JAMES MISSISSAUGA

One cable snapped on the evening of April 23. I searched internet for solutions. The cheapest way was to purchase new cables and DIY, which would cost less than 20 bucks. Since the builder's doors were aged, however, I also checked other more aggressive options on Homestars next morning. Three contractors answered my request for a quote within minutes. Based on many good reviews about ONC Garage Door Services, I contacted them first. They promised to send in a technician the same day. Sure enough, John showed up at our door steps in the afternoon. I had read many happy reviews about him already, so I was pleased to see it was him. He immediately earned my trust and gave me a reasonable quote. I could tell that he knows his business very well. So when he said his office would book either himself or some other tech to come to install the new doors, I told him that it had to be him. He also put in a new cable before leaving so that we could still use the door as usual in the meantime. Very kind and considerate. On April 29th John and his brother came to install two 8x7 new doors. They did an excellent job and paid attention to every detail. Two days later, the capping team came to put on the aluminum capping, who also did an excellent job. John followed up by a phone call to make sure I was happy with the capping. The new doors now look fantastic. It only took merely a week from my first contacting them to the completion to my 100% satisfaction. Knowing I have a 25-year warranty on the paint and 3-year on parts and labor, I am certain that I will have many trouble-free years to enjoy the new front face of our house.

I was thinking about attic insulation in late November, but Shawn sold me the furnace update as well when he visited my home. Normally I would search HomeStars to find a good contractor. This time I felt that Shawn knows his business well and decided to give them a try. Shawn did tell me that they had good reviews on HomeStars. The project was to replace our 12-year old Carrier high efficiency furnace with a new one, and to increase the insulation from 7 in to 17 in. It also included a new central humidifier and a Nest Learning Thermostat. The installation was done 2 days after signing the contract. Two technicians arrived on time and completed the work in one day. They are very knowledgeable and professional. The job was done much better than Carrier's installer 12 years ago. Another two-member team did the attic insulation in the afternoon, who also did a good clean job. The auditor came along for the government rebate. Due to the installation of Nest control, I ran into a prolonged learning curve along with the self-learning control. The next day the furnace stopped heating before reaching the set temperature. I thought something must be wrong and called Shawn in panic. Shawn explained that it might be due to the Nest's learning curve, and advised me to keep an eye on its performance in next few days. For the following two weeks Shawn and I were communicating almost daily. Eventually the system has become stable and functions well as desired. Whenever I contacted Shawn, he would respond immediately. He is a salesman, and could have forwarded me to their support team. But he never lost patience answering my questions. He deserves a customer service award. The humidifier has made the environment much more comfortable. Our old one never worked so nicely. The entire system has been working reliably for over a month now. I am very pleased with the performance and feel it is time to give the Constant Home Comfort a 10/10 rating. This is a follow up: The furnace has been working nicely until Aug.15, 2019. After dinner I noticed the furnace sound was much louder than usual. I texted Shawn. I could have called the service department, but Shawn and I communicated many times when I was learning to operate the Nest Learning Thermostat last winter, his patience and knowledge impressed me deeply. Shawn immediately called back, and suggested me to shut down the system and restart in ten minutes. The sound level went back to normal at first, and started to raise again until too loud to bear. I shutdown and told Shawn the results. He booked an appointment for a technician visit on my behalf right away. Next morning, their office called to set up a same day visit. After the lunch a technician showed up at our doorstep. Since the system was down for more than 12 hours, however, the loud sound did not reappear after 10 minutes running. The technician decided not to wait any longer, but to open the cabinet to inspect the inside. He found the fan blades were off to one side, and adjusted it. His diagnose was that after long time running the offside would cause blades to touch the housing, making loud noises. Now four days have passed, the furnace has been running normally. Their prompt response to my service request and ability to solve the problem on the spot confirmed my 5-star rating.

