Select Painting

After obtaining many different painting quotes, we hired SRY select based on their reasonable pricing to paint our entire condo and spray the kitchen cabinets. The first day everything looked great, the ceilings, trim and cabinets looked exactly like we wanted. The second day, both bathrooms and one of the bedrooms were done and to our horror, our white looked completely blue. We felt sick... we hated the colour we had picked ourselves. We tried calling Kris but couldn't get a hold of him. We called 3 times and left voice messages. We made two calls after 6 pm that evening when I got home, and one call at 7 am the next morning. We needed to let him know there was a problem to see what the potential solutions were.
The next morning we didn't hear back from Kris until they were close to arriving at our home. He said he didn't get our messages as his phone is off after hours and they had just purchased the rest of the paint for the job. When he arrived we explained that the paint looked different on the walls than it did on the trim and the cabinets. He acknowledged that different finishes will look different. Fair enough, we felt awful and knew we had a big problem. Kris suggested we choose a darker colour for the walls so we wouldn't have to re-do the trim and cabinets. We understood that it was by far not an ideal situation, but after saving for years for a renovation, we didn't want to completely change the colour for the entire condo. When we asked Kris what our options were for re-painting, it was clear he wasn't happy. He told us it would be a "scheduling nightmare." Obviously it wasn't ideal for us either, we weren't living in the condo while the work was being done and this would drastically extend our deadlines for finishing the renovations (floors, etc). When he finally agreed to have guys come back in a week’s time, which took about an hour of conversation, he then broke down what it would cost us.
Kris wanted to "settle up" for the cost of the job, which was 70% done, at pretty much full price of the original quote. He then wanted to re-charge us the full cost of the job again. We're talking close to $10, 000 in paint for a 950 sq ft condo. We get it, we made a mistake. It messed up everyone's schedules, including ours. We knew there would be additional costs associated. But it seemed a bit unreasonable to us to pay close to 2x the original cost, when all of the prep work was done, the masking and taping was still in place, and some of the work required less coats of paint (now painting white on white instead of a previous darker colour wall). We told him that we would think about it as we weren't happy with the full cost being re-charged, and that we would consider doing most of the work ourselves. He said he could get us the paint at his cost - approx $150 for the apartment. Before we "settled up", we wanted to discuss why we would be charged so much to change colours when so much of the work was completed already. Kris immediately emailed saying he didn't have time to "go back and forth over $20-40". The cost difference was much more than $20-40 - For example, he charged full cost to spray the ceiling one more coat. The original cost included set up and two coats, but this was still full cost. The cost difference we were talking about is $500. The big problem we had was that our kitchen cabinets were also being sprayed. We agreed that he would do one final coat in the new white colour on the fronts - for $1000 - and then re-install the cabinets.
We decided to just pay them for the work they had completed, at nearly full price, as we wanted to move forward. After having spent our entire painting budget on a condo that was now not painted, we decided to paint it ourselves. We emailed Kris to let him know that we were doing the work ourselves, but still needed to complete the kitchen, which he quoted was an additional $1000. He said that was OK and to let him know how it was going, as he was scheduled to come in and spray the cabinets. We emailed again a few nights later to update our progress. Again – he said that was OK. When we were nearing the end of the painting we emailed to confirm him coming to spray the cabinets. He emailed back to confirm. The day before he was scheduled to come spray the cabinets, he informed us that because we did our own painting, it wasn’t worth it for him to come back to do the cabinets for $1000, and he would now have to charge us $1500. When we called to discuss this, as being inappropriate to change the quote the night before the work is scheduled, he hung up on us twice.
He called back later that night and wanted to bring some closure to this and asked if he was coming in the next day to finish the cabinets. We informed him that we were not willing to change the price from $1000 to $1500. He refused to honour the original $1000 quote.
I asked for a refund of $500 from the original payment as he did not return to clean (remove tape etc), he failed to spray a part of the ceiling even though it was charged (one of the bedroom closets), I had to re-install the cabinets, I had to repair a ceiling pot light they had damaged in the first day of painting, and I had spent several days cleaning over-spray from the ceiling and kitchen work. There was over spray on my TV, my fridge, my granite countertops and some of my furniture.
His response to my request was that he had left over $500 in paint (which he originally told me was $150 – and which I paid for in the original payment), so we were ‘even’.
This was a disappointing experience at best, and a rip off at worst. Changing a quote the day before a job is done, knowing that the person is left with half painted cabinets that was therefore vulnerable, is poor business practice, and quite honestly, unethical.