Albert & Sons Quality Painting Alberto ElorreagaPaulo Elorreaga Tried to get more money to do the job on the day they started Kearny New Jersey

Alberto and his son came to my house to give me an estimate on interior painting for living room, dinning room, kitchen, trims and hallway. At first the estimate was too high for me, so I called them again to change it and I took off the list the kitchen and trims.

They came again, and looked at the space again. The dad, Alberto, speaks mostly Spanish and he comes with someone to help him translate when necessary. First, after they looked at everything and went through the details again, they gave me an estimate that was higher than the previous one. I said how come it is higher since they are doing less work. They weren't expecting that. Then they offered to also install baseboard molding which I needed to get done so we came to a good price for the painting and baseboards.

On the day before they came I was having issues with the home depot website to pay for the baseboards for store pick up. Then they first wanted to say they couldn't come because the baseboards wouldn't be there because they needed to be installed before painting. They must have thought they were speaking with a person with no experience, because I knew that the baseboards are the last thing to go.

After I called them on their lie, I said I would resolve it with home depot. In the end I would have needed to go to the store to pay in person so I told them I would meet them there (they were driving the truck from the store to my house). Then, their issue was that they couldn't be at the store until an hour later, even though they had said they were on the way to my house half an hour before. They then said they could pay for it and have me pay them. But since they were very late late, I had to leave the door open for them to come in and go into work. They were supposed to be in my house at 7:30am and they didn't get there until 9am.

They called me later when they got there and asked how to get into the house. Then they asked where I had left the money. Then they called again to say that the job they had quoted me in writing was too much and they wanted more money to do it! That is while they are inside of my house alone and after they had looked at the space twice. They tried to say it was a communication issue, but what they didn't know is that I speak fluent Spanish so I knew that everything was translated properly because I made sure of that. They charged me twice as much as what labor would cost them (which I know because I heard it) but I agreed to pay because it was still within my budget. I purchased all the material (paint and baseboard) so they only had labor costs to deal with.

So now the house was supposed to be rented at the end of the week and I can't do it anymore because the tenant was expecting painting and baseboards to be there. And I will need to pay more to have someone come and do the work asap but everyone is busy. 

To get them to leave, I told them to not touch anything in the house or the money, that I had it monitoed by a security company so I was tunring on all the alarms, which I did do. The money was there when I got back, but I am still incurring losses; at least a one week delay on my plans and the tenant that I will probably loose.