Advanced Paving & Masonry

This company is a sham. An individual named Ken, who had an English or Irish accent, knocked on the door of my home and said his company was doing paving work in my neighborhood and that since he had equipment and personnel in the area he would give me a good price for paving work. We agreed on a price and I asked him for a contract. It has a 3 year warranty clause for defects. Within a month the driveway began to crumble and pit, with loose asphalt gravel everywhere. I phone the company a number of times and sent photos of the defective driveway. The agreed to repair it. They promised to come out on three separate occasions but never showed up nor did they bother to call. Now they will not answer their phone. They asked for cash but I gave them a check. They cashed the check at a pay day lender. They repaved several of my neighbor's driveways and they are all experiencing similar problems. They now list an address in Leesburg, VA. Beware!!

This company is a fraud. The man takes his child and they have an English accent. Do NOT hire this “company”. It’s a fraud. He had me pay in cash. He had Hispanic workers and told us to have them move plants in an area that would be paved wherever we wanted them and they’d do it. They just pulled them out and set them on top of places, didn’t put them back in the ground. They left a giant pile of dirt and rocks and asphalt and covered the house downspout with it. He agreed to use some dirt to level my yard and instead compacted dirt and rocks and gravel and layers of sod upside down over my previously beautiful green lawn. He never came back to fix any of it and now the number doesn’t go through. Says it’s not taking calls.

First, the phone numbers given in the contract are: Office - 240 393 8874; Cell - 443 468 9029; Fax - 301 565 1700. The fax number turns out to be for Staples in Silver Spring. In the process of trying to contact the contractor after "services" were rendered, I called this number and the Staples store person said they stopped providing that fax service months ago. I tried to find the company online using Silver Spring as their location but the closest I could find was in Pennsylvania. None of the numbers on that website are found on the contract I signed. I know this is the company because the fellow put pictures of himself and his family on their website and I can see in one of the pictures him and one of his sons that he brought with him when he solicited my business. When I called the company after they had left to ask them when they were going to come back and clean up the mess they left behind, the fellow who answered denied he was the person who provided the asphalt driveway resurfacing for which I paid and got testy. My agreement with the company was to take up the entire driveway and put down new asphalt. They were also to make sure that the driveway dipped low enough at one point to allow the front yard to drain across it and down the slope. The level to which they dug out the driveway was insufficient and with the new asphalt, water continues to pool where we wanted it to drain. They took up half the driveway and resurfaced that, but put new asphalt on top of the half of the driveway that is nearest the street. My agreement was for the entire driveway to be take out and a new one to be put down. I also paid to have them take up a brick walk in the front, level the ground, and relay it about a foot further away from the flowerbed than it was and to widen it. Several apparent day workers did a fairly decent job of that but completely trashed my front yard, working in the rain, tearing up the grass, leaving pieces of concrete and piles of concrete chippings in several places, and leaving chunks of brick all over the yard, along with trash from their lunches, and empty bottles and cans. I returned from work late that night and the fellow stayed and told my wife before I got home that I had agreed to pay that evening, and she wrote him a check. I returned after he had left. I would not have paid if we could have seen the mess then as we did in the morning, and would have required cleanup before we paid anything. I called him on his cell phone and he said he would be out to clean up as soon as the rain let up and the ground was dry. As of this writing, they have not returned nor did he call back. I had to pay a landscaping company (I went to Angie's List this time and was very satisfied) $400 to clean up the yard, relevel it, and put down sod to cover the mud pit this contractor left in his wake.

When we signed the contract they had agreed to begin the work at 10am on Monday morning. I took the day off to be there. They did not show up as planned. When I spoke to them, they said Tuesday. I called them Tuesday morning to be sure that they were coming, they said Wednesday. On Wednesday a man I did not know showed up and said they were going to start work. Several man started filling in the trench hold and preparing for the asphalt. I watched to see what they were doing. In our driveway, there is a manhole cover and another access pipe. When they had covered the driveway with some stone, I went out and noticed that they had covered both access holes. None of the men spoke very much English, but I was able to convey to them that those holes had to be cleared. They immediately cleared the holes. When the truck of asphalt arrived, they quickly covered the driveway and used a steam rolling machine to flatten out the ashalt. The ashalt seemed to be made of large chunks and did not make a smooth surface we were used to seeing at our neighbors' homes. We asked them if we needed to seal it and they said it was not necessary, it would settle in. They said to wait a year that then they could come and do a commercial sealing it was necessary. Within a few weeks, the driveway started wearing away. We have large black balls of asphalt grit all over our driveway and into the street. The sides that were expanded are completely broken. We have since discovered that they may have used a cheap type of asphalt that is used as a base in roads and should not be used in driveways. We have contacted them, but have had no response from them yet.