We carefully have read your complaint about our estimate and service at your residence and we conducted an investigation in order to determinate what happened and give you a accurate response to your comments, therefore we respond to you point by point at your complaint. 1.Underhanded and fraudulent work estimate and final bill. I was given a $4,500 quote for mold removal in my basement from The Best Air Quality and Restoration. It included a $2,000 deposit at the time that work was completed, then the remaining $2,500 was due when they returned to pick up their blowers several days later. It seemed reasonable given that I was told that the work was estimated to take 4 days. (In actuality, it was a one day job, so the $4,500 cost definitely wasn't a good deal.) When our crew chief told you about the time it will take the " job " you were informed the time to do it, will depend on the amount of people we will bring to do the project. Usually it takes 1-2 days for demo and 2 more days for purification and drying. In your case we send 3 technicians with enough experience, skills and knowledge about what to do in order to bring a quality service, but our effort to bring you the best it was taking by you as a " not a good deal " according with your comment.Remember that you paid for the job to get done, not for to see our team working many days. 2. The job was completed while I was at work, so I left the deposit check with my son who was at home and told him to pay the worker when the job was finished, which he did. Several days later when the deposited check cleared and I was able to see the actual check online at my bank, I saw that the worker asked my son to write the check to him personally, but not to the company. I thought this was strange because the worker's name was not listed as an owner on either the company or BBB's website. I immediately became concerned that I had been given an inflated estimate by the worker who intended to pocket the initial deposit for himself. I wondered if the actual cost of the job was really only $2,500 and not the full $4,500. Our crew chief was authorized by us ( The Company) to put his name on the check.We have our internal systems to monitoring all this procedures with this authorization that it does not necessarily needs to be explained to you, we do this simply because WE CAN About your wondering if the $2,500.00 was the actual cost of the job and not the $4,500.00, we can tell you that our PROPOSAL was for $4,500.00 since the beginning and our prince was not inflated at all, as a matter of fact and as a smart customer, you had other proposals by other companies, as you started in one of your emails, then after you reviewed all the proposals you decided to go with us, right?Would you think the other proposals by the other companies were inflated too ? We all know the price matter to determinate if we go for one company or another, in this case we believe we were one of them who offered the same service by a lower price compared with the other ones. 3. Today, I called the business number listed on the company website and also online at the BBB, and asked to speak with the owner. The person who answered, Val Salikhov, said the owner was not available. I asked him if they employ sub contractors to do their work (thinking that might explain why the check was written to the individual), and he said no, all workers are actually employed by the business. I then asked who the business owner was and he said Sergey Salarev, (which matched the name listed on the BBB site). I asked if I could speak with that person and he said "no", I should speak with him, because he's the business manager. I also asked him to explain their estimating and billing practices and if they allow workers to have checks written to them personally instead of the business, and he said "sometimes". When I asked why, he could not explain a reason for it. I told him that I was concerned that the worker was possibly diverting the company's money to his own pocket and therefore, I wanted to speak with the owner. He refused all of my requests to do so and became combative with me when I insisted. Val was also the person who took my final payment ($2,600) for the job by credit card 3 days after the work was completed when they came to pick up their blowers. I'm concerned that Val Salikhov and the worker, "Carlos", are engaged in a skimming operation, and the cost of my job was inflated to allow them to skim $2,000 off of the top. Or perhaps this is how they get around paying taxes on their services? If their business practices were above board, one would think they would have no problem giving me the owner's phone number to verify their claims. I told him that I intend to submit a complaint with the BBB and Angie's List, and he was dismissive with me. When you are not satisfied with any service, you have to talk with the manager, everybody knows that, that is why they are there, that is their job.If the owner of the company has to attend every person with a complaint or concern then the manager would not exist, right? You trying to alert the owner about a " possible diverting the company's money " by this 2 workers is highly appreciated but that is not the case this time, we have a secure system about it, thanks so much. When you received our PROPOSAL the price was in it and we do the work base on the proposal, therefore when we finish the work we send you a final invoice were the full amount is reflected in it, so when we do our taxes we use all the totals to calculate the amount to paid, by the way, when you make your taxes you bring the total of what you paid to us that way it is expected by the authorities to match our information with your, so, how we can avoid that ? We do not do stupid things to put ourselves in such risk.All the company's emails are viewed by the owner with no exception, that way he is aware of everything. And when you called you have never introduced yourself and when Val asked you why you wanted to speak to the owner you have never said a reason. He asked you several times about your concerns but you never answered his questions. 