Great Additions

We hired Great Additions to redo our second floor - dormer and increase sq footage. Their sales pitch is impeccable, and their quote was the lowest of all that we had received. That in itself should have been a red flag. Well the whole job was a disaster from day one. Our project manager was Michael G, the owner's son, and to say that he is irresponsible would be putting it mildly. I am going to summarise below all the issues that we faced, but the biggest issue is Michael - thoroughly unprofessional, constantly promises something and fails to deliver, and never listens to our grievances and is oftentimes dismissive. So here goes -
1. Construction delays and missed deadlines resulted in our project being prolonged by 2 months - Michael would constantly promise to send workers over and they did not show up.
2. Destroyed our deck - I spent two weeks removing the construction debris and cleaning and re-staining. Michael promised to clean up on multiple occasions but never did, as usual.
3. Partially destroyed my storage shed - One of the demo guys was walking around on the roof of my home depot shed and put a crack in the roof joint. - Michael promised to replace the roof on multiple ocassions, but as usual never did. I had to finally settle for him using some industrial glue to bond/fill the crack, and it still leaks when it rains.
4. Left debris all over the backyard for me to clean up - Michael made promises to send a crew to clean up, and again no one showed up.
5. Destroyed our existing split a/c system - They were contractually obligated to take down the system and put it back up. They told s that they worked with the best hvac company on Long Island (Phoenix Air, what a joke!). It has been 6 months now since that company has been trying to fix their mistakes and we are left with a non-functioning condenser and 4 units. Michael and his father both have hinted on multiple occasions that the system was faulty before they took it down!! The Phoenix air tech also accused me to damaging my own condenser! Why would I do that? Anyways, this is by far the biggest loss - 12K write off.
6. The new baseboard heating system installed on the 2nd floor only works in 1 room. The other 3 rooms barely heat up. Michael informed me that this is how baseboards work. They are inefficient. I did not know how to respond to that ridiculous statement! Secondly, in one of the room I can hear the system making a racket, and it is not air that is the culprit. I paid a plumber to come in and bleed the system and he informed that if it was air we would hear it all over the 2nd floor.
7. Inadequate exhaust fans - This issue was finally resolved, but only because one of Michael's workers verified my claims. Initially, when we started bathing in our two bathrooms on the 2nd floor, both the bathrooms would fog up, even when we left the doors ajar. I complained to Michael on multiple occasions that the exhaust fan was not powerful enough. And every time I was told that I did not know what I was talking about (per se), and everything was fine. It's only when one of his plumbers came by to look at something else and I showed him the problem, was when he called Michael and told him that the fans were inadequate. The plumber went to a big box store and purchased two new fans and replaced the originals. The bathrooms now vent just fine.
8. When we first started using the 2nd floor, we noticed that when my son walked in his bedroom (right above our first floor living room) the chandelier in the living room would sway dramatically. When we brought this to Michael's attention he, as usual, brushed it off as nothing. When we pressed home the point he made some excuse about how he cannot control how the existing structure behaves, and that we should have somehow thought about this before going ahead with the construction! It is only when we threatened to withhold the last tranche of payment that he wizened up and send his folks in to make some big repairs in out first floor ceiling, so that it would support the 2nd floor bedroom.
The above 8 instances are just a few of the numerous times that we encountered issues. All in all I estimate that we have incurred losses of greater than $10000 and have been lied to constantly throughout this process. DO NOT HIRE THESE FOLKS - caveat emptor!!