Santay

Saying that I don't recommend Santay Landscape and Decking ( with " locations" in both Hayward and Sonora) and it's sole proprietor, Peter Koehler, would be an understatement. Consider this review a warning!

Do not hire this unscrupulous contractor! He lies, double talks, refuses to put what is discussed in writing and then conveniently "forgets" what he's told you so he can charge more for what was originally discussed or acts like he's doing you a big favor.

He tries to twist what was said around and arguing with him is pointless. We even had to put what we discussed with him in writing in emails ourselves which cost us considerable time to do what should be his job. The contracts he's given us, carefully and purposely have minimal written on them, so once he screws a person over, they have little recourse.

As customers, we try hard to give people we hire benefit of the doubt that they will do what they say they will do, as well try and accept and not dictate to them the way they should be handling their business. There's just so many times one can ask for an invoice or something in writing. He's supposedly been in business 15 years but there are no reviews for him anywhere. He sets everything up to cover his butt. We'd thought it was just him being careless or casual, but it's much more sinister and planned, thought through and contrived.

He's cashed each check we've given him immediately so a stop payment cannot be put on. We realized this with the last check we gave him a week ago before the job was finished. I did not think it was a good idea, but after the price being told to us differently and (of course) higher, every few days, my husband thought giving him the final check before the work was done or getting the final write off from the city for a permit we pulled and paid about $1200 for, would prevent us being charged even more.
But all it did was to let him walk away with the work unfinished and an email from him ( after multiple emails and texts asking him when he was going to finish) saying basically " too bad, good luck".

He has also has in his possession and is refusing to return,our engineered drawings, stamped by the city that we paid almost $4000 to an engineer to draw for us, as well as the city permit that cost $1200 that he's lied to us about, saying it was written off and it has not been, nor can we get it written off with him holding on to it. In other words, on top of his unscrupulous and unethical behavior, he's a thief. He has no reason to be refusing to return our property to us since he's been paid in full for the overpriced amount he asked for, for unfinished and very mediocre work.

He chops and changes, bait and switches and outright lies. We've now paid him almost $20,000 to do a job that was quoted at about half that amount. With hindsight, we should not have even written the second check until we had an invoice for an ordinary redwood section of fence that should have cost about $1500 to replace,but ended up costing $2200. He's promised invoices and warranties and we've had nothing. He had told us back in March both deck projects would be about $35,000 and take about two weeks to complete. The truth was, just one of the decks has now cost $18,500 and took over 6 weeks and has been left unfinished.

We now have to find an attorney, file a small claims suit, make a police report for theft and we don't know if we'll ever get our drawings or permit back totaling over $5000. We also need to find someone to finish what we already paid him to finish as well as find a new contractor to do the other deck which is falling down and may not last the winter. Being the end of Sept it's doubtful we will be able to do this before next Spring.
Oh...and as a side note:
He snoops through everything. He went through our recycling as he asked me something about a magazine we had put in there, although he did not have anything he put in it himself and no reason to have even opened the pail. This troubled me very much and when I asked why he was going through our recycling, he told me it was one of the ways "he found out things about people". Super creepy!!!!

Be warned not to hire this lying snake!