J & L MASONRY

We needed our chimney cleaned and were having a lot of problems with rain leaking into the house and basement which we thought was probably caused by cracks in the chimney. I called the office and told them we wanted our chimney cleaned and an estimate on repairs to the chimney. John, owner of J&L, and his assistant arrived on time on the day of the appointment but didn't know anything about having to do an estimate on repairs to the chimney. They had only come to do the chimney cleaning and said we needed to make another appointment for them to do the repair estimate. Since he sounded like he really knew what he was talking about and sounded willing to work with us on price, etc, we made another appointment. Again, he seemed really interested in helping us out and knowledgeable, so even though the estimate was quite a bit more than what we expected, we ended up hiring him to do the work because they were willing to work with us on a payment plan. That was the end of the satisfaction with their work. While they ended up doing a very good job and the chimney looks real good, it took them three times as long as he originally said it would, they never showed up when they said they would and frequently only worked a couple hours before leaving for the day. At one point, he made statements to my husband suggesting that we had to give him an immediate cash payment for some work he hadn't included in the original estimate or he wouldn't continue the work. We gave him the money but he would not give us a valid receipt and suggested that we shouldn't let any of the other workers know about the transaction. Flora, the office manager/biller/owner, was very short tempered on the phone whenever i tried to get information from her and it seemed like I was a real irritant when i asked for information. We believe the work John did was of a high quality but it was a very unpleasant experience working with this company. We wouldn't hire them to do any masonry or chimney work again.