Baer Necessities Contracting

Our experience with Baer Necessities Contracting was a dismal reflection on both the company and its owner, Vince. If our experience was reflective of the general level of work, professionalism and integrity generally demonstrated by Baer Necessities, I can only assume that this review will soon be about a closed business.

After consulting with and requesting quotes from multiple roofing companies we hired Vince due to largely to his personal relationship with my brother as well as slightly better pricing than some quotes in May 2015 to put a new roof on our home. Our initial impression was of a genuine person who knew their craft and was grateful to have earned our business. Vince began the project in mid-July and we expected him to be finished, as he told us he would, in two to three days. We could not have been prepared for the three weeks the job would actually take him to complete.

If the timing of the job were the only issue we encountered, we would have been glad to chalk it up to unforeseeable circumstance/bad luck/general bad time management, but this was not the case. Our experience started with the dumpster being delivered and then sitting empty in our driveway for two days for an unknown reason, the scheduled start date was pushed back (maybe a chance of rain? it never rained). He only showed up with a crew for one day and left shortly after their lunch break, then no-call-no-show the following day. We were told that they were in an accident and didn't come which at the time was a believable and unfortunate circumstance, after months of continued interaction, I am not sure that an accident ever occurred. From the third day on (yes it really took 3 weeks to replace a roof) Vince would arrive alone between 8 and 9am and would work until about 12 or 1pm and then leave for the day with near daily commentary about how far of a drive and how inconvenient it was to get to our home each morning, which is how he justified his late arrivals. His early departures each day were justified by saying he was getting too hot on the roof and that he was a victim of sun poisoning.

More excuses were made about the increasingly absurd amount of time he was taking to complete our roof by explaining to us that he could not bring crew members with him because he was working on a job for a new plastic surgeon in the area who he prioritized because he was wealthy and more rude and demanding than we were. Vince actually verbalized to us that he was more concerned about not upsetting this other customer because he is a wealthy man whom he was afraid of upsetting by taking too long to complete his job. Yes, the owner of the business we that hired and paid told us that our dollar is worth less than someone else's because of his perception of their net worth.

Even through all of this we just wanted the job done and remain polite and courteous without potentially creating additional problems or delays. Even as Vince was telling us how happy he was that we was "making a good bit of money from our job" because he was doing all the work solo rather than paying a crew; even as our roof was dubbed by him the "job from hell"; even as three days after completion of the job and alleged scheduling pickup of the dumpster we called the dumpster company and they had no record of a pickup scheduled; we remained patient. However, the final straw came at the end of the job.

Vince told us on his final day that he would be back in 2 weeks (10th-14th of August, yes your math is right that is 3 months after signing a contract) after things had settled/expanded/etc to seal the new skylight windows that he installed and do some finish work on the roof. So, after a month of not hearing from him, we reached out to schedule a time for him to come back. We scheduled a time which he decided not to show up for or call us about. So, we followed up again in a couple of days and scheduled another time. I bet you can guess what happened, yep no show, no call. So, AGAIN, called, scheduled a time and no call no show. After this time, Vince decided his best course of action was to avoid contact completely. We have called, texted, even left Facebook messages on his business site and have heard nothing back, not a call, not a text, nothing for the past 2+ months that we have been contacting him regularly to complete the job like he said he would. Now, our mistake was paying him the second half of the cost of the job before the finishing work was done, but in our minds there was a big difference between unprofessionalism/apparent incompetence and total dishonesty/stealing through not completing work that you were paid to do.

If you are contemplating using Baer Necessities for a job at your house/business/other, after our experience, we could not recommend strongly enough that you look to another contractor.