New Horizon Painting Inc. the business that doesnt give a dam Sacramento California

This company claims that customer satisfaction is their top concern. They also claim that they cover all landscaping and spotless clean up & proper waste disposal before payment is accepted. They claim that they will perform a full 10 step preparation including caulking around all doors & windows. (Excerpt from their sales brochure) This is in fact, not true. I did 90% of the preparations, including caulking and scraping of old paint.

We contracted these guys to paint our home for a price of $3500.

The day they were scheduled to start, they were 4 hours late, once arriving, they claimed that they go lost. (A phone call to us would have been nice and a Thomas Guide in their posession would have been better) They started the work and were out by the 4th day, leaving behind a mess I had to clean up.

They broke plants and Malibu lighting both in our yard and our neighbors yard, oversprayed walkways and landscaping, splattering paint on our (nearly new) air conditioning unit and lightly painting our chiminy and an ajacent 2nd story wall, leaving the wood siding exposed and unprotected with a good coat of paint.

I attempted to resolve this with the owner (Tom Stringfellow) and he finally did come out to our home several months later to inspect the job. He offered to have his crew come back out and "touch up" those areas we were unhappy with. (I had already cleaned up their "mess" and took many pictures of it beforehand).

The following months, he continued to hound us for payment, but we were advised by an attorney friend not to send it to him before he made good on his promise to "touch up" their "screw ups".

After a few months of this hounding and unable to get our schedules together for a "touch up" or "redo", he sent us a letter saying they wanted to close their books and offered to settle this matter for $2000.

This job was never about cost or money!! If it were, we would have gone with another painting contractor for $1750 and used acrylic paint instead of the more expensive elastomeric paint.

I have since filed a complaint with the California Contractors State Licensing Board and the BBB. The CSLB is not willing to do anything about this case because, as their investigator indicated to me, due to budget cuts in the state budget (thanks to Gov. Grey(out)Davis putting Calif. it deeper debt) they are not enforcing penalties or suspensions to contractors who perform poor workmanship since it is time consuming and they didn't have the manpower to follow up with such claims. She further instructed me that if we wanted a financial remedy, we would have to seek civil action. So, with that said. The CSLB is a dead end if you have a contractor that leaves you with a bad job, such as our's did. My opinion of the CSLB now, is that it is just a revenue generator for the state and not a safety net for consumers as it once was, but that is another report all together.

After speaking with the paint manufacturers VP of retail sales in Los Angeles last week, they (the paint manufacturer) has agreed to give me enough paint to finish the job the contractor has neglected to do. That say's alot to me about the manufacturer, even though they have nothing to do with workmanship.

If you need your home or business painted and are located in Northern California, I wouldn't recommend New Horizon Painting.

Kirk
Vacaville, California
U.S.A.