Arizona's Best Painting is not the Best

We signed a contract with Robert Mausbach of Arizona's Best Painting in April 1999 to have our house painted for a total of $2000.00 Our two story 2700 sq ft home was painted in ONE day (April 16, 1999).

The only prep work done was to cover the windows/doors with paper and fixed some areas in which the stucco was bubling. There was NO pressure cleaning or filling of cracks.

We told him that our home was 5 years old and that many other painters from whom we had received estimates had said that the builder had not properly sealed the stucco before painting and that was why our stucco was bulbling in places and the paint has not adheared well. He never mentioned any problems with this and signed the contract.

My husband was home when they finished and paid them without throughly inspecting their work. When I got home I inspected the job and found many cracks in the stucco that had not been repaired and those stucco patches that had been repaired were horrible most looked worse than before the painting. I called Mr Mausbach and he sent two men over on April 17th to repair the problems. The cracks were caulked and painted over immediately. The stucco patches were touched up supposedly but when I checked them on the 18th they were again cracking and looked horrible. I again called Mr Mausbach and he asked me to wait about a week to let the patches throughly dry and he would come out and fix them. I waited several weeks, called him and he never called back.

I finally submitted a complaint with the BBB on 11-9-99. Amazingly Mr Mausbach appeared at my door on 11-14-99 -saying that he was in the area working on lots of punch lists with his clients - no mention of my BBB complaint.

This was the first time he had been to my house personally to inspect the job with me. I told him about cracks that were again appearing in the stucco - old cracks that had supposedly been fixed and I told him about areas that peeling paint was never scrapped off. He looked surprised and said "Well your home was pressure cleaned first that should have taken care of peeling paint." I told him that our house was never pressured cleaned and that none of the cracks were caulked before the painting. He gave me a questioning look and didn't respond.

He did send someone out that week to recaulk the cracks and repatch the stucco problems. The patches did look a lot better except in the living room window. He never properly fixed that stucco problem. I pointed that out to him and he said that he would come back to fix it but I never saw him again.

Then I received his response to my BBB complaint. He said that most of my problems should be directed at my builder for inferior stucco work. He never responded to the complaint of no pressure cleaning or patches not properly fixed.

Since than I have discovered how the BBB works and I realized that I probably wasn't going to get anywhere with them. I had even checked with them before hiring Mr Mausbach and found no complaints registered which I just can't believe now. I have talked to another neighbor who used them and they were very unhappy too - but hadn't bothered to register a complaint!

I would like to have the stucco area in the front living room window fixed properly. My biggest concern is that without proper prep work this paint job isn't going to last long and we have just thrown $2000 down the drain. Five years of dust were just painted over.

Hopefully you can help. I am sorry that this is so long but I felt that you needed all of the history to this story.

Thanks for what ever help you can give - even to just make others aware of the quality of work they do would be satisfying so someone else does not get ripped off!