Prime One Handyman Services

I was extremely busy at the time, caring for my elderly and rapidly fading mother, and so I did not want to stop and look for another service or argue the charges. I was especially disappointed in the unavailability of an estimate on paper and the great delay in obtaining even a verbal one. I feel that these are people to avoid.

He turned what might have taken a few months into a three year long process, which he finally abandoned, leaving the site for us to clean up. Sometimes he didn't seem to know what he was doing. The first sign of trouble was not following the architect's drawings without consulting us first. It took him 3 tries to put in stairs and he still got it wrong. The guys who worked for him were competent, but he wouldn't take their advice. Eventually, he fired all of his employees in March 2011 and said some negative things about them to us. We later found out that much of what he told us about them was not accurate. Once he was on his own, there was no longer any doubt that he was incompetent. He presented invoices that were duplicates of invoices we had already paid, we paid him to purchase wood that never was delivered, he left a set of his tires behind along with other tools and extra lumber that he had purchased that were not necessary. All along, he insisted that customer service was his primary focus, that he was struggling to stay in business, yet he was increasingly forgetful of appointments and promises, and stopped returning our calls completely. In March 2011, he promised us we'd have the deck done by the end of May. We never heard from him again, despite repeated attempts to contact him via telephone and email. We even called his home number to try to reach him, to no avail, even though we would see him in his truck around town. Our new contractor was pretty much horrified when he started working with us to finish the deck - he found the joists under the deck were not strong enough for the span, the cement supports were dug in the wrong places so that some of the deck supports were just resting on dirt or a chunk of wood. Our new contractor had to completely tear out parts of the deck to rebuild them completely, and replace some of the decking that was damaged. What should have been pretty a straightforward project has now become a money pit. His abandonment of the project, lack of communication, gossip about his employees and outright dishonesty is just too much. We had to say something. Avoid this guy!

When I first contacted Reg he came by within a week to look at our remodeling job and said he'd have an estimate for us within a week. After a week or so, I contacted him to request an estimate. Another week passed before he sent me a bottom line estimate with very little detail. Shortly after that, I requested a more detailed estimate and didn't hear back from him. A few weeks later I requested a detailed estimate again. He gave me an excuse and said he would get back to me soon. A couple of weeks later he asked to come by again to get more details and we set up an appointment. He never showed up for the appointment.

It was a nightmare. I have a brand new bay window with a scratch on it and he won’t fix it. He tried to blame the manufacturer but the manufacturer said they didn’t do it, which they didn’t. Then he tried to blame it on the store where he bought it but they didn’t do it. He put one window in backwards. He never finished another window; he just walked out. It was a bad experience. He was here for a job that should have lasted no more than a month and he was here for six months. Some days he would show up and some days he wouldn’t. When I call him, he may or may not answer the phone. I have a storm door that I can’t use because it’s so unadjusted. I don’t want anyone else to get caught with him.