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This past summer hubby and me got a call out of the blue from a salesman. Right off the bat he asked to speak to the wrong people. Neither of us are named Scott there pal. Hubby informed him of this and the salesman kinda pouted over the phone and apologized and mentioned he was selling gutters.
Now we live in a house over 100 years old. We think the original gutters are still hanging (and slowly falling) off the roof. We needed new gutters anyways and had been kicking around the idea of getting them.
So hubby humors the man and gets some information. The guy is selling those gutters that keep leaves out of them (bonus for us we have a lot of trees) and we actually have a guy out the next week to look at things.
Now we have CLEANED our gutters so we know the wood they are hanging on is molding and needing replacement as well. The guy out at the house says they can do that no problem. Great! So we sign a contract (note: Work order but I am not sure there's a difference) for our gutters to be all maintenance free and not falling off the house for about 4000 bucks. Not a bad deal really as we did a little checking.
So I call up to schedule a day for the guys to come out and install. Right off the bat we have a problem because these guys somehow lost the paper saying square footage of gutter for our house. After a few weeks of phone tag this gets ironed out and the workers are to come out in a few more weeks. I'm annoyed about the wait and such but people get busy and make mistakes. I'll live.
Workers finally come out on a Friday. Hubby is home after having his appendix removed and it's general chaos in the house as usual. The workers just let me know they are there to do the job and I leave them to it and go back to making sure my dogs and child don't jump on daddy.
About 15 minutes later the workers are at the door again and tell me they can't do the job (WTF?) because THEY WERE NOT TOLD THEY WERE REPLACING THE WOOD THE GUTTERS HANG ON. Mind you we TOLD them the wood needed replacing.
I'm thinking it's just a miscommunication since the workers say they don't have the materials. Ok, things happen I'll reschedule the install. Not a big deal.
Then one of them mentions it's not in our contract so we will be paying MORE.
Now that gets me glaring but I hold my tongue. Not the worker's fault for this insanity after all so I thank them for coming out and let them go on their way as I go inside. By now my 3 month pregnant body is calling for rest so I put the dogs outside and go to lay down for a bit while my son is distracted with tv. While laying there I talk to my hubby about things and he's frowning to since he remembers telling them about the wood too.
Now, my dogs are loud. They are friendly but they bark at EVERYTHING. An hour passed and it suddenly occurs to me that I don't hear the dogs. This mildly surprises me but it's not totally unheard of so I get up and go to let the dogs in. Instead of finding my dogs digging or lounging about the yard I find an empty yard and MY BACK GATE WIDE OPEN.
No one in my house has been out in the backyard till then, only the gutter install workers. I know they knew I had a dog cause I was holding the chocolate lab back when I answered the door. My dogs are excitable and jump and not everyone likes canines so it's just common sense to keep dogs away from guests.
I panic and grab the leashes and start running about the neighborhood hoping to find my dogs. Hubby calls up all the local animal folks to make sure they know about the dogs (animal control, the local humane society, and the police) then packs up kiddo and takes the car around to help search. We kept looking even when it started raining. We were forced to stop when we came to the conclusion that the dogs were long gone after at least an hour and we had no idea if they were even together. We pretty much sit and hope someone finds them who's nice and they are checked for microchips (both have them) since they love mangling their tags.
We are livid about the whole thing and hubby (who's much meaner then me) called up the branch manager of the gutter company and verbally ripped into the man while I was still out looking. So sadly I don't know what all was said there.
Thankfully our dogs did make it home unharmed. Which is a miracle, they were found strolling down one of the busiest streets in the area. So far we haven't had any reports of them biting anyone. We were also spared any fines for not having our dogs controlled and such thankfully. The animal control officer said they were good dogs and didn't raise any fuss when he escorted them to the crates for transport. Yay for crate training on our part.
Monday rolls around and I call up to reschedule and figure out the situation with our gutter order. I'm told they need to check their notes and will call me back. I'm mentally steaming but still hold my tongue. I wait a day for them to call back then call them again. Get the same story. Now I'm really getting annoyed and wait another day. This time though I call the branch manager's cell phone directly and point blank tell him we're really getting sick of the run around.
Manager apologizes and when I drop a comment about the dogs immediately starts apologizing more. I think every sentence ended in a "Sorry about that". He tells me he is out of the office right that minute and asks if he can call back in the morning.
I grind my teeth but say ok. Not like I can force the man to have our file in front of him this minute.
So this morning he calls back and we get told that in order for them to do the work we have contracted them to do, we have to shell out over 2000 more bucks for them to replace the wood.
I told the guy I would check with my husband and get back to them on the matter. Hubby tried to call and find out if we have some other options because we honestly are not made of money. Suddenly we can't get a hold of anyone...again.
We're already thinking cancellation and are going to take the work order to a lawyer to make sure we don't have to pay out the nose for it when these guys have been so craptastic in their business. It says we have 3 days to cancel without penalty (note they didn't even have their workers out here for like a month and they didn't talk to us for like a week after we signed the contract). It doesn't say anywhere that we need to pay them for things. It says we need to hand over any goods they gave us. We have a grand total of zero things, unless you count a quote and a work order form that is.
