CASTLE BUILDERS INC

The price was competitive with other contractors, but we had no idea of how many problems we were taking on by hiring Bob and Castle Builders. The main problems came with the subcontractors that Bob selected. The subcontractors would show up unexpectedly (and unexpectedly early in the morning!) and on those occasions when we expected them to come (either because of a pattern of work we'd observed or because they told us they would come), they didn't show up or showed up extremely late. The biggest incident was when they were digging the foundation and failed to check for any lines buried where they were digging. They stopped work for the day around 3pm and went home. Later that evening we got a really bad rainstorm. During their digging, they had hit the sump pump line and as a result, all of the water was coming back into the basement. We spent the entire night trying to bail out the water, but it was coming in faster than we could pump it out. The water had reached knee level around 5am and after the rain stopped, we were able to pump it out with a portable pump and a hose. Finally, morning came and we called Bob, but he didn't show up until after we had pumped out the basement. We lost between $1500-$2000 worth of stuff, not to mention the entire night we spent pumping out that cold, dirty water. He offered no apologies, refused to pay for any of the damage, and tried to deny that it was his fault, although he was with the subcontractor during the digging. He even admitted that they hit something, but didn't know what it was. He didn't even bother to try and figure out what he'd hit---had they found out what was damaged, they could have fixed it before the rain started. We were so glad to have the project done and Bob out of our life---after we had to call him to repair the holes in the ceiling where water was leaking!