Classic Paving & Concrete Inc

I had a mixed experience with this company, whom I hired to re-do my back stairwell. On one hand, Joe showed up on time, gave me a written quote and explained the process to me . But on the day the work needed to be done, he had an emergency and was out of town. That meant Tiago, a man who had never seen my property was in charge. I was nervous about that, but he seemed nice and competent.

They did the work fairly quickly and cleaned up after themselves, but when I got the invoice I had a completely unexpected additional $375 charge for parts and labour for reinstalling a railing (I think the part was a wood plank which was probably a few dollars). I was extremely peeved about this surprise charge which NO one asked or informed me about. When I called Joe he got defensive and seemed to think that I shouldn't care about this random and additional charge. He threatened to take out the railing to take his "parts" back, but we ended up compromising and I paid half the initial charge. Still, this left a bad taste in my mouth. It's not okay to randomly add almost $400 to an invoice (plus HST).

Too be honest, I think the job was harder than they expected and so they jacked up this cost to make up for it (but this is just a theory).

Secondly, there were a few finishing touches that were not completed to my satisfaction, like the caulking around my door was a rushed job and they left a muddy gap beside my stairwell, because the old concrete was fell off, as you can see in the picture below, but eventually agreed to add in some stones so it didn't look as ugly. It's still not great, but better. Also, there is also now a major dip in the paving stones beside, like they all got squished or something. However, I understand that they may have needed to push the stones in order to create a big enough railing landing. Still, it does not contribute to the aesthetic and may create future problems.

Overall, the main work they did,the staircase, was well-done, but the extra charge and a few small details after rubbed me the wrong way. I also felt they could have been better at communicating -- for example, they told me they were going to install a larger drain, but the drain was the same size in the end. They said it was because that was what fit the pipe, but they could have easily called me to inform me of that.

As a sidenote: I'm 90% sure that Joe told me at the time that the quote inclusive of tax, but the invoice was with the addition of HST, which added many hundreds of dollars. However, I cannot prove this so I let it go. I learnt a lesson though that to always write if HST is included or not on the contract itself.