Wow! Well, glad that all worked out!
Many times I "know" things but don't call people out on them. I just figure, I know the truth and they only "think" they are getting away with something.
Now, I want to hear your other story from your day yesterday. I'm totally interested!
Thanks Denise! After thinking about it more, I decided to edit my post and give the guys the benefit of the doubt on their pricing to me. So I removed the story altogether. I'm grateful the concrete guy is standing behind their work and that I'll be getting spraydeck at no cost to me.
As for the other story, I just had to oversee the work more than I would have liked which didn't instill a lot of confidence in them. They were supposed to install a 65' drainage extension from my deck drains to a pop up drain at the back of the yard, and when I originally asked if they'd use laser levels to make sure the fall was correct (when we were interviewing them for the job) the guy assured me that they would just run water down the pipe to make sure it drained properly. That was fine with me. But when it came down to it yesterday, the pipes did not look like they had a consistent fall to them (one length of pipe in the middle looked higher) and when I asked how it was going the guy in charge said, "Great! We're done... Just covering up the pipes now." I asked, "Does it work?" and he said, "Sure." Looking at my hose and noticing that it hadn't been touched I asked, "How do you know?" He replied that because of the fall of my yard, the pipes would automatically drain properly (even though he never ran water through it like he said he would when we hired him.) So I asked to check and he politely complied. But when the hose water was put in the deck drain, we waited and waited and no water came out at the end. Sure enough, the water was probably getting stuck in the higher pipe since when they stepped on it to seat it deeper in the trench, water started appearing at the end. So I insisted they seat that section of pipe better, not just by stepping on it, but by making the trench a little wider so the pipe could be seated as far down as it was supposed to be. If I hadn't made them check the drainage with water, I'm not sure what we would have ended up with.
Aside from that, our bid listed tractor work at $100/hour for an estimated 8 hours. I had confirmed with the guy a couple of times that the estimate was plus or minus how many hours were actually used. Although they arrived around 8:45 am, the tractor wasn't used until noon and they left the job at 6 pm, with the tractor guy taking at least an hour to help his buddy do the trenching and other work. So when my husband went out to check on things right before they left, he asked about not having taken as long to do the tractor work as expected. They guy replied that the tractor had been on the job the whole time, but yes, he didn't use it the whole time so he'd give us a discount.
When the invoice arrived via email it listed 6 hours of tractor work for $600. Based on my observations, the tractor hadn't been used for the full 6 hours from 12-6pm, and I thought 5 hours would be more accurate (and that was with rounding up) and I politely replied along those lines in an email. At first the guy come back with a defense of his pricing, saying that typically a rented tractor is charged by the hours on site since it can't be used on other jobs (although I was under the impression that this company owned their own tractor since it was a grading/landscaping company) and based on other factors of the job, he thought he was being generous charging us for 6 hours instead of 8. I composed a reply last night, but decided not to send it until the morning. Fortunately, after I had gone to bed last night he must have reconsidered, because there was an adjusted invoice in my inbox showing 5 hours of tractor work instead of 6. I replied with an email thanking him for the adjustment and saying I'd be paying by check promptly.
Perhaps he's right about how rented equipment is charged, but that is beside the point if A) he owns the tractor, and B) he bids the job as hours of tractor "work" and not as its physical presence on the property. After the incident with the drainage, I wasn't feeling like paying an extra $100 for an hour of work that didn't happen. But all is well that ends well, so I'm grateful!
