United Home Experts & United Painting Co

This not a complete list because of space limitations. I have several major concerns about this project. They include problems during installation, installation method, substandard workmanship, and attitude. First, I will discuss the attitude. The statement I hear from the production manager is if I see a problem, call him. The attitude should be we do things right and there will be no problems. Why should I find problems? Why should I be looking for problems? This does not inspire confidence. I find problems and they continue to happen. The supervisor?s attitude is not any better. He continually makes mistakes and I have to tell him to correct them. I ask the supervisor for something and it does not happen. I will list the following problems. There is no order or priority. 1. The supervisor is told by the production manager of a problem that I bring up. The production manager tells me that the problem is taken care of. Yet, this problem persists and others occur. 2. One of the 16 windows installed had to be realigned. The production manager told me the red tabs in the windows were used for alignment and showed me an example of how they worked. I checked every window installed and one needed correction. 3. When the foam installation was performed, at least 8 windows had problems of missing installation. I had to inform the installer about the problem 4. Cleaning of surface before caulk was applied. Two windows on the second floor were not cleaned by the vacuum because the vacuum was on the first floor when the windows were installed. 5. When the windows were trimmed to remove excess caulk, there was more missed areas that needed attention. The supervisor did the first floor and the helper did the second floor. I checked the second floor only and found 4 windows needed more insulation. I informed the supervisor. 6. After the trim was applied, I checked one of the windows that needed more foam. It was not applied. I did not check the other windows. 7. Trim problems-all four windows in the living room had the side trim cut and now it does not touch the sill. There is approximately a 1/8 inch gap. All the other trim fit correctly except the kitchen. 11. Kitchen window-It was initially applied about a ¼ inch away from the window frame. I brought this to the attention of the installer. His answer was that there would be a paint gap if applied against the frame. He did not mention this when he was installing the trim. His response was to caulk it. I asked him to reapply the trim with it touching the frame and I would fix the paint problem. He did so. Now the side trim screws do not align from left side to right side. There is a hole where the correct screw alignment is on the left side. 12. Kitchen window-top right hand corner the window frame is exposed and insulating foam is showing. 13. Some of the trim screws were not fastened all the way to the wood. I brought this to the attention of the installer. 5. Secondary sealant application was not performed according to the manufacturer?s instruction listed on their website. Only the top and both sides had sealant applied. The secondary sealant I am referring to is the back of the sill where the window fits and the area where the side meets the sill. 18. Screw covers-I initially told the production supervisor about the problem of incorrectly installed or missing screw covers. He told the installer. There continued to be incorrectly installed or missing covers. 20. I also expressed concern about the shrubbery in front of house. He told the helper about the concern. The helper then proceeded to damage three pieces of shrubbery. 25. 3/11/13 Meeting with Chris. Talked to him on telephone. He was argumentative and combative. Downplaying problems and insist I was over reacting. 27. I showed Chris the problems and gave him a copy of the list. 28. He doubted a lot of the problems I showed him. Example-trim cut too short.-he did not think they were-made comment that they did not look like fresh cut. Missing foam insulation-other companies would not have even bothered to insulate that. He was continually trying to deflect problems. 29. He continually insisted that the installer was one of his best and wanted him to finish the job. He kept pressuring me ?almost bullying-to continue using the same installer after so many mistakes were made by this person. 30. I finally relented and let him tell the installer he could start on the exterior trim. Chris wanted me to look at and approve what the installer was going to do. After several hours, Chris asked me to look at a window. The trim had been done on a second floor window and I told him how could I see that and approve from over 20 feet away. 31. After another couple of hours he came back and suggested that they do one on the first floor so that I could see it better. I responded that I thought he should have done that for the first window. 