I cannot over-emphasize how unhappy I am with the performance of this incompetent, incapable, unreliable and dishonest company. We originally retained them for a kitchen renovation because they were the only company with which our cabinet contractor would work. They did a reasonable job when they reported to our kitchen contractor, so we retained them for our bathroom renovations as well. What we did not realize at the time was how difficult it had been for our kitchen contractor to get them to the job site at an agreed upon time. In retrospect, that would be the least of our problems.
Our bathroom job should have been completed in a couple of months at the most, yet it has now stretched into over a year and has just now been completed. What were the problems? Where to start – I will just list them by category:
Communication: It verged on impossible to communicate with anyone in this company. During a memorable 2-month period this past summer, despite almost daily attempts via e-mail, voice mails, texts, they did not respond to a single inquiry about when they would come and finish the job. I was not even sure if the company still existed at one point. Either their office voice mail was full, or the owner of the company does not have voice mail on his cell, or the cell was off, or the messages were simply ignored. On other occasions, she claimed that her computer was down, that her voice mail was malfunctioning, that she had a new system, any number of excuses. In the end, my husband and I had to drive from New Westminster to North Vancouver to speak in person with Lisa (we were just hoping to find someone at the office there). That day, Lisa claimed not to have received my e-mails; however, I showed her my cell phone with the sent e-mail messages and her correct e-mail address. Her next response was she had not had time to check e-mails for the day (it was after 4:30pm). Similarly, the communication within the company was almost nonexistent. Lisa did not pass work instructions on to Nic, her husband and the company's go-to guy, and he seemingly did not inform Lisa of our requirements. He could not seem to remember what was required on a given day (I repeatedly provided detailed e-mails or text messages that were probably not read, I also explained to him in person on each visit). When Nic or someone else would arrive to complete the job, they would be missing some necessary component or tool; only to promise to return on a later date.
Showing Up: I cannot count the number of times that Lisa or Nic absolutely guaranteed that they would be at the house, never to show up or even call with an explanation or apology. This was extremely aggravating because, in some instances, we would not use the shower before they supposedly would be coming to do their work, and in all cases because we would have to change our plans in order to be home when they arrived. And the excuses were varied (almost like they were from a list) – I was feeling sick, there was an accident on the bridge, the traffic was crazy, we didn't realize it was a long weekend, etc., etc., etc.
Preparedness: On many occasions, they showed up but without either the proper materials or the tools to do the job, so they would do something cosmetic like applying some silicon and disappear with assurances that they would be back “tomorrow” - and tomorrow never came. Other times they had to borrow basic tools from my husband – square, level – and one day, Nic claimed to not even have silicon. When I asked him to go buy some at Lowes (just down the street), he found silicon and a silicon gun in his truck.
Competence: While the job they did on the kitchen was acceptable, the master bathroom was awful. The three quartz slabs for the shower enclosure were not installed squarely – something that caused our main contractor no end of grief in trying to get the shower door installed properly. The small corner shelves that they installed were glued into place; as a result, they began to fall off the quartz walls soon after installation. When they (finally) arrived to re-install the shelves properly with dowels, they didn't seem to use a level and installed them very askew, requiring yet another visit to correct that problem. On the final visit - the installation of small pieces of quartz at the base of the shower was done poorly (lines visible where there should not have been) and clean-up of excess glue under shelves not done properly. The crews did not clean up after themselves when they finished work for the day – left the shower stall and bathroom counter dirty, and did not sweep up mess from cutting quartz by our front door.
Dishonesty: They were dishonest with us at every step in the process - from having received e-mails, to claiming that they had called us (no record of their calls on either our land line or cell phone caller display), to showing up on schedule, and to doing what had been agreed upon. Nic used the excuse of being sick may times to explain why he was not able to come as he had promised. On one of these occasions, he sent another worker who told me that Nic was on another job site that entire week and that was why that fellow was there instead. Both Lisa and Nic were both unnecessarily dishonest with us on numerous occasions.
So, bottom line, avoid Peterson Stone Works like the plague.
