Friday, April 07, 2006

It's Hard to Find Good Help

Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic, but every service person/company I've hired to prepare my house for its new life as a rental has performed unsatisfactorily. First, there's the handyman I hired to install a new garbage disposal. He forgot to punch the hole that connected the dishwasher to the garbage disposal. Consequently, the dishwasher wouldn't drain. It took a puddle of water and 45 minutes of investigation before I discovered the problem.

Then, I contacted someone from craigslist to install 2 deadbolts. The handyman calls to cancel at the exact time he was supposed to show up. He then asks to reschedule and promises to make that appointment, short of ending up in the hospital. Well, he missed that next appointment. I hope he's doing OK, because he's fired.

I then contacted another handyman to install these deadbolts. On the front door, I wasn't able to turn the deadbolt when the door was closed. That's a bad installation in my book. He finally fixed it, but there's wood filler and other hacks involved. Then on the back door, his drill bit started to exit on the other side. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but these are one-sided, keyless deadbolts.

The following day, I contracted with a service company to powerwash, paint, and clean my house. The powerwashing went well. That's pretty hard to screw up. The paint job was haphazard and represented something I could have done. As for the cleaning, they neglected to clean the inside of the oven, the workshop, the garage, and didn't bother with any of the blinds. We had a verbal agreement for all those things.

Where are all the good service people in Austin hiding?

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