RAMBO HOME SERVICES

On April 17, I Called Dave to hire his company to paint a satellite dish on my second story home per an HOA requirement. I had been traveling and overlooked the deadline (4/17) for correcting this oversite. I told Dave my daughter and I had tried to paint it ourselves, but the 20 ft ladder was not tall enough and a mishap with the ladder left us scared to climb that high. Dave was nice, said it wasn't a problem, he would have his associate come to my house the next day before noon. Dave asked me to confirm by sending an email. I sent an email to Dave: Hi Dave, Yes, thanks. I'd like to be placed on your schedule tomorrow, April 18, 2013 between 11AM-12PM to have the satellite dish attached to the 2nd story of my home.painted to match the trim. I have the paint. He responded: I will have my associate, Paul there before 12 noon tomorrow. Thanks, Paul didn't show at noon but called at 12:21PM to say he would be there a little after 1PM. He arrived after 1:30PM, in a sedan, no ladder, no painting materials, nothing. He took a look at the satellite dish and assured me he could get it done. He left a few minutes later saying he was going to get a ladder and return, "I'm only 10 min away". He returned after 3PM! NO ladder no paint materials. He asked to borrow my 12ft ladder to climb on the roof, which made me very uncomfortable and which of course didn't work. He left AGAIN, saying he would return with a ladder he would get from Dave. Paul called at 4:06PM to say he wanted to come back the next afternoon and that they didn't actually have a ladder that tall and Dave was debating whether to buy one. Never heard from Dave so I called him. While he apologized, he tried to say he didn't know how high the roof was, even though I had told him it was a two story house, he lived in the area and knew my neighborhood (he said) AND I told him my 20ft ladder was to short. On top of that Paul knew the moment he showed up he was not prepared to do the job. I lost an entire day trusting they were handling the job, albeit clumsily, only to learn they could NEVER have handled the job. I have never seen a more unprofessional outfit in my life. I would never trust them to do ANYTHING again.

Incomplete and badly done work: despite assurances to the contrary about only needing one coat, paint used was not sufficient to cover the undercolor in many locations throughout the house. When we asked him to return to complete the job in workmanlike fashion, David Rambo agreed very reluctantly and after much negotiation to return and do "touch up". After he had done this in a limited area, there were still many other parts of the house where the undercolor showed through. When asked to return a second time to complete the job with a thorough second coat, David was extremely unpleasant and reluctant to complete the job well: he refused to do a complete second coat, referring to "touch up" in the areas needed. He also required that we stay home from our jobs in order to be present and physically point out to him where the "touch up" was needed. After much contention, David called us back with a date that he would return to do "touch up", still refusing to do a thorough second coat. Meanwhile, we discovered damage to our hardwood floors where paint had been allowed to splatter in fine sprays all around the baseboard and other areas. We spent over 6 hours on hands and knees scrubbing the fine dry spray of paint off our floors and hoping that the finish on our floors would not be ruined by the cleaning material we were using. At this point, we decided we did not want David back in our house as he was clearly not going to complete the job, and we anticipated that he might cause further damage to our floors and walls by his lack of workmanship. We called David, told him we wanted to discontinue his services and offered to pay him 1/2 the amount owed for the painting since we felt he had done half the job and had in addition damaged our floors. He threatened to slap a lien on our house so we settled at a mutually agreed amount of 75% of his bill which we have paid and he has cashed. In addition to the painting, the two transition pieces he installed are both crooked - they don't line up with the tile and are off kilter. When I pointed this out to David, he heaved a huge sigh and started to tell me how tough it was, how he'd had to drill into concrete and how long it had taken. He said, at the end, that if I REALLY couldn't live with it, he would do it again but left me feeling so guilty that I didn't dare to ask him to do it again. Since then, I've also discovered (painfully) that he didn't even screw one hole deep enough as the screw head is popping out and caused me to stub my toe nastily. This was a terrible experience and I don't want anyone else to have a similar one. I would NEVER recommend Dave even though he seems at first like such a nice person. His work is shoddy and substandard and the damage to our expensive hardwood floors was heartbreaking. It is also going to cost us another $1175 to have the paint job completed thoroughly with a second coat - we got a quote.