Now we live in a house over 100 years old. We think the original gutters are still hanging (and slowly falling) off the roof. We needed new gutters anyways and had been kicking around the idea of getting them.
So hubby humors the man and gets some information. The guy is selling those gutters that keep leaves out of them (bonus for us we have a lot of trees) and we actually have a guy out the next week to look at things.
Now we have CLEANED our gutters so we know the wood they are hanging on is molding and needing replacement as well. The guy out at the house says they can do that no problem. Great! So we sign a contract (note: Work order but I am not sure there's a difference) for our gutters to be all maintenance free and not falling off the house for about 4000 bucks. Not a bad deal really as we did a little checking.
So I call up to schedule a day for the guys to come out and install. Right off the bat we have a problem because these guys somehow lost the paper saying square footage of gutter for our house. After a few weeks of phone tag this gets ironed out and the workers are to come out in a few more weeks. I'm annoyed about the wait and such but people get busy and make mistakes. I'll live.
Workers finally come out on a Friday. Hubby is home after having his appendix removed and it's general chaos in the house as usual. The workers just let me know they are there to do the job and I leave them to it and go back to making sure my dogs and child don't jump on daddy.
About 15 minutes later the workers are at the door again and tell me they can't do the job (WTF?) because THEY WERE NOT TOLD THEY WERE REPLACING THE WOOD THE GUTTERS HANG ON. Mind you we TOLD them the wood needed replacing.
I'm thinking it's just a miscommunication since the workers say they don't have the materials. Ok, things happen I'll reschedule the install. Not a big deal.
Then one of them mentions it's not in our contract so we will be paying MORE.
Now that gets me glaring but I hold my tongue. Not the worker's fault for this insanity after all so I thank them for coming out and let them go on their way as I go inside. By now my 3 month pregnant body is calling for rest so I put the dogs outside and go to lay down for a bit while my son is distracted with tv. While laying there I talk to my hubby about things and he's frowning to since he remembers telling them about the wood too.
Now, my dogs are loud. They are friendly but they bark at EVERYTHING. An hour passed and it suddenly occurs to me that I don't hear the dogs. This mildly surprises me but it's not totally unheard of so I get up and go to let the dogs in. Instead of finding my dogs digging or lounging about the yard I find an empty yard and MY BACK GATE WIDE OPEN.
No one in my house has been out in the backyard till then, only the gutter install workers. I know they knew I had a dog cause I was holding the chocolate lab back when I answered the door. My dogs are excitable and jump and not everyone likes canines so it's just common sense to keep dogs away from guests.
I panic and grab the leashes and start running about the neighborhood hoping to find my dogs. Hubby calls up all the local animal folks to make sure they know about the dogs (animal control, the local humane society, and the police) then packs up kiddo and takes the car around to help search. We kept looking even when it started raining. We were forced to stop when we came to the conclusion that the dogs were long gone after at least an hour and we had no idea if they were even together. We pretty much sit and hope someone finds them who's nice and they are checked for microchips (both have them) since they love mangling their tags.
We are livid about the whole thing and hubby (who's much meaner then me) called up the branch manager of the gutter company and verbally ripped into the man while I was still out looking. So sadly I don't know what all was said there.
Thankfully our dogs did make it home unharmed. Which is a miracle, they were found strolling down one of the busiest streets in the area. So far we haven't had any reports of them biting anyone. We were also spared any fines for not having our dogs controlled and such thankfully. The animal control officer said they were good dogs and didn't raise any fuss when he escorted them to the crates for transport. Yay for crate training on our part.
Monday rolls around and I call up to reschedule and figure out the situation with our gutter order. I'm told they need to check their notes and will call me back. I'm mentally steaming but still hold my tongue. I wait a day for them to call back then call them again. Get the same story. Now I'm really getting annoyed and wait another day. This time though I call the branch manager's cell phone directly and point blank tell him we're really getting sick of the run around.
Manager apologizes and when I drop a comment about the dogs immediately starts apologizing more. I think every sentence ended in a "Sorry about that". He tells me he is out of the office right that minute and asks if he can call back in the morning.
I grind my teeth but say ok. Not like I can force the man to have our file in front of him this minute.
So this morning he calls back and we get told that in order for them to do the work we have contracted them to do, we have to shell out over 2000 more bucks for them to replace the wood.
I told the guy I would check with my husband and get back to them on the matter. Hubby tried to call and find out if we have some other options because we honestly are not made of money. Suddenly we can't get a hold of anyone...again.
We're already thinking cancellation and are going to take the work order to a lawyer to make sure we don't have to pay out the nose for it when these guys have been so craptastic in their business. It says we have 3 days to cancel without penalty (note they didn't even have their workers out here for like a month and they didn't talk to us for like a week after we signed the contract). It doesn't say anywhere that we need to pay them for things. It says we need to hand over any goods they gave us. We have a grand total of zero things, unless you count a quote and a work order form that is.
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