Avoid, avoid, avoid. This company may have once been viable, however they no longer are. They require a 50% deposit to book a job with them however they do not have the staff to fulfill on the work. They will still take your deposit money though. The owner will give you the run around and will not communicate when the job is cancelled. We requested that our deposit of thousands of dollars be returned and we received no response to our repeated and documented requests.
They were to send two trained and qualified Bio Solutions technicians to a contained contaminated site for five days. They sold us a professional service that included and clearly mapped out details including poly’ed off areas, one entrance and exit egress, a large rubbish bin to site for removal of items that could not be disinfected, PPE (personal protection equipment including respirators, hazmat suits, gloves, goggles, booty shoe covers etc.) two fully professionally trained and qualified professional technicians, disinfection and cleaning, boxes for their technicians to repackage disinfected items, a sincere, discreet, sensitive respectful service, cleaned, organized and boxed items and a systematic plan that expressly mapped out this service and the process that they would use and follow to achieve and sanitize the site that they were hired to clean and disinfect.
We paid the close to $5,000 deposit for a job that they quoted just shy of $10k and advised that it could possibly be more money once they got into the job, but they would do their very utmost best not to go over the $10k price. As their reviews were positive, the plan as outlined to us was professional and cohesive and they did not have any BBB complaints, although they are also not an accredited business with BBB, and as they boast of having standing contracts with the World Health Organization, the RCMP, VIA Rail, BC Hydro, BC Housing, BC Sheriffs, ICBC, many municipalities amongst others, we felt comfortable to proceed. All of this information is still clearly available and visible on their website.
This was a mistake. Sept 2019, they took our 50% deposit over the phone and booked the job with us for almost two weeks out. They outlined to be to site for 8:30 am to meet the two professionally trained technicians. Arrangements were made at our end to take the week off to attend site while the work was being done and as it was being handled away from our interior location and in the lower mainland, we made arrangements for accommodations and travel and went down on the Sunday prior to the work beginning the next day, Monday.
We received a call on Sunday evening at 9:10 pm from a man who did not identify himself, that Bio Solutions would not be able to attend on Monday as they had a few people go on sick leave and they had to shuffle their people resources around, but we were assured that they would be there on Tuesday morning and when asked if it could still be completed by Friday, we were advised that if they had to, they would give us an additional trained technician to ensure that the job was concluded on time by Friday.
Come Tuesday morning and being at site on time and no one showed up. No one called us, when I did manage to reach someone finally at 10:20 am, we were offered some excuses that ‘she’ had to go to an auto body shop but that ‘she’ is loading up at the office right now and will be there shortly. I confirmed that their office was in Port Coquitlam and our site that they were to attend to is literally less than 5 mins away. ‘She’ did not arrive. Repeated calls and texts finally yielded a response that once again ‘she’ would be there soon. At approximately 1:10 pm, a young woman arrived and apologized. She was not with a team, she did not have supplies, she was not there to work but rather she discussed the job with me, asked questions for things previously communicated to the woman who had reviewed the site and quoted us and she asked to see the contained contaminated area that they were hired to clean. She did not put on PPE as the previous Bio Solutions person had and it was not suggested that I do either. The young woman advised that she would be back the next morning with three new people and that when I met these people for the first time, that it would also be the first time that she met them as well. I did not know at that time what this meant.
The next morning was Wednesday and on site before 8 am in hopes that they would arrive early to get a start as the week was now half over and no work had yet been done, in fact, no one from Bio Solutions had spent anymore then an hour in total on this either in person or communicating with us since they took our 50% deposit of $5,000.
I received a call at 8:25 am from the young woman that she was sorry but she had slept in and was on her way from Abbotsford which is a 45 minute drive when not in morning rush hour. I asked about the others who were coming and she said to let them in and to tell them that she would be there as soon as she could. At 8:55 am a silver car pulled up and three young men climbed out and the car left. As they approached site, I met them and asked if they were from Bio Solutions and was told that they were there FOR Bio Solutions. I did not understand until later what that meant. They came into the property and I was completely uneasy. They did not have uniforms on and were discussing drinking, partying and being high the night before. I called the young woman and the other contact name that I had, as well as texted them to say that I did not know who these men were and that I did not feel safe. I was told to check to see if they had their PPE on them.
The young woman arrived at approximately 9:20 am, outfitted the men with PPE, took them to the contaminated area and as I had previously and ill advised her that we were hoping to locate lost valuables, she informed these men of the same and told them to look for the items including jewelry and a diamond ring set. What ensued next was one of the most devastating and stressful of days.
The men were not wearing their PPE, they were walking all over the site and spreading the contamination that had previously been contained in 600 sq feet throughout the lower floor and clean 2000 sq feet of the site. They made disparaging, insulting and personal remarks about the site, and items that they were moving, they tossed, dropped boxes and broke items, they stacked contaminated items without any disinfection throughout the site, nothing was stacked safely or in any way that made sense or in fact with a process, they went through things looking for valuables, they ignored the young woman who was actively trying to reach her office for support and supplies including boxes. Nothing was poly’ed off to contain the contamination. People were going in and out of all exits spreading the contamination as they went. The rubbish bin did not arrive.
