ROYAL PLUS

Shady practices like not divulging prices of flooring; dragging their feet to perform work when we were being housed in a hotel; when work is finally done, the workmanship is poor, unacceptable quality. I’ve had 2 random general contractors already come by to give estimates on correcting the renovations done by Royal Plus and have 2 more scheduled. I’m submitting these estimates to my insurance. The contractors that came by already were appalled at the seams in the drywall, the water damaged drywall that was simply painted over, sloppy painting and sloppy caulking done to fill in the gaps between drywall and baseboards as well as fill in where the baseboards are ill fitted and don’t seam together.

Awful. Our first hint of trouble was when RP wouldn't issue bills for work performed 3 months previously. When it finally issued one RP stamped it "60-90 days overdue". This led my insurance agent into thinking I had been hiding bills from him. RP later issued bills for work it hadn't done. RP bizarrely wouldn't send us bills for work it had done. The RP storefront in Ocean City and the HQ office in Federal Hill MD continuously whipsawed us in our efforts to set things right. RP staff would not show up for weeks at a time. RP left a giant dumpster in our driveway for about 15 months with its name and phone number on the side. The joke among my neighbors was that RP was too dumb to realize it was unwise to advertise the name of the company doing such slow work. RP reps would repeatedly deny they had been sent e-mails pointing out problems in their work. One example: When we noticed that RP had drywalled over our cable TV outlet we sent them an e-mail suggesting they expose the outlet before painting the room. The then-project manager acknowledged our e-mail but when we returned to the house they had painted the room without exposing the cable TV outlet. The project manager then tried to say we had never sent him an e-mail pointing out the issue. This was a constant theme with a variety of RP reps. At one point RP reps complained that the 2nd floor temp was 25 degrees higher than the first floor. I found out that when RP dismantled a first floor HVAC trunk line it didn't plug the hole it left in the main duct. This meant that we had a toasty crawl space for 3 weeks during which I spent about $1300 in propane. RP refused to reimburse me for this expense. When they dawdled fixing the hole in the duct I installed duct tape myself. An RP electrician left 2 live wires touching each other in the control box which left our garage door opener inoperable until I hired another electrician to fix it. RP walked away from the job before finishing. After they removed the dumpster they left me with a garage full of garbage that I mostly disposed of gradually through weekly trash pick-up. Our final settlement was delayed because the RP controller balked at reimbursing me $2 for a toilet valve handle that RP was supposed to install but didn't. During the process RP assured us we would have a final walk-through with the project manager but they never offered one. RP folks continuously nickel and dimed us and constantly pointed fingers at other RP reps when things went wrong, which they frequently did. The woodworking and drywall reps did high quality work when they showed up.