RUSS ROBBINS PAINTING CO

When Russ was supposed to arrive to give us an estimate he was late and after about 30 minutes, when my husband finally called him, he had completely forgotten despite having set up the appointment only 2 days prior. He came right over however and we were impressed by his knowledge and professionalism. Despite the fact that his quote was significantly higher than a comparison, we hired him to do the work based on our good impression at that first meeting. He provided us with a written estimate of work to be included in our job. While the approximate time to completion was not included in the written estimate, he told us verbally that it would take about 3 weeks. We had expected that Russ himself would be performing the work with his employees. In fact Russ was at our house very infrequently. He did all the spray painting of the woodwork himself, but this was probably only 2 days out of a project that ultimately took 3 months to complete!! Two painters were at our house almost 5 days a week throughout and they were very polite and respectful. A few other guys showed up at the end to help them finish. Russ didn't provide us with any progress reports or ever even acknowledge that the job took more than 2 months longer to complete than he projected. He was obviously involved in another project and didn't devote adequate man power to our home. Also there were a few aspects of the project that we had to remind him to complete and he never did some ceilings that had been included in the quote, but by the time we realized there had been some confusion, we just wanted to be done and didn't have them completed. We were happy with the finished product. It's high quality, but not perfect, which I would have expected for what we paid. He is equally slow with everything however - we didn't get a bill for months! A few months ago we considered hiring him again despite all this and made an appointment for him to come give us another quote. He never showed up and didn't even call to apologize for another week. That reminded us of exactly what it was like to deal with him and based on that, we won't use him in the future.

When I first called Russ, he seemed really professional. He was prompt and very knowledgeable about colors, paint type, etc. That said, Russ never prepared a written estimate for the job like I asked, but we had used his services before so he just verbally quoted us a price and we felt confident in his work. When his workers arrived for the job they were very nice and trustworthy, but very messy and unaware of the details required by the job. Russ did not communicate the scope of the work. I had to stay on top of them throughout the process. I felt like Russ was overextended with other jobs taking priority. I did not feel like I was a top client. The job took longer than initially quoted because workers would come for a couple of hours and then leave to go to another job. It was quite inconvenient. The job was completed adequately, but I was not as impressed with the quality as I had been first time around. Lastly, I've had to request a bill for the work 3 times and still no response.