It turns out that Bio Solutions hired the three young men from the local Labour Unlimited. They did not ask us if this was okay nor did they advise us that this was their plan. The three men had been removing drywall the previous day from a construction site. They were not bonded with, nor were they employees of Bio Solutions. They were not trained or qualified in any way to handle our job. They were given complete and unsupervised access to valuables and sensitive items without our permission. The missing items have never been located. The young woman was not a trained technician and in fact had never worked on a site such as this previously. Through no fault of her own, she was put into this situation and was completely in over her head. Bio Solutions not only did not deliver on their contract with us which was agreed to when they took our $5K deposit, but they in fact actually completely contaminated our site and made a massive mess, an incomprehensible mess. Another company had to be hired at our further expense to clean up the catastrophe made by Bio Solutions. Thankfully we documented everything both written and with photos.
We asked that the Labour Unlimited people not be brought back and on Thursday the young woman working alone attempted to do some damage control, but it was too late. The contamination was every where and the mess was now appalling. We asked to speak with the owner because by then, we realized that there was something very, very wrong here. It was now Thursday and the owner finally responded to texts at just after 10 am and said that she would come to review the site immediately. Hours passed, we sent many texts, made calls and still she did not arrive; she did however neglect to remove us from the group texts with two Bio Solutions employees so we were unfortunately exposed to their internal communication and it was not positive nor encouraging.
After basically threatening to pull the job the owner finally arrived to site after 4:30 pm and the only word to describe this meeting is bizarre. She parked out of sight and way down the block, she wouldn’t shake my hand as she said she was ill, she asked for something to throw up in to carry with her, she asked to go outside to talk, she discussed her companies successes and high level contracts, she offered to have someone to purchase the property as she could save us realtor fees, she talked about insurance requirements for the property, she hopped around constantly from foot to foot and she would not make eye contact. She talked non-stop and seemed bent on avoiding any discussion of the nightmare that her company had created. She asked no questions and she instilled no confidence. At my insistence, she finally went inside with me to see the mess that Bio Solutions had made but she would not go to the original area that was contaminated and they were hired to clean, as she said it was not safe. She did advise me that the entire site was now fully contaminated and that it was not safe for anyone to be in and that she was concerned for us. She said that we should leave and that they had to do the job properly with the proper process in place to clean and sanitize it, but she was not sure how that was going to happen as she did not currently have the people resources to do it. She admitted what Bio Solutions had done was completely unacceptable and that she was embarrassed that this had happened.
She asked if she could have some time to come up with a solution. As it was now at the end of day on Thursday and the entire week had been wasted in time and money and the contamination that Bio Solutions had been hired to clean up, they now in fact had made 150% worse, I said that she would need to advise me by noon the next day which was Friday of her proposal and solution of how she was going to fix the mess that Bio Solutions had created as well as deal with the original contamination that Bio Solutions was hired to fix.
The next morning which was Friday, the young woman called me at 9:20 am to ask if I was coming to open up the site. It turns out that the owner did not advise her that the site was not safe to work in now and that she should not attend. Noon came and went and no call, email or text from the owner as to a viable solution to the mess and contamination that her company Bio Solutions had made through their unprofessionalism, their lack of respect, their ill regard for safety or any regard in delivering on the contract that they took our deposit for. We ourselves could have hired three people from Labour Unlimited to spread the contamination throughout the uncontaminated 2000 sq ft of the site and to break things and be disrespectful.
Shortly after noon and with no communication from the owner having arrived, we cancelled the job in writing and requested a refund of our nearly $5K deposit. We would need it to hire another company to clean up the outrageous mess created by Bio Solutions. We resigned that any valuables that may have left the house on Wednesday would forever be gone. We resigned that there would be no reimbursement for our time spent and money lost waiting around for Bio Solutions to show up. We resigned that there would be no apology for having to listen to disrespect and insults about the site and items while having to listen repeatedly to things being tossed, broken and mishandled. We resigned that there would be no apology for the incredible mess and dangerous position that Bio Solutions left us in. We resigned that Bio Solutions was not as they advertised themselves and that our solution in having hired them in good faith in fact was a complete sham.
The owner reached back out only once after we cancelled the job and that was to demand that we call her on Monday between 2:30 and 3:30 pm to discuss. As there was nothing further to discuss, we advised that we would not be calling, that the job was cancelled and to please return our deposit. We did not receive a reply. In fact we never received another word back nor the return of our deposit even after having sent many emails making this request and including every person in their company that we could find, on all of our communications. There were no email bounce backs so we know that our emails were being received and read. In the end we had to seek other and legal avenues to return the deposit. A trip to their Port Coquitlam office on Kingsway had us greeted with an empty office and warehouse that was sporting an eviction notice on the door.
Our understanding now is that they did not have the professionally trained technicians to do our job, or almost any staff at all in fact, at the time that they took our hefty deposit and booked our job. This is fraudulent behaviour and deeply concerning. People should be aware that our experience could happen to them and we hope that this will not be the case and that they can avoid the financial loss, disrespect, loss of time and personal distress that Bio Solutions has caused us.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $10,000.00
