Trust

Admittedly, I have trust issues. That truth is the product of both my natural personality and my life experiences.

Today I had to break ties with the company I hired back in November to finish our basement. The reason? I don't trust them anymore. It makes me sad because I want to believe that people are honest, that they take responsibility for their promises, and that they try to be fair and transparent. It's disappointing to discover this is not always true.

This company, called Probasements, advertises on social media to be "fast, organized, and transparent." I found it to be none of these things. I hired Probasements in mid-November to begin work the day after we closed on our home. Part of the reason I chose them over the other bids I received is that they promised they would have the project completed by Christmas. It is now mid-March, and it's still not done.

They are woefully disorganized; they show up with no warning, do a bit of work, then disappear for days and sometimes weeks. When we hadn't seen or heard from them in 4.5 weeks, Shulamith found one of them on social media and threatened to take him to court. That motivated them to install flooring the very next day, but we've heard nothing from them since.

Feeling less and less confident in these people, I called the City of Bluffdale to make sure they had actually secured a permit for this work. They had. And their early work passed a legitimate inspection by the City. Thank goodness! However....

My conversation with the guy from the City revealed that Probasements no longer has a license. Before I hired them, Gerald checked to make sure they were licensed and insured, and without a license, they would never have been issued a permit. Apparently, that license was revoked sometime in December, because they have a history of starting projects and then just peacing out, leaving the projects only partly done.

Say what??????????

Well this is awesome. Not only do we have a partially-finished basement that was supposed to be done by Christmas, but now our contractor is unlicensed. And no, they never shared this information with me.

We will be hiring a new contractor to finish this project ASAP.

Oh, and my trust issues? Yeah, this isn't helping.