I don't normally use this blog for personal problems but one of the main reasons I haven't posted lately is we've been dealing with a company to repair our basement. It hasn't gone well.
Before I begin this rant, let's imagine if Satan ran a company.
Here would be their operation guidelines:
1. Be late for appointments OR don't show up at all.
2. Make them move all their furniture the night before a job, then don't show up for the job and then laugh at them.
3. Swear at customers, get angry with them and call them liars.
4. Make sure your tactics put a strain on marriages.
5. Lie. Lie often. Lie well. Lie until you're out of lies.
666. Gouge them on prices. Quote them something really low so they take the bait, the screw them over at the last minute so they have no choice but to pay you more money.
These are just a few of the things Satan would do with a company. Oh wait he did!
He has risen from the depths of Hell to take the reigns of Zimmer and Kohl Contracting!
His anger for being locked in such a deep dark pit for all these years is now flowing through the streets of Louisville to innocent people who just want work done on their house.
Here's my story with these cretins. These deeply evil, cash hungry wicked beasts.
In April, our basement flooded. So my wife and I went through the process of getting bids from several companies. One of those companies was Zimmer & Kohl Contracting aka Satan's Construction Crew. I wish we would have never, never, never done this.
Their bid was the lowest of the five we received. When we asked why they came in lower than the other bids, we were told it was because they worked in volume and that's how they could keep the prices low.
This sounded legit to my wife and I, but just in case we put back some extra money to cover any additions to the estimate that might occur after the job was completed. They took our check and vanished like a ghost.
So after fighting for over two weeks to get on the schedule and getting anybody to call us back, we finally got on the calendar for May 24th. When May 24th arrived, we were told they needed to come back to our house to measure. Which was odd because they had been to our house 3 times already and had measured twice. Is Hell on the metric system? We thought that must be why they kept coming back to measure. It's a difficult system to master.
At this point I'd taken off 3 days worth of work for them. They'd missed two appointments now.
So we called and they said they would send out their contractor "Bin". Great, some progress—or at least that's what the devil would make you think. (P.S. This Bin fellow is apparently a wanted criminal. NICE TO KNOW NOW!)
When he did arrive at my house, he was visibly angry. He stormed into my house, brushed past my wife and in a tone that can only be described as furious Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men, began berating me. "So you have the tile? Where are the supplies? We're not supplying that! No! No! No! You are wrong!"
My response was no, because the estimate included the tile. He told me "no you're wrong." I said, "No, I'm not." At this point I produced the estimate, which LINE 1 of the estimate said they, Zimmer and Kohl, would provide and install all materials.
He then told me there was no way he could do the job for the price on the estimate. I asked how could he suddenly could come to this conclusion when he'd had the estimate for 5 weeks. He said, the person who did the estimate didn't know what they were doing and they should be fired. (Coincidentally, the guy who did the estimate was the nicest person we dealt with and I honestly feel bad for him.)
Bin then filled out a check for the deposit we had given Zimmer & Kohl Contracting, threw it at my wife and I, slammed the door, saying, "I took time out of my schedule to come out here, I don't need this!"
This outburst was also followed by some mumbled swearing.
So after calming down, I called the person who had done our estimate. He apologized and worked with Zimmer and Kohl to come up with a new price. He produced one for about $3000 more than the original price. Which my wife and I agreed too, this was our own fault for doing this. But like I said earlier, we had put aside money in case of overages, and this was honestly about what we thought they would be based on the other estimates we had received.
So we scheduled a date with the guise that we wouldn't have to deal with Bin again after his outrageous behavior. Who walks into somebody else's home and disrespects them like this? They agreed and were supposed to come out to our house so we could sign the new estimate on May 28th.
I then receive a call from them on the 28th telling me that the front office had kicked back the 2nd estimate and had assigned a new dollar figure to it. This estimate was for $10,000 above the initial estimate. How the hell do we go to MORE than double the job in two days?
Is the Zimmer and Kohl on the Canadian Monetary system?
At this point I had to walk away.
Now, I sit in my house which has all the furniture that was in the basement crammed into our living room, hallway, extra bedroom and sun room. Our house is maze because we moved everything out of our basement because they were supposed to be here to do the work. So instead of having a completed basement, I have an empty hole and a garage full of old carpet that they were supposed to hall away.
Of all the horror stories you hear about slimy, underhanded, greedy contractors and construction companies, Zimmer and Kohl fit them to a "T". Seriously, they are a walking cliché. They did nothing right in this entire process. And here I sit with a house that I have to navigate with map and hatchet and a garage full of moldy carpet.
Stay away from Zimmer & Kohl Contracting. I'm not sure how a company that's been in business for over 40 years can survive with rude, pompous employees like Bin.
Tell your friends fellow readers. These guys are just evil. I could have had my basement repaired 3 times in the amount of time it has taken for this situation to get remedied.
Enough.
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