Bitumen Insulation Technologies LLC

The job was fairly well executed although instead of taking the one-day/two-day MAX timeframe, it took 3 days ending on a Saturday. Chris was there for most of the job and when it was almost done, he informed me that given the type of soffits that I had, the promised soffit vents would require him to drill holes with a ship auger, and that he would come back the following weekend and do that b/c he didn't have the auger on him. Despite the job not being 100% complete, I decided to pay for the job anyway. I had just found out the day before (Friday) that my father had passed away and was preparing to go out of town, so I wanted to take care of payment before I left town. After the workers left on that Saturday, I went into the attic to look at the job and was quite happy with it. I noticed that one of the pieces of plywood in the attic was not screwed down to the floor properly and wobbled when you stepped on it. So I went to my garage to get my drill and some screws but could not find the drill anywhere. The drill was in a nylon bag, along with a spare battery, drill bits, drill chuck, and various and sundry other tools that I kept in there for convenience (tape measures, saw blades etc.). Over a period of several hours of turning my garage inside out looking for a piece of equipment that I always kept in that area, I concluded that it had been taken by the insulation crew. Despite my suspicions I called Chris and asked him if he would check with his crew to make sure nobody had taken it by mistake, perhaps one of them believed that it belonged to the crew. That was plausible since they had been working through the attic door in the garage. Upon calling Chris he remarked that he had seen a tool in the trailer that he did not recognize and that he would go the next day and check it out. The next day, he did not call so I called him and he said he had looked in the trailer and had found nothing. He added that the tool had turned out to be something else. At that point I told him that it did not make sense that my drill bag was missing and that I thought it might have been stolen by one of the members of his crew. He said he felt terrible and that since it happened on his watch that he would buy me a new drill. I told him that I did not want him to do that (note: the day before in conversation about his truck he had told me certain things which I will not reveal here, but in so many words they indicated to me that he was not in good financial shape). He said he would interrogate the crew but that two of them were on their way to either Wyoming or Montana or some other state, very far away. That night I was looking everywhere for my smartphone and could not find it. Again, I turned now the house upside down looking for it to no avail. It then became increasingly likely that it too had been stolen. I called Chris and told him that I had a very expensive smartphone that also was missing. He promised me that he would "launch" an investigation, talk to the owner and that he would get to the bottom of this and give me a call with the results of the investigation. I got no call. I called him and he very non chalantly said that he did not know what to tell me. That the guy who was at my house for the longest period of time swore up and down that he had not taken anything. He promised to talk to the owner on my behalf. I left for my father's funeral. 6 days later while still out of town I get a call from a man named Peter, who said he worked for Bitumen and that he wanted to hear the story straight from me. I gave him the details and he promised me that I would hear from him, that unlike Chris he would get back to me. 6 Days after that, I was back in town and had not heard a peep from Peter. Sent him an email - no answer for three days. I'm then out of town on a business trip and get a call from my wife saying that she also can't find her brand new GPS that I gave her for Christmas, which had been charging in the kitchen for a few days. Sent email message to Peter telling him that and again asking for some sort of response - none. Called him that afternoon and he was not there. Left message that they had had long enough to do the right thing and that I expected a call from Peter. Peter finally contacts me, although not by telephone, but rather by email and tells me in so many words that they don't believe that their crew took anything and implying that I'm making it up and/or trying to get over on them. They suggested that I try to obtain relief from my homeowners policy. I find it extremely offensive that a contractor would act this unprofessionally. Although it's not my place to tell them how to run their business they should have made all the employees who entered my house pass a polygraph test as a precondition to continued employment. It appears that Bitumen has a bad apple (or apples) and I want to spare others from possibly falling victim to the same kind of thing. I gave them an F for price because I feel that in addition to the $6,300 that I paid for the job, I have lost $1300 in stolen personal property. I gave them an F in responsiveness b/c except for the one time I got the phone call from Peter, all the calls were at my initiative. I gave them an F for professionalism because their response to a potential employee dishonesty issue was to cast doubts on my story and I have seen no evidence of any serious investigation. I felt they owe it to the customer to make sure every employee who enters their house is honest beyond reproach. I gave them a C for quality b/c they stapled through an alarm wire and for four days we went without security alarm service. I gave them a C for punctuality b/c they were late the first day and because to this day, my soffit vents have not been installed - something that Chris claimed was essential to properly ventilating the attic. Mind you, I paid for the entire job three weeks ago. Had I waited to pay them when 100% of the work was done, I could have withheld the amount of my stolen property.