Seniors' Home Repair Help From Angie's List

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I recently begged my partner to pay-off a contractor before the job was finished, as he had preformed well , was a good careful painter and repairman.
After 6 weeks of work and being paid $6K+ he returned to finish the job at his leisure, which as it turned out was an hour or two a day; Whenever.
My well chosen super contractor turned into a know-it-all super personal critic and forcefully suggested we allow him to install a new porch roof and new carpet
and became threatening when I said his Word was not worth a crap
When we got other bids and had another contractors do the carpet ,, and
another roofer who bid and completed the job for 10x less, he walked out declaring " nobody talks to me like that" and added " anyone else would be
laying on their back now" .
I would not recommend him to anyone. How do I put him on your list?

Leland of FL 12:11PM June 03, 2010

As a contractor, I work with many customers every day. I do try my hardest to fufill every detail of each and every customer. I feel we do very well in that respect, demanding all the guys cover thier boots when in a customers house, white pressed uniform shirts, and classes on how to vacume a customers floor when done with the task. We are human, make some mistakes, and try to fix them as soon as possible.
There are out there those customers who just can not be made happy! We have run into a couple who didn't like the fixtures they picked out, didn't like the location of the switches installed to code (state law), didn't like that one switch was up and the other was down and the light was on, and complained about price after the contract was signed and fulfilled knowing full well the agreed upon price.
Unfortunatly, these are the customers who tend to leave feedback way more often that the ones who are satisfied. I even installed a customers fixtures twice, then took down the new ones and re-installed the old ones. She felt she should not have to pay because she didn't get new fixtures installed. I only charged her for the first install, and through in the other two for free. She left bad feedback stating I didn't do what I was contracted to do.
Take all feedback with a grain of salt, good and bad. There is probably more to the story...

Dale R. Luhman of WI 8:25PM April 30, 2010

There are two reviews of my company on Angies List.
An "A" by someone who I worked for. And an "F" by someone who I never worked for, met or talked to.
Personally, I think the latter is a bit awkward that they include stuff like that.
Later, someone hired me, who read both those reviews. He said he had one more estimate from another company highly rated on Angie's List. They told him during the estimate appointment, that it would take them 2 HOURS to do the pruning. When he asked me when I drove there and met him, I responded "Probably 2 DAYS".
The man had done the trees himself for years and was good at it. Took him two days. So aside from my approach to doing estimates, he knew the other highly rated company didn't have any idea what they were doing technically. So I got the work. And he was pleased with the results.
So there you go. That's my experience with Angie's List so far. Its loaded with good and bad. And user have to make their own decisions. As for me, I encourage folks to go to my testimonials page, where they find that the nature of references match up with what would be the "A" review on Angie's List. In other words, folks who I have met or worked for in person.
Cheers,
M. D. Vaden of Oregon
www.mdvaden.com

M. D. Vaden of Oregon of OR 3:07AM March 25, 2010

I agree with the the lady who wrote about not paying for the magazine without knowing the price. I do not like not knowing the price. Recently had an offer for a face lift. the only problem was I would have to travel to Houston which is two hundred miles. I tried to get a price or a range of prices but no way would they give me an estimate,I scheduled an appointment but my husband won't let me go because of my bad back.

Linda Ely of TX 8:49PM March 16, 2010

My wife and both working Senior Citizens heard ads on National Public Radio from Craigslist. After being 'taken' by poor quality / rip-off contractors, we joined Angie's List for one year and immediately chose 3 choices for painters as we needed the back tool-shed painted and its door replaced. We found on 'friendly', licensed, bonded and insured outfit "Master Works" in Seattle. We hired 'the president' Brent Wallace, based on his estimate then the nightmare began of getting him out last summer to work on a 2-3 day job (including replacing and painting the door to the shed). After several weeks we found two women painting and scraping on the shed using OUR ladder and OUR tools without permission. The said that Brent hired them part time on occasion to work on jobs. When Brent "finished" the job a few weeks later, he promised to come adjust the door height as they were almost 1" too high at the base. As previously discussed, we gave him a checque for the balance. We never saw Brent or anyone from Master Works again. Last month we found droppings from rodents (the old door had kept them out effectively) we also found my wife's collection of seeds shredded and chewed apart. As I began measuring to adjust the bottom of the doors, I saw that the newly painted doors (August 2009) had chunks of paint peeling off of them on their INSIDE painted areas. This has been a disaster. All that Angie's List could do was refund our money: we could have gotten incompetent and sloppy contractors without using their (dis) service. Be careful. Angie's list is no guarantee of quality contractors and we now will have to wait till spring and pay even more money to fix the mess that Master Works and its 'president' left us with. Be afraid, be very afraid of hiring contractors just because they're listed on Angie's. Steve & Leela Shepard, Seattle WA

Steve Shepard of WA 4:01PM February 20, 2010

I get an e-mail from /Angie's List continually to join. I finally went onto the site to see if I could navigate through it and be comfortable using it for my area Unfortunately there is not a way to get a cost for the service and I don't like subscribing to something and then requesting a refund if I don't like it. I would much prefer to know that I like it from the get go. I'll use another venue.

Linda Palmer of FL 2:30PM February 08, 2010