Cynthia in Toronto

Note: I am a real person & this is a real review. I am writing you as a means to document my experience w/Eco Choice doors, your installers & you. I will post this honest & detailed review online, shortly. 1. I am very unhappy w/my door. Not only does the door NOT look like the pictures shown to me both online & in the printed brochure, from the outside of the house the glass pane appears green. Again, the glass from the outside appears green & not clear. I was never told the glass would NOT be clear nor was I shown an accurate depiction of the door I was to receive. 2. Only one of the installers could speak English. I was not able to communicate at all w/the non-speaking installer. He suggested I talk to the other installer, who spent most of the time he was at my home shouting & arguing very loudly either on his cell or directly at/with the second installer. Very unprofessional behavior, very annoying & very unexpected. Furthermore, the installers arrived almost 2 hrs. late. I did NOT receive a call from your office; infact, I called your office twice. I didn't receive either an explanation or an apology from anyone at Eco Choice. 3. I was presented w/a comment form to fill out, which I partially completed only after inspecting the "final" result of the door installation. The form was given to me before the job was completed rather than after, which I understand is standard procedure. The 1st installer was still applying caulking & the job site had NOT be cleaned from the inside or outside when the form was given to me. 4. The work site was NOT cleaned before the caulking was applied around the ext. of the door. The installer suggested to me that he had swept the area thoroughly. He had not. I swept the driveway, which was covered in saw dust. I swept the front porch, which was covered in saw dust. Due to great amounts of saw dust still being present on the front porch it ended up on the black caulking. Again, the work site should have been properly & throughly cleaned before ext. caulking was applied. Am I, the customer, expected to leave the front porch filthy dirty for a minimum of four days while the caulking is drying? Also, I have two very large flower planters as well as a large colored mat & a smaller black mat placed on my porch. Am I, the customer, expected to leave these decorative items to the side while the caulking is drying? If the porch was cleaned thoroughly there would NOT have been an issue at all. The items would have been placed down where they belong & the black caulking would NOT be covered in saw dust. Additionally, I spent 45 mins. cleaning the interior entryway of my home. NOT acceptable! 5. The installer was very argumentative; instead of admitting his mistakes, apologizing & moving on he continued to argue w/me. I found his behavior greatly upsetting & very unprofessional! 6. The work area was NOT properly or thoroughly cleaned after the installation was allegedly completed. The work area should be left in the same state of cleanliness in which it was found. As the paying customer, it is NOT acceptable for you to expect me to pay you thousands of dollars then clean up after you. 7. I do NOT have to prove anything to you. I am the CUSTOMER you are the SERVICE PROVIDER. It is you & NOT I that is required to provide evidence that the door depicted in the pictures & the door I agreed to purchase are one & the same. You have a great deal of nerve asking me to provide you w/online reference pictures of a Pinehurst Entry Door to prove my argument. It should be noted that your brochure pictures are misleading & inaccurate. One could, if they wanted to, accuse you of false advertising. 8. During our in-home consultation, I stated to you in no uncertain terms that I wanted the wrought iron to pop, to be crisp, to NOT be lost in the glass. We decided against the sand-blasted option & instead went w/the "clear", textured glass option, which you assured me would provide the result I was after. It did NOT! 9. The interior of the installed door is not white; rather, it appears to be a very unattractive off-white w/a cool, pale blue cast. I asked for a white door, one would assume that means pure white. In conclusion, your installers were exceedingly late, unprofessional & dirty; the wrought iron does not pop, but is lost in the door itself & can hardly been seen; the glass pane appears green from the exterior rather than clear; the int. white side of the door has an unattractive blue cast to it; your promotional materials are misleading & inaccurate; you asked me to prove my case to you rather than you prove to me that the contract was honored & I received the service / door I purchased. FYI, my family purchased the house next door to mine; Eco Choice recently installed an entry door at that property as well. From the inside, the entry door is also an unattractive off-white, w/a blue cast. Again, the int. door is not a true white one would assume it would be. I cannot stress enough how upsetting this experience has been. At this point, I would NOT recommend your company to anyone. Cynthia P.