Our entire home carpet was in need of a professionally cleaning and my first step was to check Homestars for a good contractor. Based on many good reviews I picked EHS and I was very satisfied with the result. Owner Fecri answered the phone and gave me a quote, then he followed the entire process through in a professional way. He showed up on time, worked very hard, delivered exactly what he promised over the phone. The next morning I noticed a stain in the family room which became visible only after cleaning. I messaged Fecri to see if he could remove it when he came close to my area. Two days later he came and explained that the stain was due to previous spill residue hidden in the under pad and the cleaning brought it back up. He removed it with a bottle of solution, and generously left me with the rest for future use. Thanks Fecri! I noticed this is my fifth review, and all my ratings have been 10/10. I attribute this to the fact that I always do my homework on Homestars when I plan a project. So thanks Homestars as well!

Absolutely the first class service! I selected 3 contractors on June 19 to make the first contact based on Homestars reviews. Ontario Green Irrigation was the third one. However, the link to the company website did not work. So I called their number and Peter answered right away. He asked me to text him my address. A few minutes later he called back and offered to come over to have a look in 30 minutes. He did, and got my business. I didn't bargain, nor wait for other quotes because I was impressed by Peter's efficiency and manner. He gave me a feeling that I was dealing with an honorable and trustful person. Today (June 26) when I woke up in the morning, Peter's 6-member crew is already in my yards working since the forecast predicted rain at lunch time. The team worked very professionally and managed to keep the disturbance to the minimum possible. I have a rose bed which does not like watering from the top. So I told Peter he didn't need to cover the bed. But he still put in a head there to water from the ground. He said he did not want me to water manually. Now they are gone, and I have a wonderful irrigation system in my yards which Peter has shown me the good area coverage. Bye bye my manual task of watering the lawn twice a week.

I had been renting a conventional water heater from National which started a slow leak recently. Realizing potential flooding risks down the road, I thought it would be better to switch to a tankless heater. So I called in a tankless heater agent to get a quote. The agent told me that Reliance had become the owner of my existing heater and I needed to cancel the contract with them first. I had had no dealing with nor knowledge of Reliance, so I checked Homestars reviews. Frankly I was quite worried seeing pages of negative reviews, although still less than 10% of total, what if I met the same sad situation? But in order to compare, I still decided to give them a fair chance. So I called their number on Thursday March 10th in the morning, the lady answering the phone booked me a technician right away, and the technician came and fixed the leak by 14:00 same day. He also confirmed the feasibility of switching to a tankless from them. So I called back to Reliance office and was told they would send a sales rep next morning. The rep Dave came on time at 10:00 and his offer was better than that of previous supplier with the same Rinnai model. I saw no reason not to stay with Reliance. The installation was on the following Tuesday morning. The two-people crew, Brent and Sean came on time. They were courteous and professional. They had to fetch a longer pipe from warehouse, hence spending more time than planned. At the end I noticed the new exhaust facing towards our neighbor, and asked them to change that. They had no problem to cut off the top and put in another 90 degree elbow. They left only after I was completely satisfied. Up to that point everything was straight forward, no surprises, and I was very pleased. However, when we took showers in the evening, we found that the system could not handle a second shower without dropping the water temperature at the first. This is not what they had said. I called Dave twice on Wednesday, one at 8:30 in the morning and one at 5:30 in the afternoon, both time I could only leave a voice message but received no call back. Considering those negative reviews, I started to wonder if they were only interested in getting my business. My suspicion turned out to be completely unfounded: Dave called back around 8:00 in the evening and apologized for being too busy to respond earlier. When I explained the reason of my calls, he immediately said that it was not right for the temperature to drop. I suggested to have his installation crew back, but he said the right approach then was for me to call their service department right away since they open 24 hours, which I did and a service tech was booked for the following morning. Sam showed up within the booked window and discovered a restriction in the cold water piping. To fix it he needed more time than booked as well as some new parts. Sam first got approval from the office for a stay extension, then went to pick up the required parts, and finished the re-piping around 13:00. Being a mechanical engineer myself, I am certain that from now on should there be any further problem, it would be related to the Rinnai heater itself, which will be covered by the rental contract. Reliance has done an excellent job. In summary, my experience with Reliance is a very pleasant one. They have given me first class, timely services, and delivered everything as promised. Every single person involved demonstrated professionalism and courtesy. I have no reservations to recommend Reliance to anyone. I noticed that the long reviews on Homestars tend to be complaints, so I write this long positive review as my way of saying "Thank you, Dave, Brent, Sean, Sam, and Reliance!"

