When you want to hire a contractor to work on your home, you likely ask family and friends for their recommendations in your search for a good and honest company. You probably also look at their on-line reviews. In this day and age, we use on-line reviews for choosing movies, restaurants, vacations, and nearly everything under the sun. For home renovation work, the two popular review sites are Home Stars and Google. A company that has a ton of positive reviews seems like the logical place to call. However, If you are a discerning consumer, you also want to look at any bad reviews as they are often more revealing about any potential problems in a company’s service.
At The Eavestrough Company, we are really happy with our hundreds of amazing reviews which are all from OUR customers. Our company began in 2007. To date, we have 284 Home Stars Reviews and here is the breakdown of our Star ratings:
We have 271 10 stars out of 10!!!!!!
We have 7 9 stars out of 10!!!!!!
We have 2 8 stars out of 10!!!!!!
We have 2 7 stars out of 10.
We have 1 1 star out of 10. :(
We have 1 0 stars out of 10. :(
You have to admit, this is a pretty amazing track record! It says to me that our customers are extremely satisfied with our customer service and workmanship. If you read our customers who gave us the 8 and 9 star reviews you will see they were extremely happy with everything. Why did they give us an 8 or a 9 and not a 10? Beats us! I guess I'd compare it to when I was in university and some professors graded harder than others.
However, for now, let’s look at our 4 worst reviews in 14 years of operation. It is not only potential customers that learn from these. We always strive to learn and improve and so we study these, too.
We will save you time by consolidating our 14 years worth of “bad” reviews as well as our responses below. Here we go airing our dirty laundry........
Let's start with Mary from Markham who was our first and our worst rated review. We did her job in 2011.
Mary from Markham 0 out of 10 stars. OUCH!!!!
Extremely dissatisfied. They were late doing the job, but right on time asking for their money. It required several phone calls and many excuses before the project finally began six weeks after the promised start. After the first snow we had ice dams and icicles, where there had been none previously. Wendell promised to come and investigate. Six weeks later...nothing. Contacted him again after another snow and more ice dams and icicles. Passed the buck to the roofer who had installed a new roof several weeks before the soffit and fascia. In contrast, the roofer, came within an hour and verified that it was not a venting problem, but an eavestrough problem. He removed eavestrough and six inches of ice from roof. He will return in spring to redo the eavestrough properly. Apparently it was not installed properly and we would continue to have problems (more leaking, more water damage) with every snowfall. Would not recommend Superior Eavestrough (note: at this time we were known by our original name of Superior Eavestrough. We changed our name in 2013). to anyone because of their poor responsiveness and lack of accountability for worksmanship issues.
My Response:
I am not going to make a point by point answer to Mary's post. She was upset about having ice dams and if you know anything about ice dams, they are never caused by an improperly installed eavestrough. You can look into ice dams on your own. However, looking back, as a company, we did drop the ball on this one. We should have been more prompt and responded to Mary. Because Mary was in Markham and we are in Hamilton, I attempted to resolve and discuss matters on the phone. Her ice dam came and went. I felt the matter was resolved. THEN, lightning struck twice. We had another massive snow storm and the ice dam this time grew to epic proportions with 6" of ice on the edge of the roof! My problem, she contacted us in the evening and my wife and I were leaving for Mexico the next day! :o So I phoned a friend of mine who had also done her roof and he was happy to go. He had to carefully melt the ice. In the process, he accidentally damaged the gutter and removed it, all while I was on a beach in Cancun.
Mary wasn't happy with my sending the roofer. She didn't want us back on the property to re-install a new eavestrough on the section removed. However, unbeknownst to her, the roofer arranged another company to install the new eavestrough and we paid for it to be installed.
Mary's right, we did not respond promptly to her request. We learned from this mistake. We also decided we would narrow down our install area as Markham is just too far away to service properly. It's the last time we ever worked east of Mississauga!
Next, onto Shane.....
Shane from Hamilton 1 star out of 10! OUCH!
