Servpro of Broome, Tompkins & Tioga Counties Servpro Promised mitigation and recovery of home from flooding; overcharged and failed to deliver after many months Binghamton New York

Servpro was recommended through my insurance company, USAA, when my house flooded in the first week of January. Months of living in a hotel later, and my house still isn't repaired. Due to the extreme nature of the neglect, mismanagement and incompetence from Serpro, I formally terminated our contract on May 17, 2018. I fired them for the following reasons:

On January 3, 2018, the baseboard heating pipes in the basement of my home burst, flooding the 1st floor and extending up to the kitchen of the 2nd floor. My family (my partner and I with 5 children) would live in a hotel from January 4th through May 5th. Flooring, drywall, upstairs and downstairs kitchens, bathrooms all needed to be completely redone. I selected most of the replacement materials from Lowe's, which is where problems began and red flags were first raised. Servpro insisted on paying for all the materials, which would have been fine, except that Lowe's kept calling me as Servpro's credit cards were continuously declined. Servpro then went behind my back and told Lowe's to stop copying me on emails, stating that I did not want to be bothered with the details of the project. I would not discover until after firing them that no fewer than a dozen individual employees at Servpro would be calling in to use their personal credit cards to cover purchases. Lowes would reveal that the Servpro company credit cards almost never worked. To make matters worse, Servpro would order the wrong parts or wrong quantities or fail to order parts at all. This week, I am just discovering that the carpeting was never ordered, backsplash was never ordered, transitions for the flooring were never ordered, and so many other "little" things were never ordered. Meanwhile, I have stacks of glues and tiles and miscellaneous parts that I will have to return.

If the management of materials was horrific, the mitigation of the original flooding was even worse. Servpro did not correctly fix the pipes and all of the associated plumbing issues that caused the flooding until late March--and Servpro would not have done this if I did not regularly visit the house to inspect the state of repairs. This resulted in thousands of dollars in extra plumbing costs as leak after new leak was discovered as the weather began to warm. The flooring had to be removed, but the mitigation team did not remove the glue affixing the floor to the concrete--this would prevent the new flooring from being correctly glued down months later. We had to use a vacuum sealing product instead. Servpro teams did not check the breakers when connecting the air handlers which were positioned to dry the floors and walls. Over half of the fans placed throughout the house were not running for more than a week as the breakers had tripped--and no one came by to check to ensure that the fans were running. The mitigation crew trashed everything without regard to my instructions and without thought to future repairs. A brand new faucet for the kitchen sink was just thrown away. The microwave over the range with the ventilation fan was just ripped out, leaving it completely unusable. Doorstops were thrown away; kitchen cabinet handles were thrown away; the list goes on and on. The drivers for the mitigation team repeatedly drove through my lawn, leaving huge pits/tracks in the front yard. The stone steps leading to the front door were cracked. Servpro left the heat cranked to 80 degrees for almost an entire month, while no work was done on the house, resulting in electric bills over $2000.

When they did actually show up, Servpro has mismanaged the project in every way imaginable. Servpro promised that mitigation would be completed by the end of January, but mitigation didn't begin until nearly the end of January. Servpro promised that the flooring would be done by February 23, but work didn't begin until March. It is not unusual for 2-3 weeks to go by with no work done, no communication from Servpro. Servpro promised that my house would be livable by April 20. Three weeks later, Servpro informed the insurance company that we were ready to move back into the house and we checked out of the hotel. I arrived home to discover that whole portions of the flooring were missing; nothing had been unpacked into the bedrooms; there was no stove or refrigerator connected; painting and touchups still remained unfinished. My daughter’s bedroom was unlivable--she had to sleep on the floor for two weeks. The kitchen was filled with boards with exposed nails. I repeatedly emailed Servpro asking them to correct these issues so that we could live in the house as promised. Servpro failed to respond.

In terms of cost management, Servpro has been misleading at best. Original estimates were near $90,000 at the beginning of the project and ballooned to $109,000 by the end. This is despite the fact that total material costs (which included installation of the kitchens) are less than $40,000 and total contractor costs are between $12-15,000. As I have begun coordinating directly with each of the vendors and contractors involved in the project, I have begun to discover that Servpro is padding their numbers with no basis in material or labor costs. I also discovered that Servpro has tried to retroactively revise contractor agreements after the work was completed. One company, DP Roofing and Flooring, had an original contract for $12,000 worth of labor. When Servpro failed to install our toilets, washer and dryer, refrigerator, stove and much more, DP did that work, which Servpro refused to do and then refused to pay for.

On terminating our agreement, I asked Servpro to turn over all contractors and vendors directly to me, to terminate any pending payments and forward all invoices/bills to me so that I can begin paying these personally after review. Servpro did not comply and instead has attempted to settle all individual accounts on their own. Servpro’s documentation on this so far is dubious at best.

In the end, Servpro forced my family to live in a hotel for 2-3 times longer than necessary at great personal cost to us. My house is still not fully repaired, though now that Servpro is fired progress is finally moving at acceptable rates. By the time the last repair is finished, I will have been without a complete home for 6 months. I could have built this house from scratch in that time.