I used Mr. Rooter today to deal with kitchen drain line clogging and was delighted for their absolutely first class service. When I called their number found at Homestars.com late last night, the friendly lady took my number and a few minutes later another lady (Lorri?) called back to schedule a technician visit. Both ladies were so nice and professional which left me with a good first impression. Today Lorri called to inform me that technician was on his way. Sure enough Mr. Greg Wilson rang the bell 10 minutes later. After some basic inspection, Greg offered free camera inspection to see the problem in the main drain that is buried under basement concrete, but the camera could not go in due to grease clogging. I felt the seriousness of the problem. Greg believed that the expensive high pressure water jetting would be required. Two years ago I rented snaking equipment from Home Depot to clean the drain line and now it was completely blocked again. So I agreed to have water jetting done as soon as possible. To allow us to use the kitchen sink in the meantime, Greg used the snake to open a hole after which he put the camera in to see the situation. Surprisingly the powerful snake, with a much bigger head than Home Depot’s, had cleaned the pipe pretty well. I asked if the water jetting would still be needed which by then had already been booked at their office with my approval for Monday. But Greg said it was not as bad as he original thought and he would cancel the booking. I am very much impressed by Greg’s honesty. He just does not do unnecessary work even it means lost business. To be fair, their rate is not cheap. But I feel that their first class service deserves the highest rate in their sector. My wife has put Greg’s business card in the safe for future use. Thanks also goes to Homestars.com through which I found Mr. Rooter in seconds.

As a perfectionist, I have never given a contractor 10 out of 10 before. But anything lees than 10 is unfair to Smart Roofing Inc. based on my recent, pleasant experience with them. Since last summer when high wind blew off a few shingle tabs from my roof, I was wondering if reroofing should be done. I called a number of contractors picked from their ads in late May. Jerry at Smart Roofing was the second contractor to call me back. Before his first visit, he called me to ask if it was raining in my area. Since it was, he postponed to the next day. He showed up on time and went to the roof to investigate, which the first contractor didn’t do (and then I understood why Jerry rescheduled the visit). Jerry’s enthusiasm impressed me immediately. You could see his proud in his company and their work when you heard him referring the houses they had reroofed as “my houses”. I could tell that he was not acting. He showed me the problems on my roof and I was quickly convinced to use their service without seeking more quotes. To help me choose the color, he drove me to see some of “his” houses (over a dozen just in my neighborhood alone) and left a sample collection of all available colors for me to discuss with my family. His visit was on a Friday, and the 5-member crew showed up the following Thursday to do the job. I stayed home to observe their processes from time to time. First, I gave them very high mark for their safety awareness considering the steep slope of my roof. Second, I was convinced that they did not cut corners. When a worker was nailing down a new plywood but could not reach the upper corner by a few inches from his temporary platform, he climbed up the rope (2 meters away) just to hammer in the last nail. Third, every crew member was experienced, professional, hard working and courteous. A neighbor who had experience in the roofing business later told me that he was impressed by the good job Smart Roofing crew did with my roof. The crew completed the work after it got quite dark, which made me a little concerned that some details might have been unintentionally missed. So when Jerry showed up next day, I asked him to have the crew double check the roof in daylight. But I still wrote Jerry the check for the balance. In the meanwhile we had light rain that raised a few concerns, including water dripping from eaves trough. I emailed Jerry about my concerns on Tuesday and noticed that my check was already cashed. How many times have we seen the contractors changing attitude after they received the payment? Not Smart Roofing Inc.! The entire crew showed up on Thursday evening after Jerry left a message in my voice mailbox in advance. The crew checked the shingles and found nothing wrong. But they did not stop there; instead they borrowed the garden hose to find the root cause. It turned out to be a hole in the gutter. They then used caulking to seal the hole. The crew spent a good half an hour to address all my concerns which, in hindsight, might have been pre-existing conditions. I really appreciate and value their prompt response and a fantastic job! Smart Roofing charged more than the first contractor’s quote, but I am extremely happy for my choice knowing that I have a perfect roof, and that the 10-year workmanship warranty is not on paper only!