TradesPro

I never write bad reviews. When work goes badly I always resolve things amicably with the business as I don't want to damage someone's reputation. But in this instance it is worth warning people about Richard as he is dishonest and unethical. I hired him to do a variety of jobs and initially thought most of his work was okay, but after he left I noticed a lot of issues. I had Richard fit a shower head in my bathroom along with other 2nd fix plumbing. I had told him that my previous builder who renovated the bathroom had problems with their plumbing work (which is why I had them stop and hired Richard to finish the job) and so I needed him to make sure everything worked properly. He was aware of my concerns and said he was going to test the shower head before sealing it, and even brought a bucket upstairs to catch the water. He then "finished" the bathroom work and at the end I asked him "so everything works okay, there aren't any issues? " and he said it was all good. I didn't use the shower right away as I wanted the silicone and everything to fully cure. But when I went to turn on the shower for the first time, no water came out. Richard lied about testing the shower before fitting it, and lied about everything working properly when he finished. If he had told me the water didn't work at the time I could have fixed the issue immediately. I have a different plumber here now and after having to cut out the ceiling to get to the joint (Richard sealed it improperly and we couldn't just unscrew the shower head) we immediately realised the problem is that there was a plug in the pipe connection which was easily visible -- all Richard had to do was remove that, but he never checked the pipe for water flow. What makes this situation worse is how Richard treated me when I called him about this. When I asked him if the shower was working when he tested it, he said "no the water had never come out, sorry". I asked him why he didn't tell me about it when he was here. He immediately got very defensive, said it's not his fault, he said I should have tested the shower myself and he's not taking responsibility for it. And then he hung up on me. I paid Richard for work he didn't do properly, and now I have to pay for more extensive work for my new plumber to fix this botched job -- this includes cutting plaster out of my ceiling, removing the shower head (which has damaged the shower head due to the poor install, and now I have to purchase another shower head), getting a new part for the original connection that was damaged trying to remove Richard's shoddy connection, and then I have to pay my decorator to repaint the newly plastered area. In addition to this fiasco, when Richard installed a radiator he damaged my wall, then tried to cover it up with silicone which made it worse. The radiator also leaked onto my wood floors and stained them. He installed 2 mirrors and both are slightly crooked. He installed door handles/deadbolts and one of the screws is bent and doesn't work, he just left it there and didn't bother replacing it with a new screw. One of the doors didn't close properly and I had to ask him to go back and fix it. He siliconed my bathroom very sloppily, some of it is lifting and he didn't wipe away the debris carefully, so there is a thin layer of silicone residue on all the tiles where it should have been wiped clean. I didn't notice it until after he left after letting the silicone set. On top of all of the above, I treated Richard really well. I paid him £80 each day to drive to me and back, so £240 for 3 days. I didn't have to do that but he had said he was struggling for work, and it was right before Christmas and I wanted to help him out. I also bought a new drill bit for him so he could drill through porcelain tile (what kind of handyman doesn't have the right drill bits, especially when so much tile is porcelain these days?) as well as a pack of angled nozzles for silicone, which added £40 to the bill. I am simply astounded at Richard's dishonesty and would not recommend him in any capacity.Moreexpand_more