Elle in Toronto

We hired the Post Hole Company just to do holes and install posts for our backyard. Biggest contractor mistake we have ever made. The day ended with the crew ripping out newly cemented fence posts and leaving wet cement in the holes, when we would only pay for completed work. He’s a bit more detail as to how the day played out. Initially, it seemed like it was going well – Steven, who I think was the foreman, was pleasant and worked to smooth over any issues with our neighbours. We dug about two thirds the holes and all was good. Then it started to go sideways. Steven had gone to another site and left Max, the hole digger, in charge. He had started to making “don’t touch my holes” comments to my husband and father in-law, when they were reviewing the work that had been and had began to raise concerns with the post hole locations. My neighbour had asked that their existing fence be left for consistency, so we were trying to navigate existing post holes with a new fence and keeping both fences as close as possible. Max said that we needed to spend an additional $70 per hole to dig by hand and get closer to the fence. We proceeded with this to get the job done. When the crew got to the last hole, they said they could not dig the hole any closer to the fence leaving about a foot between my neighbour’s existing fence and our new post hole. This would not only look odd, but make the fence crooked. Because they said they could not get it any closer, my father in-law stepped in saying he would deal with it later to make the fence straight. Max obviously had a bit of an attitude, and was not keen on this idea for whatever reason. At this point, Max demand that we pay for all the full cost for all the holes, even the ones they had not set. We were fine to pay for what they had done to date, but there was no way we were paying for work before they had completed it, especially with the conflict that was arising on site. My husband then asked to speak to the owner on the phone to discuss the concerns. We were never told that payment was required upfront and it seemed a bit odd that we were not asked for a deposit then suddenly be told half way through the job that they needed payment in full. Max arranged a phone call with the person we were told was the owner stated that “he has to side with his site guy on this”, and stated they needed payment for the whole job. You can’t actually call the company with customer issues via their phone number – you can only deal with someone who quotes/schedules the work or leave a voicemail for customer care. When we refused to pay the full amount of the work, Max started swearing at us and then it GOT SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE! The contractor started instructing staff to remove posts from holes that had fresh concrete thinking they would force us into payment for the entire job. They threw fence posts that we had purchased on the ground with wet cement and left wet cement in the holes thinking that we would have no choice but to pay them – basically blackmailing us. We ending up paying for the holes that were dug, and told them to get off our property and leave. We then brought in our handy man/family members to clean up the substantial mess – 10 post holes filled with wet concrete, fence posts that were covered with wet concrete. My guess is every crew is on a commission to upsell and they didn’t like it when we said we could do it ourselves. We also discovered that one of our shovels went missing after the crew left site. Needless to say, I would NEVER RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY TO ANYONE.