DISASTER SPECIALISTS

Their guy showed up and expected me to let him do the work without giving me any idea of how much it was going to cost. Two months later they billed me $393.00 for showing up. I can only imagine how much it would have been if he had done anything billable. 18 months later the court decided that they were entitled to $300.00 for showing up! Just want everyone to be aware before calling them.

OOPS! I think I covered that above.

Principal refused to return phone calls after receiving initial payment from me.

The company was very responsive to a phone call inquiring about their services in conjunction with an heating oil spill that occurred in the basement of our home. They provided a storage trailer they put on our property and, though not authorized to do so, went ahead and moved the contents of the basement into the trailer. Putting aside the fact that they were not authorized to move the contents into the trailer, my concern with their service lies not in the actual labor performed. Rather it lies in the billing of those services. An invoice arrived charging a monthly amount for a trailer budgeting three months of use of the trailer. The bill also itemized the quantity of man hours spent emptying the basement contents into the trailer. Given that this house is rather small and the basement just isn't that big. I was charged for 16 hours of labor to move the boxes from he basement into the trailer. There was an upright freezer that might have taken a couple of men to move the 40 feet to the trailer but otherwise, the items were boxes and plastic bins of books and other assorted items. When I challenged the claims specialist about this billing, he said he would have the front office look into the hours billed. Lo and behold if he didn't come back and claim that actual time spent on the job was only 11.5 hours. Now, nowhere on the bill does the DATE of service appear and nowhere on the bill does it specify how many men worked on the job. I have asked for a detailed claim and nothing has been forthcoming. My wife showed up at the job when the trailer was filled - She eventually wanted to fill it herself in order to access certain bins - and she thinks there were 4 men at the job. here's my beef: how does the revised total of 11.5 hours divvy up with 4 workers? the math makes no sense as that works out to be 2.875 hours per person or 2 hours and 52.5 minutes. if they are that precise in their billing, how come I cannot get a statement from the company detailing the date of service and the number of persons working the job?? The hours worked are totally suspect and starts with the fictitious 16 hour "estimate' they are happy to bill as actual hours worked. I suspect the specialist estimates are paid a percentage of billed dollars and that is why they "estimate" such a high number of hours. Since insurance typically covers a large number of the claims these kinds of companies handle, I wonder if there isn't some routine padding of bills that occurs. In fact, the estimator for my job asked if insurance was paying for this job when I complained that there was no way four men could spend 16 total hours moving stuff out of the basement. Beware of minimum charges unstated but charged, be at the job to keep track of total number of men working and total number of hours billed and ask for detailed invoice including time and dates of work and materials used. If these guys won't provide that, don't hire them.