Pouring Pavement

I would never tell someone not to hire a particular company, I’m no expert on concrete, but I know enough to know when a job is done right and when it isn’t. We hired Pro Concrete Solutions GTA, partly because of the glowing 10/10 reviews they received here on Homestars. I can assure you we did NOT get the 10/10 company that seems to be represented here. We got a company that was high on promises but low on delivery. The communication we got from Steve (the owner) during the project was terrible, as was his communication with his staff. One hand didn’t know what the other one was doing; instructions were not relayed properly resulting in errors mid project. During the project there were stretches of days where no one showed up to continue the work, and I’m not talking about rainy days where work couldn’t be done. I’m talking about clear sunny days mid project, no workers, no progress, and no information from the company. We had to chase them down and hassle them to find out when things would get done.
We were promised demolition of an old existing driveway to be replaced with a new concrete driveway, shared with our neighbours. The old one was to be cut up to a large crack at the top of the drive, as concrete continues on to the backyard, which didn’t need to be replaced. The new shared driveway was to slope away from the houses so that rainwater would travel down the middle and away from the homes. We were also told we’d get new parging along the side of the house as the old one would get destroyed during the demolition phase.
What we got was a driveway that wasn’t cut to the right section initially, leaving the large obvious crumbling crack as is. We noticed the error prior to the new concrete being poured, asked whether the crack would be fixed and were waved off with “yeah yeah yeah’s” only to find the portion still not cut after the new concrete was poured. They had to cut again, jack hammer and fill again the portion they missed.
We also got a driveway that actually sloped INTO the house at some areas causing water to pool along certain sections of the house, most notably right by the basement window. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the work was so poorly done that a large puddle pools at the top of the driveway with every rainfall. It’s so large that it hasn’t rained in 5 days and there’s still enough water collected in the area that I can splash with my foot.
We got parging that looks like it’s been done by a 5 year old playing with playdo, slapped on like an after thought, that’s cracking already I might add. The old parging job was done by the previous homeowners and was better than what was done by these “professionals”.
We reached out to Steve on the day that we noticed all the water pooling, which was 2 days after the job was completed. He was quick to acknowledge that it was an unacceptable problem and promised that they’d come back and fix it. It’s been a month and I’m still waiting, with countless dates planned resulting in just as many no shows. The favourite excuse seems to be rain delays, but there have been more sunny days than not so I’m not buying that one anymore.
Pro Concrete Solutions GTA were quick to post our driveway on this site when they were finishing up, so I’ve included what it really looks like, pooling water, no sloping in certain areas and sloppy work.
I cannot recommend Pro Concrete Solutions GTA to anyone, but if you do decide to hire this company, just be aware that what we got was far from the 10/10 reviews that have been posted here. (And just a side note, all the previous reviews were done by people who just happened to join Homestars within days of each other)