33. Cleanliness of jobsite-I noticed a lot of the exterior trim nails were on the lawn and told Chris. I also mentioned that they did not do a very good job of cleaning inside the house either. I showed him numerous pieces of trimmed foam still on the floor. 34. Damaged shrubbery update-Three shrubs were damaged. Later in the afternoon Chris told me that the helper told him the shrubs were buried in snow. I told Chris that I hold told the installer about the shrubs. Two were visible and I carefully removed snow from the other two that were partially exposed. Another example of him doubting me. 39. Your companies STOP (standard operating procedures) are not existent or not being followed. Examples-preparation of substrate for application of caulking-14 windows were cleaned with vacuum, 2 were not. Installing window and then start another window installation without going over the previous installation for problems. Installer communicating with homeowner if there is a problem. Using a 30 foot ladder when a 20 ft. ladder should be used. Building permit was not displayed. These are just a few of things I noticed. 41. Ricardo came to inspect insulation. Said he was going to check some of the windows. I told him to check every window. Used silicone caulk as a retrofit. Was going to install window trim. Told him no-let the silicone cure ?otherwise will not be able to remove rim in the future. 42. Came back next day to install trim. I told him that he had not checked the top of the frame. He said he did not have to because a ¼ inch gap was allowed when measuring. He checked every window after I told him to do so. 43. Trim was reinstalled flush to the fiberglass frame this time. It was not installed flush to the frame the first time (I might have mentioned this before). The excuse was we put the trim back in the original holes. My answer was that the trim was flush against the old windows. 44. I noticed a lot of screws were marred and they were not screwed in straight. Agreed to replace all screws. 45. Kitchen window- the trim is too thick and too wide as compared to the original trim. I believe they are trying to correct a defective window or install by using thicker trim because the original trim showed the defect. 46. Noticed bulges in the frame where the screws are used to secure the window. Tried to fix it once. Still some bulging. 47. Used a razor blade to clean windows. Production manager said it was alright that the district rep had given him permission. 48. Had to asked him when he was going to clean windows and install screens. 49. Refuses to replace damaged (cut too short) window trim in living room. Offer $500 off bill. He said he had spent $700 himself. Called a millwork company about replacing the trim-minimum $400 to $500 charge. I still have to hire a carpenter and color match. 50. Upstairs hall window-After reinstalling the trim flush, the blind would not raise. It is better now but still occasionally sticks. Some of the screws were over tightened in the wood. 52. At least one blind does not work properly. It is not secure. 53. Chris says I say things that he did not say. 54. I am sick and tired over having to inspect the work over and over. 55. Upstairs hall window and bathroom window is not square. 56. Original installer did not use the nozzle when applying the insulating foam. 57. Problems in general-according to the company there are no problems. I bring up a problem and a halfhearted attempt is made to fix it. Go figure. 58. Bathroom window alignment right side. 59. Secondary caulking was not done. After installation a bead of caulk was applied from the outside underneath the sill. Did not perform inside secondary caulking where the side frame meets the sill. 60. Undervalued the job when applying for the job permit. Also stated the windows were 0.29 u factor and the installed windows were 0.30 u factor. A second installer replaced the exterior trim and the results were excellent. Contacted Marvin. Customer service response was we manufacture windows. We do not install them. Contact our northeast distributor A.W. Hastings. Contacted Hastings. Their response was we do warranty work. We do not have control over the installer. Made arrangements with their outside sales manager to mediate at a meeting with United Home Experts. He reiterated he had no control over the installer. Have contacted a local consumer advocate about my problem and waiting to hear back from him.

