Where to start? From the beginning I guess.
We had a garage fire, unfortunate but it happened. The scariest part is that I was home and my pregnant wife was at work. Remember this detail.
Called the insurance and they picked CRBR to do the restoration. Everything started pretty good, we had a crew showing up within a couple of days to do the soft content cleaning and place them in a POD that was parked in our driveway. Good. One of the guys showed up for an estimate and the scope. Good. Next step:demo. Done quickly. And this is when everything went downhill. All of the drywall was left in my driveway for weeks, with the promise of "oh tomorrow somebody is gonna come pick it up". When finally the trash was picked, crickets. For months. And months. Always an excuse "the project manager, quit" "the new project manager got fired" "the new project manager is catching up, sorry!"
So I finally decided to go to the office in person. I have to say they were extremely nice and showed me the new scope and estimate which was about $10k higher than originally drafted. Naturally I asked if the insurance was notified and it was approved "of course, nothing to worry about!" Ok then let's go.
Crickets. Crickets. Crickets. You remember my pregnant wife? My child was now 14 months old; but the job was done, at last!
Couple weeks later, we got a letter that we needed to pay about $10k for the additional work.
So called the insurance and they never approved anything. Called CRBR, they never sent the additional scope to the insurance company, but I still have to pay as the job was completed and I am responsible for it. Oh and they were gonna put us in collections if we don't pay.
At this point I disclosed the fact that I'm actually IICRC certified in fire&smoke, water, mold and bio; and my wife is an insurance broker. We are the customers from hell in this case if you poke us.
They sent a bill to the insurance with a whole bunch of parts that were claimed to be replaced but weren't: insurance fraud; we authorized the job to continue, signed the contract under false pretenses:illegal. And I wasn't shy about it, put me in collections, I'll sue you.
Long story short, they sent a revised invoice to the insurance company (which dropped us, by the way, so thank you CRBR) and got their money.
Do yourself a favor, call COIT or ServPro. read more