Catanzaro and Sons Painting

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• By Donald P.

  May 28, 2015

  Exterior house painting

  5 days

  Catanzaro & Sons Painting, Inc

  The newly painted house looked beautiful, as you'd expect. The following summer I noticed a few spots peeling on my south side. I felt funny calling them back for so small a problem and decided I'd take car of it myself. The summer passed without my getting to it, but it didn't seem like any big deal. By the next summer the peeling was spreading, but my health problems overshadowed the paint job problem (I'm disabled). By year 4 the side of the house (which faces the street) was a major embarrassment and my neighbors were asking me what happened to the paint. I called the owner , Hank Catanzaro, in June and he came to look. I asked him what would cause the paint to peel like it had and what he could do about it. He must have thought I wanted him to repaint it free of charge because his first response was that it had been 4 years. I told him I realized that and also it was my own fault for not calling the first year or 2. He took a close up look at the peeling shingles and told me they hadn't been sanded. After a short discussion, he left with his last words being, "I'll come back with a moisture meter and an estimate. I'll take care of you and give you a good price." I didn't hear from him until I got a company email soliciting business in September. I replied to the email that I'd been waiting to hear from him since June. Not remembering, he called me for an explanation and when I gave it to him he answered it must have been a "miscommunication" and said he'd be by the next week. (I later realized that when caught in a lie, his favorite expression is "It must have been a miscommunication"). The next time I heard from him was another solicitation in November. I made a sign ("Painted by Catanzaro & Sons 4 yrs. ago") and took a photo of it if front of the peeling side and sent it to him by email with a note about being embarrassed by the job he did. No response (apparently never downloaded the photo). Last month he sent a postcard solicitation, so I printed the email and photo & mailed it to him. That upset him. It wasn't a problem that my house looked like it hadn't been painted in 10 years, or that he lied to me twice about ever intending to give me a "good price" estimate to correct the job he had done. The reason it wasn't a problem was because it had been 4 years since he had painted the house, and the real problem was that I had let other people know that this was the condition of his work 4 years after. After several attempt by both of us, we finally spoke by phone. That didn't go well. When I tried to remind him he said he was going to give me an estimate and said the peeling was from not sanding properly, he denied ever saying that. The fact remains that if there was nothing wrong with the job looking like that after just 4 years, why was he so upset for anyone else to know this was the job he did 4 years ago? So he shifted tactics to try bully mode. He got verbally abusive, yelled, swore and I hung up, which is probably what he wanted anyway: Just go away. He does a lot of business in this town, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who are satisfied with his work - as long as everything goes well. But, if there's a problem don't expect his word to mean much.

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