I've used United Home Experts for exterior home painting, roofing, and new gutter installation. I found them to not be the cheapest, but they are fast, well organized, professional, and clean. They take great pains to make sure the site is clean and nothing is left behind, and even sweep the ground to find dropped nails. More importantly, they reacted immediatly to an emergency I had as a result of a large pine tree hitting my roof. I had multiple holes punched into the roof, and within 2 hours of calling them a crew arrived and installed temporary patches to the roof. If you want great service, quality work, at a fair price, United is a great choice!

THE BEST! We found United Home Experts on Angie's list as an installer of Marvin Windows after reading the Consumer Reports guide to patio doors. Our sales person/owner showed obvious integrity at the first visit and his estimate was reasonable compared with other local companies. When the made-to-order sliders were ready, within the specified time, United called us and came the following day. The workmen were punctual, considerate, communicative, and the job took exactly the time they estimated. Some special requests were filled to my needs. They did an excellent job of clean-up and put everything back in place. These sliding doors are beautiful and the installation truly admirable. I shall be recommending this company to everyone, and have every intention of using them for other projects in the future.

They were on time from the estimate to the completion of the work. I had put them off from the fall as some work was being done and they maintained the contract at the prior years price. They were very flexible and responsive to my needs. They made no mess and cleaned up completely.

I always like to get 4 different quotes from different contractors when I tackle a home repair, and I never pick the cheapest because I know what I will get. (I ended managing the project my self after many calls). I have done before and I have learned from my mistakes. United home expert were not the cheapest but rather were a little higher then most but I received the service I was looking for, the project was done on time, the manager was always there making sure things went close to perfect and at the end my house look like a million bucks. This company is always on our list and I will always call them for future projects.

Overall United Home Expert do a splendid job at what they do. The time and effort and patience they took with us are what really makes "us" the customers know that we are in good hands. Job went from start to finish on time with no surprises. For the exact amount they quoted us.

I would describe my experience as "On time and on budget." It was really incredible the overall transformation of my home on the inside and out. I was really impressed with the professionalism of the company and quality of work. There quote was detailed and competitive with other companies I considered using. I would say overall, great company to work with for their services. I would recomend them and have to many of my friends and family since the work has been done.

They did a good job. They were responsive and easy to work with.

Mike Dudley met with us and was professional and friendly. He explained our choices for both paint and windows. He gave us an estimate and followed up. He provided us with a discount on our windows since we were a repeat customer. The work was completed in a timely fashion and we were generally satisfied with it.

At first it was going along beautifully. I paid the deposit, they started the work. I was originally told by the estimator that there wouldn't be a need to pay at the half way point as the job would be finished shortly after. Sure enough, I got voicemails to give my banking information to the home office so they could receive payment at the half way point. I should have known from that, it was going to be a nightmare from that point. After that, the painting crew that I was assured to be "the best" had personal issues and stopped coming to the house. After a month, I called over to the Expeditor to see what was going on with my job. He assigned my house to another painting crew and was told they were even better than the last. I negotiated something a little extra for my inconvenience. That was all well and good, until the painter lied to me, about using up all of the paint that I supplied. I could prove that it wasn't even used in fact. From that point it just got worse. My job took 2.5 months! I can't believe that a homeowner would have to go through this. Since then, I've noticed that there are spots that weren't fully covered and I don't even want them back at my house.

My house in Somerville was lost in a fire over a year ago, and my contractor walked off this job with the full work contract not completed. I hired United Home Experts to do the siding work on my house. From start to finish UHE was tops in their customer relations, in the work done and the clean-up afterward. John, my job manager, and his site manager Wesley, were completely professional and responded immediately to any questions or concerns I had. I'm very pleased with the quality of their work and their Everlast siding. I would be happy to use them again and recommend them highly.

We signed a contact with them back in July and part of the deal was they were going to give me a good price by doing it in the slow season. We were fine with that, so they started in late December. The projected finish date was the end of January. There were some weather delays and there were some errors on their end, so work had to be adjusted. There were some small issues throughout the project, that we made right on, however, towards the end, they decided to add time and money on to the project (they are trying to add $8000 to the price). I don't think it is right that they are adding time/ money on to the project when we had already signed the contract.

I contacted this company for interior painting of my home and never received a call back. I tried calling them two weeks after the initial phone call and still received no response.

They did a good job, but were a little expensive. I liked their services and will use the same in future.

See above praise for the performance. What is especially good about United is the expertise and reliability of the head. I've compared his assessments to those of other contractors and have no doubts about the wisdom of selecting United.