Were do I begin? First of all, I am a real person & this is a real review. I took over a thousand pics to document the sub-par workmanship & disrespect this company paid towards my property. Unfortunately, Homestars limits the number of pics you can post. Here's my story: I hired WOW last fall to paint my entire home (walls, ceilings, trim, doors, rads, ext. bricks). I left my home in their hands for three days, which soon became four, while my dog & I stayed at a hotel. I entrusted these people w/my personal belongings & property. On both the 2nd & 3rd day, I returned to my home to check-in. I was appalled at what I saw. Not only was my property (very expensive rug; hi-end computer equipment; dining room chairs; sofa; stereo; CDs; appliances etc.) not fully covered (in some cases not covered at all w/paint cans placed under exposed furniture) & protected from plaster dust & paint, I found workers paint covered tools & a soiled painter's canvas laying on top of a drawer containing MY CLOTHES (please refer to the second pic below). And, graffiti had been painted on the entrance wall leading up to my second floor. I felt sick to my stomach, disgusted & violated by these people. I thought to myself "what gives them the right to treat my belongings in such a disrespectful manner?" Additionally, my home was an absolute mess; I could see there would have been no possible way for me to stay in it while the work was being completed. I was very upset when I spoke to the owner of the company (we only had one conversation over the phone during the entire process). He assured me that my home would be "spotless" when WOW completed the job. He offered to have my home professionally cleaned; I accepted his offer. He, however, was not willing to accept any responsibility for the unprofessional, disrespectful actions of his workers. I was soon to realize that being accountable was not something the owner was interested in nor did he really care about doing right by his customer. During a subsequent email exchange w/the owner, I emphatically told him that some of the colors & finishes I had chosen were not being used. He outright refused to correct the mistake. I offered to extend my stay at the hotel for a few days longer in order to give his workers the time to redo the doors, rads & stairs. It should be noted that I clearly communicated my instructions to the sales person prior to the commencement of the work. I directed the owner to read the emails, but he refused to. He would not budge. Clearly, he didn't care about my satisfaction. He seemed to only care about the money he would lose by having to redo the work. To back track just a bit. The sales person assured me the work would be completed in three days. By the second day, I could see that hardly anything had been done other than prep work. By the third day, I realized I would have to book an additional nite in the hotel I was staying at. All in all, I spent four days/nites in a hotel. My next door neighbor kept an eye on my home & the work being done. She reported to me each nite the goings on of the day. On the fifth day, I returned home. As I walked up my street, I felt uneasy & worried. I really didn't know what to expect, but I feared the worst. As I got closer to my house, I could see the painted ext. bricks. The work was sloppy & uneven. I opened my front door; walked inside. I felt sick to my stomach. My house was a filthy mess (please refer to the first pic below). The owner had no intention of having my home cleaned professionally. I spent the next four days cleaning, scrubbing & vacuuming until I felt comfortable in my home again. Rather than describe what I discovered thru the cleaning process, I will list everything. Here we go: 1. Not all of my chosen colors & finishes were used. 2. Walls were painted in Eggshell, as I requested, yet light switches & the area surrounding them were painted over haphazardly in Hi-Gloss. I wish I could show you all how crazy this looks. Who does things like this? Oh! WOW painters do. 3. Not all of my ceilings were painted Chantilly White as I requested; some where painted the same color as the wall (Wind's Breath). And, some were not painted at all. 4. Paint was allowed to run off onto my hardwood floor in corners or at the bottom of door frames where it pooled into huge globs. 5. Disgusting pieces of hair, some very, very large (please refer to the third pic below) were painted over. 6. Rads were only partially painted. The insides & back legs were not touched. Black paint got on walls behind the rads. Very sloppy work. 7. Black paint was splattered on my expensive Duvet. 8. My very expensive rug was covered in plaster dust along w/everything else in my house that wasn't fully covered. 9. White paint was splattered on my stationary bike & the surface of my dresser. And, the workers broke my 4-poster bed; my bed has since been converted to a standard bed. 10. The black used to paint my stairs, rads & doors was not black at all; rather, it was a very dark grey. Benjamin Moore confirmed that the color was not a true black, which is what I requested. I purchased Leaside Black, a true black, & had everything painted over again. 11. Cans of paint were left in my basement. I was able to confirm that some of the colors & finishes I requested were not used. One label was painted over. I took the can back to Benjamin Moore to find out what it was. It was not a color or a finish I requested. 12. Where I requested Hi-Gloss be painted, I received Semi-Gloss & vice versa. 