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May 22, 2004
A Rant About Painters: World of Colors, "Professional Painters Specializing in Interior Painting" South Orange, New Jersey  I was ecstatic to get to the point of interior paint this year and called out the local gold-standard painters - World of Colors - to take care of the master bedroom, the cat room and the upstairs sunroom. I've seen a number of their jobs around town and the results have been uniformly fabulous. They're particularly good at taking an old room full of chipped and peeling paint and making it look brand new. I probably should have paid more attention to the friend who has had to have them back more than once for touch-ups... Lessons learned.  Their price for 3 rooms, including sheetrocking 2 ceilings, quite a bit of wall repair and putting up new crown molding was reasonable, so I went ahead and signed up. I generally do my own painting, but this job called for the pros in order to do the wall repair and the ceilings. The job that was estimated at 3-4 days went five and a half (I had to throw the crew out at 10pm one night so I could get to sleep) and although I talked to the crew while they were prepping about the existing chipped and alligatored paint, I was left with visible chipped paint on all the trim (primed and painted, but no sanding or scraping), drips on doorways, unfilled nail holes, one window track unpainted, a hole in a ceiling for a light fixture that's too large for the canopy to cover it, cover plates for electric that had been painted around rather than removed, etc.  This stuff happens, and I wasn't beating up on anybody
about the time overrun when I called the office to explain my
concerns. I was really trying to be reasonable - I just wanted
them to do the job right, and I make a practice of going out of my way
for contractors who do good work. The office manager took the
position that I hadn't contracted for any stripping (which I certainly
hadn't - I've never seen one of their jobs look less than spectacular
with no stripping discussed) and that the work had absolutely been done
to their usual quality standards (not that she had actually seen
it, mind you). After much phone tag, she agreed that she'd send
someone out to look at the work, but demanded that I hand over a check
for the full balance at the time of the inspection. I'm the first one to admit that her tone just set me off - and I believe I pointed out that published negative reviews of their work would not be in their best interest - but the fact remains that I had agreed to 3 payments, with the final one due "upon completion", the first 2 had been made as agreed and the job was not finished. One of the head honchos came out, looked at the work and was horrified. He didn't want to take even partial payment of the remaining balance until he could get his guys back here to fix things (he found any number of things that I had missed), but in the interest of keeping everybody happy (and in the unlikely event that I'd want to use them again), I went ahead and paid a bit more than half of the remaining balance pending completion as a gesture of good faith. I also explained to him that the office manager has an uncanny ability to p*ss people off. His sly grin told me that probably isn't the first time he's heard that.  Now, here we are 2 weeks later - the original crew
foreman arrived this morning to fix the bad prep work (and immediately began
slapping spackle on everything in sight, which warned me that the
battle is probably far from over) and shortly thereafter I got a call from the
WOC office manager to read me the riot act about my refusal to pay the
full balance 2 weeks ago. Again, trying to be reasonable, I
pointed to the signed estimate that called for 3 payments, with the
last one 'on completion', and explained that I would be more than
happy to settle the balance if the work is actually completed
today - and I got shouted down. Maybe it's just me, but that's no way to run a business - especially one that lives on referrals.  So at 4:00 the head honcho shows up to rehang the last ceiling fan, and
presumably to collect his check. I took him around the work area,
pointed out a couple of areas of concern (like the spackle around the
hole in the ceiling that was clearly visible to the naked eye and
hadn't even been repainted) and just asked him flat out if the work was
up to snuff. There was a pretty uncomfortable silence - during
which I suspect he was gauging my reaction to each of his possible
answers - and he agreed that it wasn't. The 3-day job, that has
now taken six and a half days is going to now wipe out my Sunday and
they'll have to come back on Monday evening as well - total: 8 days.If the spackle comes out again, I'm throwing them out right there on the spot. Oh, and they dropped a heat gun on one of my wood floors - the solution for that was to rub the burn mark out using steel wool. Of course, that killed the finish on that area of the floor... YMMV. |
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This page last updated on May 22, 2004. © 2004 PGE, Ltd., All Rights Reserved. |