- Browse Businesses
- Guides
- Beauty & Fashion
- Consumer Tips
- Write a Review
- For Business
- Request a Review
- Discussions
- Backed by the National Science Foundation
- Sign up
- Log in
I gave Ben three cuckoo clocks to fix. One of them simply had the chains which hold the weights jammed. One had a chain which had broken and had come crashing onto the floor along with its weight.One of them had a door which opened to expose animation and which became loose and was hanging by its wire. On the clock where the chain had broken he was supposed to replace all three chains so they would match in color ( oxidation had taken place). Instead he replaced only the one faulty one with a bright gold chain which didn't match and looked awful. He charged me $350.00. To top it off, every once in a while the weight drops abut six inches as though it is not even on its wheel. Whatever was wrong to make it fall initially has not been fixed. On the clock with the broken door he managed to fix that but then part of the animation which had been working was no longer working. He took it again, telling me it had worn out since he had the clock but when he brought it back one chain had no ring to stop the chain from being raised too high, the three weights could not be raised to the same height, they were at three different heights when fully raised, and the clock would just stop working midway through the animation. All of that had been working perfectly till he worked on it again. Again, he charged quite a bit, somewhere around $400.00The third clock is a corker. It took me a while to realize what he had done, but when I heard the cuckoo I realized it was not MY cuckoo. I studied the clock and realized he had replaced the entire movement, cuckoo included, had replaced both chains with a very bright gold, and had replaced the dial. He didn't even put the dial with its Roman numerals on correctly, either, because the number 12 is positioned at 8 o'clock. How less than bright can one man be? He denied everything but I happen to have videos of photos of all my clocks. This is a very old clock which I have had for over fifty years, and it was old when I got it. He either wanted the antique parts for himself or for another clock, or he had the identical clock which had already been jury rigged with cheap parts years ago and swapped them. The man is not only inept, he is a crook. The photo on the left is what he brought back. The one on the right is my original clock. I left a message telling him I wanted the parts he took to be returned but obviously he has not responded and never will. He wanted to charge me over $400.00 and I had said I would pay him when I got my clock parts back, not that the original job was merely to fix a jammed chain. Stay as far away from this guy as possible.
Followup. Shortly after I wrote this review the entire chain came off and the weight came crashing to the floor. I now have a non-working clock hanging on the wall and can't find anyone to fix it!
Tip for consumers:
Stay away.
Have ordered before with good results
Had them years ago and they died!
The agent who I hired to sell my house has done nothing and I asked to be released from the sales agreement. She said all I needed to do was sign a withdrawal from an MLS agreement and I would have no further responsibility to her or her agency.
That was a lie. The sales agreement with her, a Mona Schechner, said that if I terminated the contract I would still be liable for a commission. She kept arguing it was not true and her agency manager, a Mr. Piscopio, insisted the same thing.
My attorney also said they could soak me at some point for payment and two other agents I know in the area could not believe that clause was in the agreement. My fault for missing it, but it was there, and yet it was not in an earlier agreement I had with her when she had had my listing earlier, for a six-month period.
Agency manager threatened to go after me legally, his emails were extremely abusive and frightening. I am probably going to have to report them to NYS and take them to court as well.
Agent has responded to my review on another site with multiple lies, including the timeline of signing with her. She claims many people were brought here and that I had formal offers which I turned down. Far from true. There is no way for me to dispute her lies on that site, unfortunately.
If I could leave no stars at all, I would. I would even put in minus stars. My charges on Instacart's site are almost $100 higher than the invoice which came with the order. Things I did not ask for replacement for if out of stock were replaced, and with items I do not want. Four pounds of chicken resulted in one small $3.00 package. Linguine with red clam sauce turned out to be white clam sauce. I ordered a quesadilla which I did not get, but got a package of flour tortillas. I ordered meatloaf with mashed potatoes and got one slab of meat which looks like shoe leather, and no potatoes. I got salmon salad instead of shrimp salad. I hate salmon salad. This is only a few of the problems with this order. I can't seem to get an answer from Instacart or even a summary of what has been charged to my card. I will never order from Instacart again.
I only just discovered that here in New York State it is the LAW that a home improvement contractor must provide you with a written contract with the total cost of labor, materials ( along with the names of the manufacturers of the materials), length of time the job will last, and that if a contract is not provided, that contractor is breaking the law. I was never given a contract or asked to sign one, although Elite has claimed on two separate occasions that I signed one and they would provide a copy ( would have been impossible) and then claimed I refused to sign a contract. Neither are true. They are also by law supposed to provide a written warranty for all work and materials. I do not have that either. So they are in violation of NYS law at least on two counts. All this information is listed on the site of the Attorney General of NYS.
