Bob Sheetz

unknown

I made the mistake of hiring this painter without getting a price quote first because my sister-in-law told me he charges a flat $35/hour for labor plus cost of paint. After spending 5-1/2 hours at my place doing a one-coat white paint on my already white ceilings, using 1-2/3 gallons of Benjamin Moore paint, taking about half an hour off to eat lunch that I bought him (I also ran down to feed the street meter for his car every two hours), he presented with a bill of $550.00. After I paid him and he left, he called me from his car to tell me he realized he had overcharged me by about $100. I told him to tear up the check and I'd mail him another one. Then while I was on the phone with someone else, he called his wife and left a message, but mistakenly redialed MY number and left the message for his wife on my phone! In it, he told her he had thought over the fact that he had overcharged me, and decided that he didn't want to mess things up with my (very wealthy) brother and sister-in-law, so decided to call me and tell me he had mistakenly overcharged me!! Despite this "correction", by my calculation, he still ended up charging me $65.45/hour for his labor (almost double his $35/hour rate). After he found out that he had mistakenly left his message for his wife on my phone, he called me twice and left messages that it was all a misunderstanding, because he had charged me by square footage, not by time. If this is even true,the fact that he painted an already white ceiling another coat of white, didn't even do prep work like filling in air pockets in the concrete ceiling, and only put one coat so that there are patches of bareness showing through, and dared to charge me by square footage (would he have charged me by square footage if I wanted my ceilings painted red and it required three coats?) is ridiculous, and if charging me by square footage versus time yields two dollar amounts that differ by 52%, there is something seriously wrong with his method of charging his customers. I mailed him the $450 despite his messages offering to "discuss" the situation and never called him back because it's not the $150 or so he overcharged me that bothered me, but the fact that he thought to take advantage of me in the first place, and only partially recanted when he thought it was going to get him into trouble with my relatives. If anyone reading this actually thinks of hiring this guy, at least make sure you get an upfront quote!! He still had half the exterior of my brother's 11,500 s.f. house in Lake Forest left to do when this situation occurred, so at the very least, I hope this situation keeps him honest with charging my brother and sister-in-law since it would be way easier for him to fudge the amount on such a large job. In my case, I was home the entire time he was working, so there was no possibility of mistaking what he was charging me by the hour!