Quick summary: This business is dishonest and unprofessional. They will take your money if given the opportunity. Look elsewhere for work.
In detail: It has been about two months since we had our poor experience with Clem Brown and Team Concrete, so this was not written in haste or in anger. Mr. Brown, owner and operator of Team Concrete, was a pleasant individual. He was very friendly and talkative, and so we trusted him and paid him half of the agreed $3,000 up front ($1,500), which he said he needed for supplies. We gave him a check and I asked him to bring the supplies to the house, as I my wife was a bit skeptical. He did not comply with this request. We discussed the plans for the new addition of our house in detail, and Mr. Brown walked through the new addition and he assured me that our plan, which consisted of microtopping our floor and shower with stained concrete, would be something he could do, and that he had done this, "thousands of times", and that he could do it and it would look great. I had full confidence in his ability at this point. After he had already cashed the check for $1,500, Mr. Brown asked me when we would have a shower pan built for the concrete to lay on. This was a new concept to myself, and I was surprised that I had not heard of it prior to Mr. Brown cashing the check. Mr. Brown assured me that the plumber was responsible for building such a pan, as it is a shower pan. After some stressful back and forth with our plumber, who insisted that this was not a normal job for a plumber, I took Mr. Brown's word for it, and hired a third party to build the pan that Mr. Brown requested. I then went and purchased cement board, which was necessary to lay underneath the poured concrete. Mr. Brown agreed to lay this cement board, as it was a necessary step in laying concrete over a wood floor for the microtopping process. Mr. Brown had an employee lay this cement board, (I assume an employee of Team Concrete). The man who came to our house to put down this cement board was missing teeth, extremely thin, and requested a sandwich when I asked if he needed something to drink. It was hard not to draw conclusions and assumptions about substance abuse when seeing and interacting with this man. That being said, the man was respectful, even if the request for a sandwich was odd (lol). I inquired with Mr. Brown about this employee, and Mr. Brown said he knew him well, so again I took his word for it. So he layed down the cement board on the floor, but left the cement board for the shower, which required a half inch thick cement board. This was requested by our architect and our plumber. We emphasized this twice to Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown inexplicably neglected this instruction and put quarter inch thick cement board in the shower. We even have text messages in which this instruction was clearly written. He just messed that part up, and it was easy to get right. Back to the shower pan...we spent an extra $600 on a professional to build a shower pan. The guy consults with both the architect and the plumber and builds it exactly how it is supposed to be built. Mr. Brown then tells me that he can no longer do the shower because of how the pan has been built, AND he will not reduce the price he is charging (and has charged us) because "he was doing that part free...the $3000 was JUST for the floors". This is hilarious b.s. At this point I tell him I want my money back and that we no longer want him to do the floor. I had decided it was best to not have an incompetent person finish a floor in my house because it would likely fall apart. He became extremely angry and denied me my money back, saying that they had already done $1000 worth of work, and the supplies cost $500. I called three guys and asked them to quote me for cement board installation. The highest amount I was quoted was $400. Since he would not give me my money back, I requested that he provide a receipt for the supplies he purchased so that I could return the supplies and at least get the $500 back. He said he would do so but never did. We called the place he bought the supplies from, and it was $225 worth of supplies. Mr. Brown and Team Concrete are incompetent, unprofessional, and worst of all, dishonest. read more