They are now suing me for the balances on the countertops and labor associated with installing them even though the material was not supplied and work not done. In addition, they have decided not to return the almost $5000. 00 they have which were deposits on materials and payment for a sink drain and bottom grid. He has rebutted my review on a couple of sites, and his rebuttal is full of lies. After insisting to me that I had signed a contract with him ( and he never did bring me a copy) he has now stated I refused to sign one, and he regrets it. He claims I simply changed my mind on the material when in fact he ordered the wrong item. There is a lot more he lied about, but too much to go into here. He claims I did not hire Elite Kitchen and Bath, but rather Express Contracting. This is probably because I pointed out that Elite is not licensed, as it should be. I hired Elite Kitchen and Bath, period. In all actuality, I never even knew there was such a thing as Express Contracting until he had me write out some checks to them. He is very quick to state that his workers are "legal" immigrants on his payroll. Since this topic never came up, I have to wonder why he is mentioning it- he "doth protest too much". Something I never thought about, but maybe now is the time to think about it. He claims I got detailed invoices with material and cost on each project. No, not true. He still will not explain why I had over ten thousand dollars worth of "materials" from Home Depot, when it is an impossibility. None of those items are described. Since everything he purchased for me is listed separately, there can not be an additional $10,000.00 of "materials". That's a heck of a lot of grout.
I dont even know where to start. I dont know if I will have enough room to list everything that went wrong. Elite kitchen and Bath/Express Contracting are two business arms of the same company. Elite sells you the materials, and you pay Express ( by the man hour) for labor. You wind up paying checks out to both companies, and in all actuality, I also wound up paying over $11,000 to the father of the owner, David, who may or may not still be part of the business, but my check sure as heck was not written out to a business. Express is apparently not licensed as I write ( it was) and Elite has never been licensed. The Dept of Consumer Affairs told me that any retail business which refers, recommends, uses- any entity which does home improvement work must also be licensed, so Elite is in violation of licensing law. I was also supposed to be given a contract with all the details and the cost of the job, both labor and materials, but no, I never got one. All contractors know what a job is going to cost, but this one just shows up every week or two, like a rent collector, to get a check for the work which was done over the past two week period. After a while you do not even know how many hours the guys worked, on which jobs, and how much you are even paying. They are also not listed with the Better Business Bureau, and according the the BBB site, they never gave them the information requested in order to list them.
I hired Elite to put down a tile floor in my basement, and new ceiling tiles as well. I also hired them to do part of my kitchen, mainly replacing the island with a new one, the countertops on both the L-shape part and the new island, and to purchase and install a new wall oven, microwave, dishwasher, and eventually a sink and cooktop on the new counter. They also did some other minor jobs for me which I will mention later.
The guy who did the basement floor spent over three weeks, ten hours a day, putting down that floor. It is a very small basement, and should have taken a third of the time. At $70 an hour labor to Express Contracting, that puts an awful lot of money in their pockets. They claim they purchased over nine hundred very large floor riles - roughly 9 X 34, but I have no information on manufacturer, color, where they came from, and there is not even one small piece left over, and I have no warranty on the floor.
After almost six months, they were dragging their feet; things should have been finished in half the time. They also purchased and installed a storm door for me, which was costly, installed it incorrectly, and it is going to have to be removed. They took my entrance door off to install new weatherstrip on the bottom, and now it is difficult to open and close the door - it drags. The guy insists thats the way it should be. No, not true.
He brought in a painter he sub-contracts to for painting a kitchen with very little wall and trim, laundry room, powder room and basement, to the tune of over $11,000. The guy did not repair or sand anything, but merely painted over all the damage. According to David Sharbani, if things needed repair, they should have just been ripped off and replaced with new trim. Sorry, that is not what I do. The guy also got paint on the floors, windows, doorknobs, and ore. I am still scraping it. IN addition, he was supposed to cut out and replace a piece of sheetrock which had mold on it, and he simply painted right over it. I now have to pay someone to do that job.
There were thousands of dollars of items listed as having been purchased from places like Home depot, a lumber yard, a plumbing supply place. Nothing was itemized, no names of actual items purchased. There was no way in hell that the amount of supposed purchases were used in this house.
They left black rut marks all over my patio with their equipment, and I had just spent a fortune having it power washed.
His guys insisted on storing things in my garage, and even though I watched like a hawk, and stopped them from cutting wood and mixing grout near my car, they succeeded in damaging the car and I had to take it in for bodywork.
The straw that broke the camels back was the day the men finally arrived with the countertops, right after breaking up and removing what was here, along with my sink, cooktop, turning off the gas supply to the cooktop and all my plumbing in the kitchen. They showed up with the wrong color and pattern, and then the owner insisted its what I ordered. I know darn well what I ordered, and when I told him we had discussed my order being based on blending in with a few small counter areas which were to remain, he did not remember that discussion, nor did he remember bringing the sample I picked out, but somehow he did remember the wrong pattern he ordered. He attempted to paint me as inept and doddering. He was more than willing to order a new counter, and charge me his cost. Was not going to happen.
