39 Dollar Granite

We paid over $6k to this company, plus about $2500 for raw materials for their part of a bathroom remodel. The shower and backsplash installation were very problematic. The business owner engages in unethical business practices and hires poor quality subcontractors to complete the work. They have zero experience with showers or tile, and I imagine their lack of organization and communication result in problems with even the most standard jobs. I fully understand contracting jobs can have some delays and hiccups, but all of these issues together are unacceptable and resulted in significant delays that could have been avoided. Moreover, having to babysit the tile guy when he intermittently showed up for work caused me to lose a lot of time at work and to cancel a planned Valentine's day beach trip. Here's my summary of the issues: 1) The entire payment was taken hostage for over three weeks even though the deposit was supposed to be 50%. Even after recognizing the error, they did not offer to rectify. The company refused to refund the partial payment, and lied saying that this was their policy. This gave us less negotiating power regarding the next problems -- hence why the industry standard is to make the final payment AFTER the job is done correctly. 2) Shoddy tile work: Marble backsplash tiles were touching and the business owner lied again, saying that gravity causes natural variations in spacing. That is what spacers are for, I'm not an idiot, and 4 outside opinions confirmed. Several installed tiles were chipped and uneven There's even one marble mosaic tile that had a saw blade run through it. 3) Supervision and proper waterproofing: Not once did a supervisor from the company come to ensure that the tile person was upholding quality standards. A lack of oversight was a major problem because this was the only shower job they had ever done and (2) I had to take many hours away from work to look up, read, and request that standard precautions were taken to ensure proper waterproofing. This was not a one person job and that's all they sent. 4) Inexperience: I chose this company was because I THOUGHT they had experience with installing stone material. The tile installer did not have stone experience and we had a "grout crisis" when the stone started to absorb the dark grout I had chosen (the stone had not been properly sealed). I unexpectedly had to take a full day off of work to manage and hand scrub the the stained stone (which the company also did not offer to do). I was the site supervisor - I even came up with the idea of how to install the floating stone bench even though they had reassured me in the contract process that there was a plan. 5) Poor communication: The sales person provided invoices that looked like hieroglyphics, the business owner is often in China, and there were 2 more people who handled payment/management and the actual work. It was a terrible game of telephone no one had a full understanding of the plan despite me providing marked up photos indicating installation details. 5) Quote/invoice: The invoice was impossible to interpret and never clearly explained all the components of the job that were discussed. It was supposed to include a custom niche and corner shelves but those were not provided because of miscommunication and illegibility. They also charged more per square foot for the stone than we agreed upon when we chose the slab. 7) Timeline: We got our first quote from this company in December and the work was not complete for three months. All these issues, including the business owner's international travel, played a role. The tile subcontractor was completely unreliable, not showing up when he agreed to. 8) Cleanliness and stains: If I had carpet, it would be ruined. The tile man poured concrete-like material into our manicured Bermuda lawn, left bits of tile in the lawn and shrubs, and allowed plastic to float away into our neighborhood. And this dragged on for three weeks because the tile subcontractor was so unreliable and careless.