Kitchen Tune-Up

"Wow, I seriously wonder if this client has me confused with someone else as I know she did talk to more than one company. She tried to restain her bottom cabinets and it didn't go well. She asked if we could sand and refinish them. I informed her that we didn't offer refinishing services and also, because her doors are a veneered panel, they can't be sanded anyway and the only way to remove the dark stain and lighten the doors would be to sand them...which is not possible with her doors. I explained that the only options we would have to offer would be to paint the doors a solid color or replace them with new doors. We NEVER discussed installing new cabinets nor did I offer that option as she just wanted us to address the lowers. We had a lengthy, pleasant discussion about her kitchen and other unrelated subjects. Though I could not do what she wanted done, I felt the meetings and discussions were very pleasant and am shocked that she says she felt disrespected. Hence my concern that she may have me confused with someone else. I will call her personally to see if I can find out what's going on."

"I'm certainly sorry [member name removed] feels this way. I wish he was able to post pictures of his kitchen as it is beautiful. I think he would agree with that...at least his wife would. We had a few minor fixes to do on the kitchen, one with the tile backsplash - they picked a stone that has a staggered face and then complained that their light switch plates didn't sit flush against the stone. Which they were advised of this prior to the purchase. We went ahead and ground down stone around the outlets to have them sit more flush (and didn't charge them for the hours of labor it took). He also had a problem with some of the electrical work, we had fixed quickly to (what I though was) his satisfaction. We provide a final quality control check at the end of the project when we do a final walk thru. Often customers will bring items to our attention prior to that, which we encourage so we can get them taken care of sooner. That by no means suggests that customers have to do their own quality control. Just because a client sees an issue before we do, that does not mean we don't already know about it or won't catch it on a final walk thru. After all, they are there every day..all day long. Finally, a large challenge we had with this kitchen was leveling the cabinets. The client decided to have his brother come to town and help him with replacing the flooring. They left the flooring very unlevel and there was a 2" difference between the wall and the front of the cabinets, which was left for us to deal with. It's very difficult and very time consuming to fix this large of an unlevel floor. We had to use extensive blocking and had to order in a completely different floor molding to cover the huge space between the floor and cabinets. If he had used one of our subs for this floor, we would have required them to come back in and get the floor more level as it was certainly not done to the specifications we would have required. So the flooring level of work was acceptable to the client but he made a point to complain about things like his trash compactor was not centered in the space. The right gap was 1/16" different from the left gap. It was very frustrating. My guys gave him 100% effort and their kitchen looks fantastic. During a final walk thru, all items were acceptable to the client and he made no mention of his unhappiness to our owner. We encourage our clients to communicate with us so we can ensure their satisfaction. We want that so we can make sure the client is happy and also to make any internal changes we might need to make. Feedback is essential and welcomed and is much more productive than filing a bad report on us a full year after the project is completed. Lastly, this client created a very ackward and stressful environment for us. During the project they offered to play for my guys a porno video where one of their family members was one of the participants. This was highly inappropriate and made my staff very uncomfortable when in their presence."

"This report is a complete surprise to us and I'm saddened that the customer isn't happy and didn't bring their unhappiness to our attention 2 years ago when the project was done. We certainly don't want anyone unhappy with the work we have done either at the time it's done or years later. I have personally called and left a message and emailed the customer. We are asking them to allow me to personally come out and check out their complaints and see if we can't get everything to their liking. We simply don't have unhappy customers and I don't want them unhappy. As of 4/14 we've not heard back from the client but we will keep trying. I'm glad Angie's list allows client to express their opinion so we at least know of an unhappy customer, however, I do wish the client would have called us first and allowed us to take care of them. I hate to think they have been unhappy with their bathroom for 2 years. I tell all of our clients the same thing, "if you have an issue or problem with anything, please let me know". I can fix anything, but I can't read minds."

"Oh...this is frustrating. The only thing this client did with us was get a kitchen design and renderings, she never did any actual work. She was extremely difficult to work with because she NEVER had the common courtesy to return any of our numerous phone calls (which we keep a record of). I did a site visit, created a design and color renderings way back on 5/19/2013. We called and left her a message that it was on her email. When we followed up in June, she said she couldn't open the files. Why she didn't call us is beyond me. We resent it to her in a simpler format. We also send out 2 subs to give her a quote on moving her laundry appliances to a new space that we would build out (we were hoping to do this after she approved the kitchen design, but she requested we get the "non kitchen" construction quote to her also so we accommodated her request). Again, we sent her that quote and called and left a message that it was on her email. We followed up on a regular basis but NEVER got so much as 1 phone call back. In October, we reached her live and she claimed once again that she didn't get her renderings. This went on 1 more time. In the end, we tried to get her to come to our showroom where I could display everything for her on our big screen TV and she could see her kitchen design and touch and feel the product we were proposing. Each request was met with some excuse why she couldn't come and she asked that we call her back at a later date. We put in a lot of time on this project but we can't be the only one interested in getting it done. The homeowner has to put in some effort and be somewhat responsive. In the end, I just left her a voicemail that explained that it appeared she may not have much of an interest either working with us or doing the project and I told her we would leave the ball in her court....but if she did have an interest, just to give me a call personally and we'd be happy to pursue it with her. She never called."

"Thanks so much for the kind comments, it means the world to us and we'll share it with our employees. I had to laugh out loud if you thought you drove us crazy. Not at all. You were a great client because you rolled with the punches, listed carefully to options and most importantly, appreciated our efforts and made that know to my guys and to me. That made your job enjoyable for us also. Enjoy your bathroom...I think it looks great and something we are certainly proud to have provided you."

"[member name removed], Thanks so much for the kind comments."

"Thanks so much for your kind comments. Our primary goal is a happy customer at the end of the project. She's happy, so we're happy...the world is good!!"

"Thanks for the kinds comments. I'd like this report to be classified as cabinets not ceramic tile as it wasn't tile we did a design for. When we do a kitchen design our intent is to put a design together, then get customer feedback so we can tweak the design and get it just as the customer likes. I know this customer didn't provide a lot of feedback which could be due to the fact that the project wasn't doable for them from a financial standpoint. But I would encourage any of our clients to be very responsive and engaged during the design process so we can produce creative designs that meet the client's needs. Without feedback, it really tough to give a client creativity as we don't want to "overdo" it so to speak."