Alexander General Contracting

Alexander was recommended by friend's plumber. I hired him because I really liked his idea for turning the space outside my laundry room and beneath my porch into a shed, and because I could tell that his price, though not great, was reasonable. On the plus side, he performed the initial work in a timely manner, and more or less stood behind his work. On the down side, there were problems with nearly all of the work, and none of the problems were or ever will be fixed to my satisfaction. Here are the problems. The shed was supposed to have two doors, one a premade steel door with a window, the other a more traditional double shed door made by his carpenter. Although I drew and sent him schematics of the shed that showed how the steel door should open, he missed this and ordered a door opening the wrong way. Foolishly, I offered to let his carpenter remake the door to open the right way. Not surprisingly this was not done right, and Alexander never seriously tried to fix it. The double shed doors were also done wrong, becoming inoperable after a few days. The carpenter was sent back, and he did make them operable, but barely. As someone who cares far more about function than form, I will forever be bothered by these poorly working doors. There were/are also two problems with the mini-splits. One, in the master bedroom, was incorrectly installed because Alexander himself drilled the hole through the wall too high. Because of this, condensation was not able to drain properly from the indoor unit, and poured onto the floor one night, ruining the carpet. It took numerous calls and visits to get this repaired, and the eventual "fix" of repositioning the indoor unit at a tilt is questionable, because the repositioned unit does not seem to be properly secured. The other AC problem was a defective indoor unit. Alexander had a part replaced (on the outdoor unit) which obviously didn't work; and then he didn't respond to this information for several months. When he did finally respond it was winter, and he used that fact to put off further repairs. That was a mistake, because when he finally sent his AC man back the following spring, we quickly determined that the indoor unit had a leak--but it was now out of warranty. Alexander spent the entire summer unsuccessfully trying to get a replacement part--then told me I would have to buy a whole new indoor unit. He did at least pay for its installation, but as with nearly all the rest of his work, I am annoyed and dissatisfied with this. This is why I would not use him again.