I hired Timeline Journey to have a basement window removed and sealed. Not your every day job, however simple enough for any Handyman who's website indicates "Small jobs lead to large jobs, large to small. We don't know where one becomes the other,we do both. The # 1 question from clients is: "Do you do..." The answer is YES WE DO!" I coordinated with Steve the owner, who clearly advised me they had done window removals many times. After speaking with Steve, and reading some of their testimonials, I felt confident they could perform a window removal and seal, we came to a conclusion that it would be an all day job at $55 per hour including material. Roughly 9 hours of work was quoted +HST. No problem. The morning of the job, Steve sent one of his 'Handymen' to the house name Louie. He showed up at 8:45, tapped his boot on my rug and proceeded to walk downstairs to the basement with snow filled boots, trekking the snow throughout my entire house. I had to ask him to remove his winter boots after he had come in from the outside a 2nd time. Perhaps, this is a courtesy I take for granted when someone shows up at my house. Louie goes stairs at the window for about 30 seconds and came to the conclusion that it would be a much better idea not to remove the window and to seal it from the inside with insulation and install a cement board on the exterior of the window and then caulk around it. I asked him if he can guarantee it won't leak through, and he says his work is guaranteed. I also told him I was putting a bar in front of the window and had been experiencing some leakage and asked if he could cut the dry wall behind (since he was removing the window anyway) so we could see if there was leak from a cracked foundation or just the condensation of the window. Steve agreed to do this, he kept saying he will through that in (as in freebie) since it wasn't part of the original scope of work. Nothing was in the original scope of work except the insulation and sealing, since a window wasn't being removed!!!! He left my house 15 minutes later and showed up over an hour later with some material. He showed up with some very cheap insulation. I can tell the difference since my house was insulated with the Roxul insulation throughout. Turns out, he didn't bring enough with him. And the cement board he brought wasn't large enough. He had to leave for another 45 minutes to pick up more material. Now he's been gone from my house for about 2 hours. He came back and announced that he had to spend an additional $65 on material, no idea why he would tell me this. But he did cut the drywall open and show me there was no leakage. My friend does drywall a living and I watched as Louie did this, which took all of 15 minutes from the cutting to the screwing, taping and mudding. He left at 2pm and told me everything was done. I received a txt msg from him asking me to email money transfer to Steve. Louie was in my house for less than 3 hours. He was gone over 2 hours to pick up supplies. He did a very poor job of taping and mudding, according to him wasn't part of the original job (the original job was to remove a window and seal it, the entire scope changed), but he kept reiterating that it wasn't part of the original agreed upon job. Thats right Louie, cuz you suggested something different, and I agreed, I didn't agree to pay you for the same fee if the scope changed. While I was upstairs, I heard Louie call Steve and fill him in on everything that was done. When I called Steve, he acted like he didn't know anything and had to confirm with Louie. Eventually they agreed to drop the price by $100. I agreed to pay to get them out of my hair and am bringing in a real expert to get the job done properly. One advice I suggest with to dealing with these type of company is that if the scope changes, make sure you discuss the final price, because that's all Timeline Journey really cared about. Just the Money.
