I live in a 90 year old home with a block foundation basement that is very leaky. I have owned this house for about 3 years now and decided it was time to fix the problem. I had consulted 3 different companies and got quotes for the job and took the middle quote, fearing that lowest quote would be crappy work and the highest was over priced. I hired a franchised company called Wise Cracks this location is based out of St. Catharines. The quote and scope of work that was provided was reasonable and the owner, Ed Patton, provided references for me to contact. All in all i believed I had made a good decision hiring them. Well things started south real quick. Ed shows up on the first day with 4 kids with him that couldn't string a sentence together to save their lives. He brought me in the basement barked out some orders to the guys and then left, that was the last I ever saw of him. These kids did crap work... They were supposed to do an interior weeper system with sump pump, dimple sheets on the walls, rough in for a bathroom, and new poured concrete floor. These kids took every short cut possible. After the thrid day they finished and it looked okay... Then it rained that night, the basement leaked like crazy, water was everywhere and it had no where to go because they cemented over the drain which i had to bust up with a hammer to give the water a place to go. I called, they said they would be there the next day to fix it, they didn't show up after I took the day off of work to do so. They offered no appoligies, just told me they got busy and couldnt make it. They did come a couple days later to fix the problem. While I was waiting for them to come back to the house I was looking at their work they did on the bathroom rough in, something looked wrong. They had put the toilet rough in directly against the cement wall. How was I supposed to frame and drywall it like this? I called Ed and he proceeded to tell me how much of a waste of time my "job" was, that I didn't know what i was talking about. Then I got a little pissed off, told him basically if he didn't come back and fix it i was gonna sue him. He sent some shmuck to fix it that just ripped up the floor and changed the position and did a crap job of patching it. Oh I forgot to mention I had already paid them their $8000 fee in full. Next I was upset about the floor, it was waivey. I asked if they had made an attempt to level it, he said no, we aren't concrete specialists, even though his company letterhead says they are. After much bikkering back and forth he finally refunded me the 850 bucks for the floor. This has been going on for 7 months now. If you have to get your basement fixed do not even waste your time with this guy. He is so unprofessional, has absolutely no people skills, probably couldn't change a light fixture without screwing it up. Stay away, Wise Cracks Niagara are scam artists that wont stand behind thier crappy work.
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