So remember how I did the wise thing instead of the fun thing? Well, it backfired. The company I had hired to clean up my flooded basement has decided to RIP ME OFF. My insurance adjuster gave me money to replace my carpet but I decided to use pieces of carpet that we had and just patch the bad parts of the carpet. That way I figured I would save about $1,000 that I could use towards my water heaters and I my insurance deductible would be absorbed by the money as well.
I received the invoice from The Flood Company (never use them, they are dishonest). They charged me the amount that my insurance company gave me minus 50 dollars. What a rip-off. When I looked closer at the bill I realized they were charging me for things they never did. They said they replaced my baseboards with 6" baseboards and we used the existing baseboards, they weren't damaged. I can tell you a measuring tape does not lie and our baseboards measure 3 1/2". 1st lie. They charged me for cleaning our storage room floor, utility floor and food storage room floor. Which they didn't do. We had moved all of our stuff back in the storage room so there was very little floor to clean and if they cleaned it they did a horrible job. DID NOT HAPPEN. The food storage room wasn't even affected by the flood so why would they clean it and again it is very dirty so obviously they didn't clean it. 2nd lie. They charged me for laying 513 sf of carpet in my family room. The area that needed to be re-layed was about 30 sf. They told me they charged me for the full room because they stretched the carpet in the whole room. What a CROCK!! Charge me for stretching the carpet then. I know their is more labor involved in laying carpet than in just stretching it. 3rd lie. They then charged me for cleaning the carpet in the whole family room. When I checked out the carpet they had cleaned about 75 sf of carpet and that is being generous on my part! They charged me for 513 sf. 4th lie. Then they charged me 20% profit and overhead. What a dishonest company!! My insurance adjuster didn't put any profit or overhead on her estimate.
I called and talked to them about the invoice and the man, Alex, that I talked to was somewhat condescending towards me. When I questioned him about the baseboards he never gave me a direct answer. (I am fuming just writing about this!) He also kept making comments about how they need to make money. He is running a business. I bet you he is making BUCKS on my job. He also indicated that we received enough money from the insurance company to cover the invoice and we didn't have to pay our deductible. That is true, but his invoice should reflect the work done not the amount of money we received from the insurance company. I talked to the adjuster about us not replacing the carpet but still receiving the check and she said what we did was our choice, the money was ours.
I'm so frustrated!! I was up half the night thinking about it and I finally came up with a resolution. I am going to call my adjuster and go over the invoice with her to make sure I am looking at things correctly and then I'm going to call The Flood Company and go through each line item with them. If Alex refuses I am going to contact my lawyer. I can be a pretty feisty person but I do have my cracking point and then I cry so I want to stay strong. With my calculations, they are charging me an extra $1000 for work they didn't do. Ridiculous!!!
After I received the invoice my adjuster told me The Flood Company is not an easy company to work with and she wouldn't have used them for any repairs. I wish she would have told me before instead of after. Hindsight is 20/20 and I definitely learned my lesson. A very expensive lesson but a lesson learned.
If this is not resolved the way I want it resolved I will file a complaint with the BBB.
I should have just done the fun thing and got new carpet!!
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2 comments:
Just curious if you got things resolved with The Flood Company. I too was overcharged by them by about $1500 for cleaning up after an overflowed bathtub cascaded into the downstairs...
Any rate, I disputed what was owed to them, and they kept indicating that several things were owed that I was disputing. I never did pay it, but now I have a collection company trying to collect their entire debt.
Any way, I was just doing a google search to see who else got stuck by The Flood Co and figured you should know that you weren't the only one...
Please add a comment and let me know what eventually happened with your situation. I'll check back here periodically.
I ended up sending them a letter with a copy of their bill. On their bill I marked the items that they didn't do and took those items off the total. I had to do it several times. The last time I sent a letter, I sent a check for the total I was willing to pay. I ended up paying about $500 more than I wanted to but it was better than the original amount.
I hope this helps.
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