A game of two halves..
This review will have one or two negative aspects, as will be shown from other reviews I've made on Trustpilot I believe that I am pretty fair in my comments and will give praise when its due.
A game of two halves! We wanted a new fire in our lounge and contacted Firetec. We agreed a price of nearly £4000 with Ben which owing to the depth of the fire would need a false chimney breast constructed of a wooden frame, plasterboard and plaster.
The fitter did a great job constructing the false chimney breast and fitting the fire leaving the breast to be plastered. We had said that we would like work to be completed before a holiday on 12th May so that upon return the plaster would be dried for us to paint. As well as the chimney breast needing re plastering there were also marks from the old fireplace removal. It had been agreed with Ben that the plastering would be finished to a standard ready for painting.
We were told by Ben that the plasterer, Luke Mather of LM Plastering would call to carry out the work at 9am on Saturday 9th May. From further communications received it would appear that he called 40 minutes early. Both of us were still asleep and didn't hear him. He then left. We were told at 0840 am by Ben that the work now wouldn't be carried out (still 20 minutes before Luke was due.) Although disappointing this wasn't the end of the world. We liaised directly with Luke and fixed a day of 2nd June, Ben also contacted him and asked him to ensure that he had the date in his diary.
Luke did not turn up on the 2nd June. He'd forgotten to put the date in his diary, great!
We then had to fix another time and date with him. This time Luke did turn up, an hour late but hey at least we thought the job would now be done and we could carry on with the painting. When he did show up he made a joke of not turning up on the 2nd which we found pretty arrogant as we felt it would have been reasonable on his part to at least offer some sort of an apology.
Luke's work was not good at all, he left a hole on the underside of one part the chimney breast (we didn't notice this until later on). there was a concave in the plastering on the lower part of the breast and no attempt at all had been made to render the marks/indentations left by the removal of the old fireplace and hole by a socket. He had already packed up to go and we had to get him to go back to his van and collect his leftover plaster to fill accordingly. He then said I would have to sand the plaster myself which I was not as agreed with Ben.Luke made us feel that we were wrong and as people of a certain age we found it pretty intimidating.
Even then the work hadn't been done properly, the marks from the removal of the fireplace had not been covered to the level that they could be sanded, the same could also be said for a hole by the plug also resultant from the fitting and we then also discovered the hole in the underside of the breast and later a concave in the render on the lower part.
We called Ben to draw to his attention the unacceptable standard of Luke's work and he called a day or two later. We expressed our view that Luke had let us and him (Ben) down. Even when faced directly with the work it was surprising to hear Ben say that Luke was a great plasterer, although conversely he did accept that the work on our property was sub standard. Ben said that the work would need re sanding but it turned out when another more competent plasterer arrived a day or so later the indentations needed to be filled again to a level that could be sanded (so despite our asking Luke to do it he still failed) along with the holes previously mentioned and the concave. In fact it required two visits from the plasterer to put Luke's work right.
So finally the work was completed but not without inconvenience and quite a lot of stress for us.
We asked Ben for a £200 reduction in our bill (around 5%) as a goodwill gesture owing to the inconvenience and stress mentioned but this was refused by Ben. We were then threatened in writing with solicitors and debt collectors by him (in writing) so after taking advice from CAB we paid up in full within a couple of days of getting the final invoice as for what we were asking it just wasn't worth the hassle.
Our observations are that the actual fitting of the fire and construction of the false chimney breast was fine but the plastering as set out above was poor and put our own plans to get our lounge finished back by several weeks. It was also very stressful having to challenge Luke directly about his work and then call Ben out and get it put right. There was no excuse for leaving the job in this state. His lack of reliability despite even being reminded to put the date in his diary is also of concern.
if considering Firetec then up to and including installation they were fine however knowing what we do now a check of who is doing the plastering might prove prudent.