13. The trim is a mess, very sloppy, very uneven. It appears as though it was painted by hand w/o the use of tape. 14. Numerous cracks were not patched. The huge crack along my bedroom ceiling was shoddily patched. It looks absolutely terrible. 15. Black paint on my hardwood floor in numerous places. 16. Black paint all along the circumference of my antique glass door. 17. The area under window sills/ledges was left unpainted or done partially & very sloppily. 18. My stairs were painted black & white. The work is really messy & uneven w/numerous hairs painted over. No one bothered to make sure the surface was clean before paint was applied. And, my front door was painted black. I specifically asked that my front door be left as it is. Again, this company ignored my detailed instructions. The list goes on... To this day, whenever I think of the owner of the WOW Painters Toronto Franchise, I get sick to my stomach. The gall of this man & his workers to disrespect a customers' property is beyond my understanding. I cannot stress how violated I feel. In Summary: Do not believe what you read in WOW's promotional material. 1. They do not complete the customers' painting to the "highest standards". Their work is shoddy & messy at best. 2. Their "superstar estimators" are poor communicators, who do not ensure the customer gets what they asked for. 3. They do not "arrive at your home w/the paint colors & finishes you chose" because they didn't actually read the numerous detailed emails you sent them, which outlined your instructions. 4. They do not use "highly experienced" & "highly professional" painters. Their painters don't care about the work they are doing. You're just a number. Besides they're moving to fast to care or to produce quality work. Speedy = Sloppy! 5. They do not leave your home "spotless". My home was a filthy mess. It took me four days of continual cleaning to get things back to normal. 6. They do not "guarantee" customer satisfaction. The only guarantee I received was the guarantee of poor workmanship & unprofessional behaviour. They are all about the money, bottom-line. They didn't give a darn about satisfying me. In fact, the owner outright refused to correct the mistakes made by his workers. 7. They do not give you "the same quality painting you expect and deserve without disrupting your home". My home as well as life was disrupted for four days. I stayed in a hotel because of the disruption caused by WOW Painters. 8. They provide sloppy, messy, & poor workmanship. And, they do not respect your belongings & property by ensuring they are fully covered & protected from paint & plaster dust etc. 9. They do not "work from the proposal to ensure your project is done right". The lack of communication from the owner down means that you will NOT get what you expect & deserve. Make sure you document the process; keep detailed records of everything that happens because you may need it in court. 10. Speed + Poor Workmanship = Extreme Customer Dissatisfaction Do NOT hire these people under any circumstances.

Note: My experience w/HPT started off very badly, but it turned out to be amazing: Please read the entire review. Fist of all, I am a real person & this is a real review. Do not be sold by HPT marketing materials. HPT painters & handyman are sloppy & unprofessional. 4 out of the 7 clauses in the contract I signed w/them were not honored. HPT do not always use drop sheets (please refer to my attached pics) & if they do they are filthy dirty & not at all like the drop sheets used in their marketing video. HPT painters are sloppy & don't care enough to ensure that trim, outputs & door knobs are painted around carefully or covered. They do NOT clean up after themselves & they do NOT provide the client w/daily reports/updates. Only two of the three colors I carefully chose for my rental units were used. Window treatments were taken down, but fixtures & screws were lost making it impossible to hang the treatments up after the work was completed. The work of the HPT handyman we used to install a new laminate floor throughout the main unit as well as remove & replace the shower stall tiles was exceedingly sloppy & unacceptable. Please refer to the attached pics. The list goes on... I implore everyone looking to paint their home to go elsewhere; find a painting company who actually care about the standard of work they do along w/treating their clients w/respect. I will shortly begin painting my own home; HPT just lost a very big job. In conclusion: HPT charge top dollar for sub-par work. BEWARE!!! Addendum: HPT are making every effort to ensure that I am happy. They have agreed to redo the work done by their handyman. And, we discussed steam cleaning the hallway carpet that was not covered w/drop sheets - at no expense to me. All other issues related to the painting of my property have been addressed. Brian, the owner, is a gold-star professional. And, Rick, the project manager, is truly a stand-up, honest guy. Once all of the work is complete, I will provide an updated assessment. I'm impressed! Update: I cannot say enough about HPT. They truly care about customer satisfaction. The shower stall in my rental property was redone from scratch; it looks terrific! And, they followed thru on their promise to professionally clean my flat & steam clean the stairwell leading to the other flats. My rental property is spotless! I will be hiring HPT in the spring of 2017 to paint the exterior bricks of my home.