Bri from Old Toronto

I was a Direct Energy customer and I always found booking and gas furnace maintenance to be straightforward. Now that they are "Enercare", it has been a frustrating experience. I was notified that I was due for my annual furnace maintenance and given a link to book the appointment, and when I did that, nobody showed up at the agreed time. So I tried again. By the third time I booked--in the meantime I was sent a letter with a PIN code to use when booking--(I booked for a Sept 30 service) and again, nobody showed up at my house for the appointment. Today I called Enercare, and their response was that "yeah, their on-line system has had problems" and customers should definitely call and NOT use the on-line system. The initial booking they offered me was December 23rd, but the helpful customer service person managed to move that up to Halloween by contacting the planning dept. That said, having missed 3 appointments with me, I'll wait and see if Enercare turn up on Halloween.

I had Window City windows installed in both September 2008 and August 2009 (single hung installed in Sep 2008, and casements in 2009) that I bought through Canak Windows. Since then, 2 single hung windows have failed. The plastic hardware that keeps the window from falling inwards (ie for cleaning) failed spontaneously causing windows to fall out of their sills when opened about 3" and after a strong gust of wind. This occurred for the first time in August 2012 and took 3 weeks to get a repair. A second single hung window failed recently on August 12, 2015 and after calling Window City on August 13, I agreed to pay another $160+HST for a service call. I explained that the window was above my son's bed and needed to be duct taped into place (as per photo), and that there was thus some urgency to having it fixed. "Jingle" (not sure of spelling) in the office said she would put a rush on the repair and that they would call me back with a repair date. This took until August 27 (despite my calling back and leaving messages both with Window City and Alex Buhov, formerly of Canak Windows) and eventually I was given a repair date of September 1, 2015 by the office. The service was completed as expected on that date by an excellent technician, who at my asking also checked all of my other single hung Window City windows and he found another one with failing (bent and breaking) plastic hardware, that he also replaced on the spot with new METAL hardware. At my request, he left me additional metal parts to repair my other windows including the 2012 repair (which has another plastic part put in). While I am happy that the Window City is finally replacing cheap plastic parts with metal rather than more plastic, it is an expensive trip out to get a technician to come for what is no more than 10 minutes work to repair a design flaw in the windows. It would be a much better business strategy to contact their customers and to replace all the cheap plastic mechanisms for a small fee, thereby avoiding long delays and potentially dangerous situations of spontaneously falling windows.

We hired Ternak to replace our front porch with a cedar wood construction-- with the proviso that breaking all soil-wood contact was essential as we are in a termite area. We also had them replace the crumbling concrete retaining wall in our front yard with patio stone. Overall, we had a hard time getting companies to bid on the project because it was such a small job, and went with Ternak because the work needed to be done promptly and they were quick to provide a quote and could do the work immediately. Overall, the carpentry work wasn't what we had hoped for: (1) we asked for stairs that were wider than the pre-existing (to make use of dead space between our property and the neighbors), instead, they shifted the stairs to the side (towards the dead space), such that the concrete path leading to the stairs now looks offset (because of where they put the banister, it was not possible to fix this); (2) they built the top stair about 1.5 inches shy of the landing, and we needed to insist that such a tripping hazard needed to be fixed; (3) most importantly, they did not put gravel/concrete under the wooden planks of the porch to break wood-soil contact. The retaining wall has fared better over the last ~5 years, while it is tilting a slightly it is still in good shape.

Waterproofing of an old foundation in termite laden south toronto. Mud Monkeys worked in conjunction with Aetna and handled additional challenges of needing to excavate along a city laneway. They attended meetings with city officials to help secure the permit, kept to schedule and budget, and managed the job in the tight space confines of old Toronto (a challenge in itself) with minimal disruption. Mud Monkeys were consummate professionals, always pleasant and knowledgeable. When they noticed a leak in my roof gutter, they made a point of informing us. When they found that my front porch wasn't sufficiently underpinned and they couldn't excavate there safely, they revised the quote. These guys are qualified, competent, honest, treat their employees and customers well. The proof is that when we solve the problem with supporting our front porch, we will hire them again.