I am Extremely upset with this company. I paid $6127 for new Eavestroughs, Facias and Soffits and still have a leak dripping on me through a seam directly above the stairs to my door. There are many other leaks/dripping as well, but the one above the stairs is the one that leaks on me when I enter/exit my house. I called the company and they refuse to do anything, because they said it is a problem with the roof and a lack of roof trimming. I sent them pictures showing them where the leak was coming from, and the roof trim that they claim is not there, and they won't do anything about it. I could understand if the leak was coming from between the house and facia/soffits, but it's not. It's coming from the centre along the seam. Now I can either contact my lawyer or just go up with a can of Flex Seal to stop the leak. They only reason I gave them 1 star is because it looks nice. Unfortunately it doesn't do what it was designed to do. DO NOT use this company.
To be honest, I am not sure what I could have done to avoid this negative encounter or stinker of a review. Shane was a nice guy. I know it was his first home and he probably had little experience with roofs and eavestroughs. The one thing I do know is once he had a new roof installed, the problem went away.
Next, I will move on to Alaska (not the State...her name is Alaska! :) )
Alaska from St. Catharines 7 stars out of 10. But who started out giving us a 0 out of 10 in her original review.
My response:
Alaska had a company install her gutters and it was a less than good job. She contact me personally and asked to have Alu-Rex Gutter Protection installed on her eavestroughs. The day I went to do the quote, it was pouring rain. Alaska missed our appointment and I called her. She informed me to proceed with measuring because she couldn't be home. I did as instructed. She accepted the quoted and we installed Alu-Rex Gutter Clean and cleaned out her eavestroughs prior to install.
Two weeks later she called extremely irate that we had not caulked her gutters which were leaking profusely. We advised her this was not part of the work order and we generally do not take on work to seal another companies leaking eavestrough. To say Alaska's temper blew sky high is an understatement. I don't blame Alaska, I think she thought this would be part of the job. I also explained the day I was there it was pouring, the gutters were clogged and water was spewing over the sides everywhere.
Alaska was REALLY mad at us. Whether it was warranted or not, I discussed the matter with my business partner, who happens to be my wife :). We decided to just give Alaska back all her money and she could keep the Alu-Rex Gutter Protection free of charge. I think the total amount of the job was around $800.00. One thing I learned from this is to try and clarify all specifics before commencing a job.
Next, onto the last one.
Bob from Oakville 7 out of 10 stars.
Good company but I had to do a lot of day-by-day checking/supervision to get what I wanted since not all the foreseeable job scope details (at least those that should have been foreseen by the company owner) were not brought up/discussed/options agreed and priced before the job started and therefore were not detailed in the quote. Owner, who supplied the quote, did not show up first day of job or anytime during the week- length job.
My response.
Bob was an interesting customer. My installers were constantly phoning me telling me he kept climbing their ladders several times a day. He also pulled up a lawn chair and watched them as they worked, which, I think most contractors would understand gives you an eerie feeling. During the course of the week, Bob told the installers to cap 6 windows, 1 complicated Bay Window, and 2 doors. All of these were not part of the initial quote and required a lot of work. When we completed the job, we billed Bob $1250 for the extra work which really barely covered materials and labor but my rationale was we made pretty good money on the rest of the house.
Bob disputed this $1250 and felt the cost was unreasonably high. Some how he through out a cost he felt was fair of $450. I let Bob know I had about that much money invested in just the materials and it took 10 hours labor to do all the extra work (most of it in the large bay window). Bob refused to pay more than this and I simply accepted the $450 he was willing to pay. This was really the only hiccup with Bob. Bob was actually extremely happy with the work and the finished product. The one thing I will rebut in this quote is my failure to show. I was there twice and my crew appreciated the coffees! However, I will say that I don't show up to every job because my 5 crews are that good!
The one lesson I learned from this is to always, always, ALWAYS provide the price before we commence extra work.
We aren't a perfect company and we never will be. The one thing I will add is we aim for perfection because if we aim for it we might just come pretty close! All in all, and I think you'll agree, out of 284 reviews these 4 reviews aren't too bad. It's been 4 years since our last bad (7 star) review. That's a pretty good stretch we want to see continue!
If you would like a quote for eavestrough, fascia, soffit, siding or gutter protection, please do not hesitate to call us at 905-966-2564 or visit our website at www.theeavestroughcompany.com. Based on our reviews, there's a greater than 99% chance you willed be thrilled with the work we do!