I had to hire someone else for the counters, and to install the appliances and sink, so I am without a kitchen for weeks now, and living mostly elsewhere, coming back to the house when necessary. He owes me money as well, which he has not produced. He owes for the countertops, the sink drain and bottom grid, all of which he got paid for. All in all he owes me about $5000. 00 and Express owes me for $12 00.00 worth of work of installing the new counters and hooking everything up. I probably have to go to court to recoup my losses. He also should pay for the damage to my entrance door and the abominable storm door, as well as a new painter to undo the damage his guy did. Paid these guys over $70,000 and the jobs probably could have been done, and done better and more efficiently at almost half the price. After almost fifty years of using contractors and being my own contractor at times, you would think I knew better, but he was strongly recommended by someone I knew, and the referral was seconded by someone who lives in my neighborhood. Could they be so clueless, or is it that David figured he could con a widowed senior citizen?
I ordered a rug through Houzz, which is apparently one of the places Rugs Done Right deals with. I discovered immediately that I could get the rug for $100 less. I tried to cancel, and Houzz sent a message that I would hear in three-five days. Needless to say, the rug shipped before they even got to me, and I am now responsible for paying return shipping. Rugs Done Right knows this, and aside form the fact that they are making an inordinate profit because their free shipping really isn't ( it's tacked onto the price of the rug), they make no attempt to rectify the problem. Do not deal with Rugs Done Right OR with Houzz.
Houzz has a lot of items which are actually being sold by a third party. I wrote to cancel an item almost immediately after ordering it, but as Houzz's website states, they will respond in "three to five days". By the time they managed to have the actual vendor contact me, the item had been shipped. The vendor states I have to pay for return shipping, and it is a very heavy and large rug. If Houzz had decent customer service, this never would have happened. I will never purchase from them again.
You do NOT want to ever use this dentist. Over and above the fact that he is horribly expensive, his workmanship is poor, and his lab even worse. I was recommended to him by a dentist I had used for decades, who was no longer available to care for me. Whereas my original dentist was caring and did not do unnecessary procedures, and bent over backwards to do excellent work at a fair price. Dr. Fischman did a number of root canals which were probably not necessary, and caused the eventual extraction of two front teeth because he did not have the patience to remove temporary bridgework slowly, and used a pneumatic hammer, which causes trauma to the teeth. Instead of x-raying teeth which were sensitive ( he insisted you could not tell the state of a tooth through an x-ray - fail), but in truth, it was easier and more lucrative to do a root canal and consider the problem solved. I went to a surgeon for the implants, and there was no problem with that work, but I then spent over two years with Dr. Fischman unable to make the crown and bridge successfully. The teeth would hit before I closed down, I would wind up constantly biting the inside of my cheek, and my jaws ached. I have had problems biting into certain foods, and chewing most is difficult. He would grind them, drill them to the extent they looked awful, and they still did not fit. The porcelain ( if that's what it is, to start) does not even come to the gum line, and I have metal showing above every tooth. I did not have that kind of recession when I first went to him. When I insisted he at least do the bottom over altogether, and remove the bridgework with a drill, and not the hammer, he grudgingly did so, and charged me all over again for those teeth, even adding more to the total. Over and above the problem with fit, the quality and appearance of the crowns were awful. There was no comparison to the crown and bridge I had in my mouth when I went to him. I had had full mouth restoration at least twice before I went to Dr. Fischman, and never had a problem. After over two years, he reluctantly told me he had lost my impressions early on, so what he was doing was "winging it", and that's when I realized he could never get me back to where I was. He had also shifted the top teeth, and brought them in. He had apparently also "lost" the original temporary for the top, which would have, at least, given an indication of where the top should have been, since those temporaries were from my original impressions just before he "lost" them. I now have to find a new dentist and hope that person can restore my bite, and give me cosmetically decent crowns. When I went to him, I knew I would need a few extractions and implants, but thought that after that I would have new crown and bridge which was the equivalent of what I had originally. Boy, was I ever wrong. Right now I do not even want to open my mouth because people might see these teeth. It is going to cost me an arm and a leg and a lot of discomfort now to try to remedy the mess he made in my mouth,. I frankly do not understand how any dentist could be this bad.
Tip for consumers:
This dentist has now refused to send me my valid dental records so I could see another dentist and have everything remediated. He withheld the records from my previous dentist, falsified his records, would not send me the x-rays he first took when I went to see him, or the impressions and models.
Stay far away. I ordered an expensive Epson printer from them. It had a $250 rebate, but required the UPC code from the carton. The carton came damaged with pieces of outer cardboard ripped off, and among them was the UPC code. Adorama would not do anything about it, so I was out $250.00. I will never buy anything from them again. They were responsible for getting everything to me in one piece, and they did not, but they would not make good on their problem.
Leslie doesn’t have any fans yet.
Leslie isn’t following anybody yet.
Empty.
Great service and very knowledgeable. Everyone I had the pleasure to talk with where very...
I was sorry to read that this was your experience and can only think that this was down to human error. If you could please email me, Helen@adorama.com with your order number I will give this my immediate attention.
Please accept my apologies for the frustration and disappointment caused, and I very much look forward to hearing from you.
Helen Oster
Adorama Camera