James B.

Avoid at all costs. The company director Gavin Byrne has a history of shoddy and shameless work. The exterior works his business performed on our house (and still features photos on the web site of his 'new' company) started blistering badly with months. He refused to fix his work and was personally abusive. We had to take him to court — and won our suit, but it took us over a year of hassle. Nightmare contractor.

See attached photos for what his work looks like just a few months later.

I've had two excellent experiences with Coreco now: once getting a mortgage for a home purchase, then again re-financing the mortgage. Friendly responsive service, extremely knowledgeable and professional, never made a mistake. I'm surprised they don't charge more -- if they charged twice as much I'd still be more than happy!

They do great bespoke closets. We got floor-to-ceiling closets done in two rooms of our new house, and they did a beautiful job! Two years later the rolling panels work just as smoothly as the day we bought them. Would recommend to anyone.

If you value your property or your safety, don't let E&D anywhere near your home. I'm still surprised how many ways they could screw up an apparently simple job to repair small leaks in a 4th story roof:

- In November the owner assessed the roof and said they could fix the leaks for £1200 + VAT, which we were happy to pay. Two workmen came (one of them is the owner's son), did some work and took photos.

- A couple days later, the leaks got dramatically worse. E&D refused to share the photos of the work, denied they'd even taken any, though I'd seen them on their phone.

- After weeks of haranguing, the owner finally came back and looked at the roof again. He was angry at his son, said the son never finished the work. Also there were new areas that needed patching that he "didn't notice" the first time he was there. He wanted another £1000, I argued him down to £400 though when they sent me the invoice later it bounced back up to £450 + VAT.

- A few days after that, a large heavy sheet of roofing asphalt FELL OF OUR ROOF, crashing onto a lower roof. If the wind had been blowing differently it could have hit someone on the street and caused serious injury.

- I called the owner about the fallen asphalt. It turns out his son had simply forgotten a large extra unused sheet up there.

- When the son came over the next morning to take away the asphalt, he was angry (at me!) because the owner had yelled at him for the mistake. He was slurring his words and menacing. I was just glad to see him leave before he got violent.

- After more weeks of waiting the remaining repairs were scheduled in January. I waited at home all day for the workmen to come over, phoned, texted, emailed -- nothing. Two days later the owner texts me, and I quote, "Sorry was away boys did not turn in on Saturday can we reschedule". That's all the explanation I got.

- Finally two other workmen from E&D came over. They finished the job and took photos, and in fact were quite helpful and polite. So it's a roll of the dice which staff you get.

In sum, a simple job that should have been done in one go dragged out to seven appointments over three months, and we had to live with a leaky ceiling all through Christmas with the attendant damage to wood, plaster, and electrics. I'll certainly never use them again.

If you want good service at a fair price, it's all about finding companies you can trust. Rightio fails that test abysmally.

We called Rightio for a trivially simple job, disconnecting an old radiator we wanted to get rid of: they said it would take less than an hour and cost £139. The plumber they sent didn't know a thing! He wasted a full hour figuring out how to shut the water off (waving off our attempts to just tell him), then spent all of 15 minutes removing the radiator and capping the pipes, then wasted another hour struggling to re-pressure the boiler, even though, and I quote "I've never seen one like this, I don't know how it works." We've re-pressured it before, we tried to tell him he was doing it wrong, but he got stubborn and abusive. He never did get it to work either, we just managed to get him out of the room.

As a result, they tried to charge us for THREE HOURS, £450. I tried to dispute it, but they have a great scheme: they insist on clearing the bill right there as the plumber got ever more agitated: raising his voice at us, shouting at the phone as we spoke to Rightio, even knocked over the coffee we made him splashing the whole wall. We were happy to settle at £350 to get him out of the house.

In summary, if you like watching a 15 minute job spun into a 3 hour one, paying 3 times as much for half the job, and having in the end to do half the work yourself, by all means go with Rightio!