NAT Painting & Contracting / Lazare Contracting

Groupon ran a special and in my case the owner was the one doing the painting and he arrived promptly and worked solidly.

I have to say that 200.00 is a fair price for what he had to do, it was a very small room, we'd moved all furniture out and the walls were in excellent condition, there were only 3 full walls to do and he didn't do any trim or ceilings. (The Groupon deal was 85.00 for 250 worth of service.)

On a personal level, I didn't actually like the fellow.. He made many disparaging comments about my home comparing it (unfavourably) to his and he also griped about about not making enough of a profit on the Groupon deals that it wasn't worth putting one of his teams on it as he would lose money.

I don't like when companies offer special pricing through group buys and then are angry when people take them up on it.

So for the price the job was OK, not spectacular but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

I bought a voucher for 7 hours of painting on TeamBuy and it seems like the standards of service defaults to lower levels if they offer you a deal. For the first month and half they did not even respond to several calls and messages for scheduling an appointment. I contacted TeamBuy and they came back saying that they were unable to contact the merchant and they can offer me deal credits. And then I noticed TeamBuy running another deal with the same merchant. After threatening to contact my credit card company to reverse the charge they finally got the merchant to contact me.

On the day of the appointment the painter arrives at 2PM instead of the scheduled time of 9.30AM. He comes up to my unit without bringing his tools and right away demands extra money because I wanted feature walls. After negotiating for about 20 minutes and settling for an extra amount he goes back down and comes back up close to 3. However his time clock apparently starts at 2PM. He goes for lunch for 45 minutes and includes that time in those 7 hours. An hour into the painting he goes back on his words and starts another argument that he cannot finish the job that day and all of this time is coming out of the 7 hours. Knowing very well that I am in that situation where I have to get the job done he was demanding extra time and money. I had spent a lot of time dissembling furniture and prepping for the job and had to basically agree to everything or else he would just threaten to leave. All this while he was in communication with the owner but he kept telling me that he could not get the owner on the phone with me because it was a weekend.

It was clearly agreed with the owner that lunch and breaks will not be part of the billable time and any additional work would be billed at a certain rate. The painter didn't care about any of the things I had to say. He was like take it or leave it. I sent an email to the owner to get these questions answered but she just came back with distorted facts and bogus apologies for the experience. What was meant to be a good deal did not work out to be a deal at all. I've had painting work with the same or more amount of complexity done in far less time than what these guys took. I gave them a rating of 1 for completing the job although it was completely on their terms and by holding me at ransom knowing very well that I would not want to be left in that messy situation with an unfinished job.