Prestigious Inc

Overall a disaster. Ripping out the old deck went quickly. However, when Noel put in the new deck he neglected to read the instruction manual for installing composite wood that had been sent by the company. As a result he failed to carry out several critical steps like pre-drilling holes for screws and properly spacing the deck boards. He also failed to put in the proper supports for the rails and did not cut the rails correctly. The result is a deck that is bowing and warping at various places due to the pressure that results when boards are not spaced properly. The improper spacing also means that water cannot drain off the deck, so in winter the deck becomes an ice rink and in summer after it rains it becomes a pond. This has also led to premature peeling of the composite material. When the problem with the deck became painfully obvious we called Noel to see what might be done to fix the problem. He told us that the composite had been recalled due to defects and we should contact the company, We did and they sent out a claims investigator who took pictures of the deck and concluded that the reasons they had recalled the material had nothing to do with the problems we were dealing with and the likely cause of our problems was improper installation. We called Noel back with this report but he continued to insist the problem was in the material. Since he is a one man company there was no one working with him whom we could question further. However, we did ask another contractor who has done very good work for us and has experience with decks what he thought about the installation. This second contractor stated that the problem clearly was poor installation of the deck. We went back to Noel with this information and he promised to do some repairs on the railing support but insisted he could not deal with re-spacing the deck floor boards since this would lead to the boards splitting, We waited and waited for Noel to come by to start the repairs he promised but he never called. While waiting for him to call we again checked with our other contractor with regard to Noel's claim that he could not re-install the deck boards so they were properly spaced since this would cause them to split. Our other contractor said that if the boards were carefully re-installed there would be no danger of their splitting. We called Noel back and told him that given this information we expected him not only to install the proper rail support but also to re-space the deck boards correctly. At which point Noel became very rude, continuing to insist that he had done everything correctly and that the problem was both the fault of the company and ourselves since we refused to accept his claim that his installation was perfect. When I asked him if he was prepared to accept any responsibility for his work he hung up. At this point our only recourse seems to be to take him to small claims court.