deck post on the concrete piers, I noticed one of the post bases (a metal bracket that is sunk in the concrete) was very weak. Using my bare hand with not a not of force, I easily pulled the base out of the concrete. I started to contact the company regarding this issue. I sent pictures to Marlene, the customer service staff, and requested they come and fix it. I was scheduled in for Jun 20th, but they did not show. Then I was scheduled again for Jun 23rd, again they did not show. Up to this point, I had made regular calls for about two weeks trying to have them come and fix the issue, but no success. On Jun 26, I tried to call again, but simply no answer on the phone, so I keep trying, only to noticed that Marlene hung up the phone without answering and then later she BLOCKED MY NUMBER! This was so ridiculous that Marlene actually accused me of making too many phone calls even though I just want to talk to her about scheduling a site visit so they can fix their problem! Then I start emailing back and forth with Marlene, and in the end she was trying to take a bureaucratic stand and say that even though this is a job that they've done wrong, they need to do a new locate, and wait for more than a month to fix this one problem. I took that as she was just avoiding taking responsibilities, I asked to talk to the owner, Andy. Marlene said he would contact me as soon as possible but it's been a month and I haven't heard anything from them.
I make a video recording the poor quality of the concrete pier so you can see yourself their work. Do not use this company. See for yourself: https://youtu.be/uO2nIYXPTCg
- Approximate cost of services:
- $850.00
- Company Response
1. You phoned us on June 20th of 2018 to report the poor condition of one of 11 footings we installed in August of 2017 and demanded to be seen THAT SAME DAY for repair. We do not push customer appointments on behalf of anyone for any reason so we recommended you book an official appointment for the first week of August but you refused to do so.
2. Since you did not wish to book an appointment, we kept you on a waiting list to be done on a best effort basis. However, we could not fit you in as hoped due to it being the busiest time of the digging season.
3. You phoned one of our office lines over 35 times in the span of an hour for a total of 107 phone calls for that day. You did not choose to leave a voice message, but hung up after no answer and re-dialed immediately. We have 2 phone lines, one of which you were tying up for an hour and the other which was busy with customers. We advised you by email that your phone calls were inappropriate, un-called for and stated that we were limiting communication with you to email only.
4. You were advised back in August of 2017 to re-route your eavestroughs so as to direct water AWAY from the footings as it would indeed damage them. You obviously did not follow our recommendations or instructions last year either.
5. We have tried our absolute best to resolve this for you, but due to your inability to be flexible or reasonable, you essentially refused our help and took matters into your own hands.