4. Also, when Carlos was at my home last week to collect the air movers, he told me that I should allow him to use an anti microbial to clean my duct work because harmful spores could be in there. He said the service would cost an additional $350 and would "protect my family from harmful allergens". I told him I wouldn't pay more than $100 for that. He agreed, and he then proceeded to pull out a squirt bottle of some cleansing agent and released 20 squirts of the substance into my filter and AC air duct. That's all he did! $350 for that? Ridiculous! Then he asked me to pay cash for the 20 squirts. He wanted to pocket that money too. I refused to pay cash and when his office called minutes later, I added the $100 to the charge with the remainder of the service payment. This upcharge was a total scam. When Carlos suggested to let him spray Antimicrobial agents into your duct system it was because you mentioned him about the smell upstairs, the Antimicrobial solution will take care of the smell as a result of the fungal spores into the ducts and also will kill them, that service cost is $350.00 but since we provided our service he decided to lower to $100.00, what wrong that could be? As simple you saw that he sprayed "20 squirts" that service must to be provided for a certified mold technician and not for anybody else and Carlos is not just a mold certified technician, he has the supervisor class on it, so please do not look it at it as ridiculous. Also, Carlos did not say the Antimicrobial will clean the ducts, he said it will kill the fungal spores and will take care the smell. 5. Finally, I asked Carlos why IF they did actually treat the mold the week before, there was still a large amount of black mold still evident on the floor directly in front of the main mold concern area. He shrugged his shoulders and then told the worker he had with him to get the squirt bottle and a rag and clean it up. This wasn't a new spot and it should have been addressed the first time. I honestly don't think they actually treated the mold areas. I showed him that two doors still had mold on them and he told me to clean it with bleach. Isn't that what I hired him to do? Something should be done about this company's business practices. Is there any way to find the actual owner and share these concerns with him? Also, I would like to receive my $2,000 back, because the full amount that I paid is clearly is not the true cost of the services that I received. They charged me $4,500 to remove the carpet, affected furniture and a small amount of drywall around half of the basement (see photo). If you are smart, you won't use this company. About the spots on the floor. After we finished with the clean up, we treated all the surfaces with the Antimicrobial but that does not mean the all the mold stains will disappear, specially when is still wet and the moisture source is still active, that is why we set drying equipment, to dry this moisture areas, if some stains remain after everything gets dry, then we can clean the residue of those, and that is what we did. About the doors. It is the same situation, with the difference that you wanted to keep those doors, because they were not tha affected, the same Antimicrobial were sprayed on them to kill the fungal. What you say about to clean them with bleach is because Carlos suggested to do that and then painted with semigloss paint to make them looks good, if that is your complaint about, we offer you to let us paint those at no cost to you, just as a courtesy. You said we charged you $4,500.00 "JUST" to remove carpet, affected furniture and small amount of drywall in half of the basement is completely false. Let me remember you what we did : - Remove carpet. - Remove padding - Remove tack Strips. - Remove baseboards. - Remove drywall affected. - Remove furniture affected. - Remove vinyl flooring in the basement's entrance, bedrooms, bathroom and landing of the stairs case in the basement. - Remove 2 doors. - Thoroughly Clean the whole basement. - Antimicrobial applied to all the surfaces, walls and floor. - Set a large dumpster at the street in front of your house. - Take all those items and debris from the basement to the dumpster at the street,by the way, we filled the dumpster. - Set all our equipment (7 pieces)and let then be running for 4 days to archive the best results. -Set the equipment up and taking down. Definitely our charge was accurate and not inflated as you want it to make it looks like. As we started above, you had other proposals from different companies and they did not inflated them and of course were higher then our one, and you know that. All your concerns became because the check on the technician's name that you did not like it but that we authorized. Base on all the above explanation we can not give you anything back. We also have many experiences when customers see something they do not like because it seems strange or out of the normal for them and they make up a story of it trying to get an economical benefit on what they thing is not right but they get exposed in their true intentions when the explains about their concerns gets clarified by a logic explanation. Hopefully you accept our explanation as a enough proof that we did nothin