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| - I hired Chuparosa Painting for the exterior of my home based on several recommendations on Nextdoor.com. During the estimate, I asked George Stewart, one of the owners, who would be doing the actual painting. He said they had 3 crews, and because of the size and details of my house, they'd put their most experienced crew on my job, saying some of his workers had been with them for 15 years. He assured me I wouldn't pay until I was happy.
From the start, we discovered none of the actual workers seemed to understand English, but we tried to communicate and put out a large cooler of drinks for them, figuring happy workers make for good work. At the end of the first day they'd 'prepped' & speed painted most of the front of the house and I could already see it was not looking good.
On the 2nd day, after seeing several more people recommend Chuparosa on Nextdoor.com, I mentioned that I wished I'd gone with another company. A member there who said she was considering hiring Chuparosa herself, messaged me asking about my experience. I told her about some of the issues I had and that I wasn't happy. She, in turn, told this to George who immediately called me and angrily said I'd cost him a $2600 job by telling a customer I was unhappy. (This same customer later left a glowing review of the company, so if they actually did a great job, good for her.)
Day 3 was spent attempting to fix things I pointed out, such as crooked lines, bare spots, drips, bad stucco patches, nail pops, and paint over dirt and bugs, all things that really should have been addressed in the prep stage. I looked out my windows and saw several newly broken roof tiles where the workers had painted over my smaller garage. When I talked to George about this, he said he'd knock $100 off the bill to pay for new tiles. (The roofer I contacted said it starts at $250 for a job like that.) Later, Hugh Stewart, the other owner, said there was no way his painters had broken my tiles. After 2 attempts at painting my front door, I still wasn't happy with the sanding marks and drips and told them so. George said he'd knock more off the bill so I could hire another painter, since they probably couldn't get it to look like I wanted. That night, after painting the floor of my balcony in the dark, the workers packed up their stuff and left.
The morning of the 4th day, owners Hugh and George showed up on my porch, demanding payment. I told them there were still things to fix and until they were fixed, I wouldn't be paying. I walked around and showed them the problems. They grew agitated and defensive. Hugh told me everything was fine, my expectations were too high, that they were painters, not miracle workers, and anyone else would be happy with the job. Hugh said it looked good from the street and got my homeowner's association off my back, what more did I want? He insisted I'd put his workers under duress with my expectations, threatened to sue me for non-payment, and demanded to deal with my husband from now on because he felt I was unreasonable. At this point, I was done being bullied by two grown men. I gave them my husband's number and told them to get the hell off my porch. They called my husband who also stated we would not be paying until the problems were corrected. Hugh then accused us of trying to get a free paint job and threatened to sue.
Seeing this was going nowhere, I filed a complaint with the ROC on 2/2/2017. When we informed Hugh we'd filed, he said he didn't feel his license should be in jeopardy 'over one bad paint job'. (His words, not mine.) My husband assured him if the work was as quality as they insisted, they had nothing to worry about. We agreed to a partial payment of $2000, stating that if the ROC found no issues, we'd pay the remainder. Our check was cashed that night. An ROC inspection still took place on 2/24/2017. Hugh said he'd be there, but didn't show.
2/28/2017: Received a phone call from one of the actual painters, who said he'd been fired w/o pay, and was told it was because we didn't pay. He was given my cell number by Chuparosa to ask us for money. He said he'd worked for them a month & had in turn hired his own guys to come help him paint our house and was now out $600. He wanted to know if we were going to pay him because Hugh & George were no longer taking his calls.
3/03/2017: Received a directive from the ROC stating Chuparosa needed to repair several examples of substandard work.
3/06/2017: They came back, spent all day fixing 25 issues, demanded the remaining $1500 and threatened to send us to collections if we didn't pay. We all finally agreed to half the amount and paid them.
Before he left, George sneered, "Some stay at home mom you are, there are dirty clothes all over up there." Finally! Someone who agrees that my teenage son needs to clean his room! I'm obviously bad at this mom gig. Maybe I could apply at Chuparosa Painting since it seems there's no experience necessary.
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