I got my flat re-painted by Berger(Company certified painters) after 4 years of possession and really wanted to change the look of house with premium emulsion. It’s a tough job if all family members are working as they asked for 5-6 days to complete the repainting; one has to take leave and combine with weekend. So in order to avoid the hassles of handling roadside painters I decided to go with Berger’s certified painters.
Sales executive was too polished and punctual on initial visits till the contract/cheques were signed. They made a bill of Rs 35000/- for 1200 sqft flat(no negotiation), which I was ok with as the enthusiasm levels are too high when you choose lovely set of colors to start new year 2011 in a fresh looking home.
Although they promised that covering of all furniture etc will be done with utmost care and post-painting cleanliness is top on their priority but still we packed almost everything except furniture into the loft and cupboards to avoid any possibility of mess-up with paints.
Day 1 starts now, they sent two painters who were well behaved, they hardly worked for 4 hours though.
Day 2, Four painters arrive and created a havoc by breaking wall-clock, flower pots, wall-mounted decorative lamps(worth 2000/-) and numerous scratches on the vitrified tiles with their unpadded ladders. Their painting style was so bad that it reminded me of the early 1980s when white-wash was the name for interior painting, they didn’t care about our repeated requests to avoid haste and handle things with care.
We called the contractor and sales executive who turned by the end-of-day and promised that this would not repeat the next day.
Day 3, they got entire new bunch of workers, couple of them were acceptable but the other 3 were real bad. They repeated the same carelessness and cleanup of paints was not done at all, woodwork had emulsion dots/drops all over, this time even the contractor joined them and told that Berger does not provide more plastic covers so they have to reuse the ones used on day 1(I wonder where 35000 bucks goes), those covers already had lot of dirt/paint. At this point I was bit more cautious and dismantled the decorative lamps to safe place so that the hooligans dont have a chance.
Sales executive again promises that this wont repeat on Day 4.
Day 4, contractor comes late by 11:30AM and says that he is short of resources so there is a change in plan, Day 5 is scrapped out and they’ll complete all pending work on the same day. Again 4 workers spent some 7 hours(mostly they’ll close room for smoking bidis in balconies and relaxing between the coats instead of initiating other jobs). Day-5 was meant for finishing touch-ups and you can point out the leftovers only once the emulsion/enamel has dried up for few hours so this change in plan was
to avoid the finishing touchs by these scoundrels. By the End-of-day they left the kitchen door/window paints with once coat only stating that the enamel is out of stock!
Sales executive came back with feedback form, which was pre-filled by him with ‘Satisfied’ rating on all 50+ columns, and number of workers was bumped-up for each day(3, 5, 5, 5). The latter didn’t mattered to me as what else can you expect from these cheaters. I didn’t signed on it and they never bothered to take a feedback, belonging to Service industry(IT) I had a different perspective of customer satisfaction/feedback.
I had to hire 2 guys by paying 800/- the next day just for cleanup of the mess they created and ran away.
So total loss in addition to the contract payment of 35000 was around 3000, scratches on tiles is irreversible damage as you cannot get all tiles replaced easily and mental agony is obviously not measurable.
Berger support helpline did noted my complaint and again came back with lots of promises(which is propriety of Berger it seems:) and informed me that Senior person will get the feedback from me personally and do the best to finish pending things but what actually happened was that all 3 cheques were quietly en-cashed the same day so that there is no possibility of me canceling any of the cheques.
My advise would be to go with the road-side painters as Berger charges 2.5 times of the market rate and moreover your expectation wont be high with ordinary painters, their payment can be controlled on daily basis and you can buy the material personally.