In the end, our job looks pretty good, but our general experience with United was quite difficult. We asked to wait for the best crew, put a deposit down in the spring, and sat tight until September. Once work started, project management was left entirely to us. What is most frustrating about that is that I now see there was another review in here from 2006 with that same complaint a Project Manager with the same name. The PM was absent for the majority of the job. His first visit after work started came 2 weeks later. He would come if called about a problem but skipped some appointments after I took time out of work. The construction crew was fine, but they had no direction ? we had to be present every day to make sure the right things were happening as specified with the salesman. We told the PM we a hard deadline of finishing by the end of October for a vacation and would wait till Spring if they thought they couldn?t finish ? he said they?d have it done. The night before we had to leave was a hectic rush to get United to take care of things undone but required to leave our house safe for 2 weeks - getting gutters on, getting outdoor lighting re-attached, etc. There were a bunch of other things not completed, largely because a week of sunny, warm, weather went by with nobody on site (was there some other more important job than ours?) The initial paint job suffered from ?surfactant leaching? and you could see many areas of white, uneven blotches. My understanding is you only get that when you paint in on cold moist mornings, which they did. Caulking was sloppy and some trim was given only 1 coat and streaky. That painting crew, who was separate from the construction crew, did unacceptable work. United brought the Sherwin-Williams rep out, who agreed about the leaching. To United?s credit, they agreed to repaint and complete the unfinished work (ex: attaching our screen door and caulking the window trim) in the spring. A few other issues from that fall that I consider important: - Finish work (caulking, doorbells, lights, re-attaching electric/water, etc.) was a cycle of return trips; repeatedly asking for the same thing to be done - We had recently installed brand new Pella windows ? construction tear out with aluminum wrapping. United claimed they had to remove that expensive wrapping and would make it look as good, but the result is no where near as nice as the Pella wrapped trim, in our opinion - Poor communication between sales, project leads, and crews (ex: the painters started painting the trim the wrong color after we had given them the color codes about 4 times, getting bills before work was complete). Spring of 2010, the repainting was started by a good crew. Roy was much better as a PM - he seemed to understand our issues. Maybe our experience and review would be better if he had been PM from the start. United also completed the miscellaneous construction items and in July of 2010, all work was finished. The siding and final paint job look pretty good. It's unfortunate that the finished product had to be marred by the issues we ran into. I?m told by United that the first PM is ?no longer with the company,? but that doesn't help change our experience. It was disappointing, given the salesman made a point of telling us about how we were paying more than the other bids for a high-end premium job. I'd not use them again for a new job, but we hope we will have luck more like we had with the second PM should we ever need to use them for warranty work.

I compared a few quotes and chose them on a personal reference basis. The job didn?t go particularly well. There was an area which they hadn?t painted and so they came in to repaint it. They could have told me the problem with the siding beforehand. Overall, I am not happy with the job. They should have told me if there were any problems with the house. I would not use their services again.

We made an appointment and they did not show up.

They were very nice to deal with, but the workers really didn't have enough supervision and the quality of their work was not that good. I had to watch them and I'm not a builder. We had problems so they kept coming back to fix it.

They did a good job. I liked what they did.

United might not be the cheapest quote you get but they are knowledgeable, dependable and professional. I would recommend them especially for painting and roofing.

I sent them the required 1/3 deposit upon signing the contract. Then 3 months went by without a phone call. It took several calls before I finally spoke to them and requested a refund of my deposit. To their credit, they did refund my $. Apparently this job was too small for them to bother with. On the other hand, they did perform a much larger job a few years ago that I am happy with. They solved a paint peeling problem that other contractors were unable to resolve over a 15 year period.

It went very well. They were resonably priced and they did a good job putting the windows in. They also followed up.

They were horrible, absolutely horrible. They advertised that they were referred by the siding manufacturer as someone who was a competent installer of home siding. They advertised that they did construction and carpentry. They came out and I assumed that they were purchasing and installing material on a regular basis. In conjuction with the roof I asked them if they could repair the soffit, facias and the gutters on the house. Basically water proofing the top of the house and just short of the siding. The work was completely sub standard. They had a roofing crew that was not skilled and did not know how to do finished carpentry. They had to rip off the work and redo it, though I still had to fight with them to do that. They redid the work and it still not high qualilty. They put in vents in the soffits and they installed all the vents upside down. So they all started falling out of the house as soon as the house started expanding and contracting with the seasons. I subsequently paid another, more competent contractor to rip it out and redo it. They were very responsive and addressed any issue or complaint I had.

I thought they were quick and efficient. They were done in the same day. I have been dealing with Dave and he is very responsive.