We paid a deposit in early August 2016 and Caldek said they were about ~2 weeks out from starting the job. Our job was small, ~$,6000. They finally sent a carpenter out to take a LOOK at our job after the Thanksgiving long weekend. At that time, it was determined that the estimator misquoted the job and our small deck project actually required a significant rebuild. The main issues found by the carpenter were things that I pointed out to the estimator and should have been obvious to the estimator.
Our revised quote was over $9,000 with GST, which according to one of the owners of Caldek was at cost.
Customer service after Caldek took our deposit was awful. We had no idea when Caldek was actually going to show up. They blamed everything on the weather last summer, but our job was very small and could have easily been tarped. They also could have sent their carpenter out to look at our job on one of these many rainy days, but never did.
We felt backed into a corner when Caldek came back with the higher quote. We offered to meet half way between the original quote and the new $9,000 quote for $7,500 to complete our job, but they refused to complete the job at that price. Instead, they opted to refund our deposit.
We ended up having Canmore Duradek complete our job in Late October and early November. Our end product with Canmore Duradek is great and their final bill was 5% cheaper than Caldek's $9,000 quote, which was done at cost.
If you are sold on Duradek, be warned that Caldek is expensive and has poor customer service. I would look to Canmore Duradek or All Season Decking out of Red Deer.
Overall, very disappointed with Caldek.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $6,000.00
- Company Response
I am sorry your experience was less than excellent. We did make a mistake in the quoting of your project. On the other hand we were also upfront about it and wanted to rectify the issue. I quoted it at no profit for us in hopes to make up for the mistake. We ended up giving the deposit back with no hassles as we could not agree on the price. To find out you had someone else do it at 5% less is pretty minimal when you actually wanted it done at 20% less. As we know the weather last summer was brutal and this project was over living space. These types of projects need 3-4 days of clear weather as to not have potential water issues.
I am glad you got it done right in the end and hope you enjoy the deck.Regards