Urban Abode

Hi, it's Brad McCallum, owner of Urban Abode here, and I'd like to make a response to the above complaint. I believe in fully taking responsibility for my company's actions, and I'm very disappointed to have read this complaint online.

Like any company working in home renovations in Calgary, with a tight labour market, entitled trades, and common delays like illnesses, material availability, I will admit there are challenges that can sometimes prove frustrating for the customer involved in ANY renovation, whether they hired Urban Abode, or another quality renovation firm. However, this is an incredibly unfair, and untruthful review of our company.

I won't go into great detail about things, but suffice it to say that one cause of delay on the project was the flood of 2013. We were wrapping up the project, just 3 days left on the main and second floor phase of the renovation when the flood hit.

The access to Elbow Valley was shut down for a few days, and we had trades who were affected. All of us had friends we were helping out at that time. We informed the customers on the day that the police came knocking at the jobsite that the area was being shut down, that we would need a few extra days to wrap up the details, to offset the few days delayed. Ask yourself it that sounds reasonable to you when judge the merits of this review!

The customers mentioned timelines. We had 60 days to finish the main and second floor renovation. That project was about $50k. DURING the renovation, the customers continued to add work to the project, nearly growing the scope and value of the work to 190% its original size.

Does it seem reasonable that the project could be completed in the same timeline as originally quoted when it nearly doubles in size? Well, even though that is not reasonable, we wanted to please our customers, so we did work to complete it on schedule. Of course, we didn't allow for a 100 year flood to spoil the last few days of the schedule, but no one in Calgary did. In order to get that work done, we told the customers we would push back the basement development's progress so we could focus on getting them to move into the main and second floor of their large home.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

The comment of over budget really bothers me. The customers were continually told of what the extra expenses would be if they continued to change the scope of work. There was no budget set, and if there was one, it was not dictated to me.

When a customer asks me to paint there kitchen, I provide a cost, get the approval, and then complete the work. That does not mean we are 'over budget.' Maybe the customers went over their own budget, but once again - how was Urban Abode suppose to know if we were continually asked to add more work. Between the basement and the main and second floor renovations the customers added over $70k in additional work and upgrades. These upgrades included home theaters, wine cellars, steam showers, etc.

Our contracts are one of the most transparent in the business, there was NEVER any suggestion that something was included in our contracts, and then charged for later. We have NEVER done that, nor has anyone ever said that we have done that - ever! Not until this complaint. The customers never told me these concerns either, just online.

Unfortunately, the customers seemed to show an extreme bias against working blue collar trades. I heard twice from them over the course of the project that someone wasn't qualified to do the work, and that someone may have been drunk or high. This is an incredibly unfair and untrue statement. Our wood finisher was working on the site on a Saturday because the customers wanted someone there.

He was sick, with diabetes and terribly painful neuropathy. He was having a bad day, and was in a lot of pain, and had taken his medication. They said he looked spaced out. However, there was no complaints about his work.

Our wood finisher worked with Urban Abode for a few months after this and had to cut back his hours continually due to his debilitating illness, eventually having to go on permanent leave due to his worsening condition. He was not high, not drunk, just working on a day that he was in a lot of pain because he was trying to complete the work. The second time the customer made a comment about one of our guys not being capable was when one of our labourers did some demolition. They performed the work well, but unfortunately the customers didn't appreciate what was involved.

When they saw the work he had done they concluded that he was unskilled and could not work in their home. Fair enough - they are welcome to choose who works in their home, but they arrived at an incorrect assumption based on their own lack of knowledge on what was needed to do the job.

The suggestion that we hire people without a trade ticket is patently false. All registered trades do the work of the skilled trades.

However, there are many moving pieces to renovations - delivery of materials, cleaning up of job sites, performing simple tasks - all of which can be handled by people who do not have a trade ticket. It's just not realistic to expect that a ticketed trade like an electrician is going to also be the person sweeping up your job site, any more realistic then it is to believe that your neurosurgeon will be cleaning bed pans. Sub-standard work? This is not the case, and never has been.

The home is beautiful. The customer wrote this review at a time when they wanted Urban Abode to refund them for $14000.00 of custom window shutters. That is the only reason I could imagine for the claim that work is substandard. The home is so incredibly nicely finished, the design so fantastic, and the quality of the work so high that I wish future customers of ours could walk through and judge for themselves.

Look at our work online - it's impressive. Look at our profile on Houzz - how many renovators do you see in Calgary with work as prolific and custom as Urban Abode's? Our quality and design are at the top of the pack, and we just won awards for customer service and design. Now, about those shutters.

The customers did order custom window shutters through Urban Abode. This was a mistake on OUR part. We are not a custom window shutter company, and there was a large learning curve to the process of ordering and getting everything right. In hindsight, I would have asked the customers to go directly to a custom shutter company.

The order was first delayed due to details of the order, then by a part of the manufacturer. When the shutters did finally arrive, months later then we had all originally planned there was a hitch - some were too tight - by a 1/16" of an inch. Remember - Urban Abode custom builds and finishes custom cabinetry all the time. We had three skilled carpenters at the time.

Custom fitting window shutters is not a problem for us! But there was a problem - the customers changed their mind about wanting window shutters. They felt they shouldn't need to be cut/adjusted to fit their extremely unsquare windows. They felt the paint was too perfect on the shutters that they didn't 'look' like wood, even though they obviously were.

They felt the view in their new home was too nice to cover up. They felt they waited too long - which I agree was unfortunate. The point is this - they would not allow us to install the shutters. They decided they did not want them.

But they were custom made!!! What was Urban Abode suppose to do? We were not allowed to install them. They sat in their garage.

The customers owed me nearly $40000.00. I was told I could receive payment if we refunded the shutters. As a business owner who had suppliers, trades and my own people to pay I was left with a challenging situation. Force what was lawful - the fact that you can not change your mind on custom built shutters, and fail to cover our expenses with people we made promises to, or to eat the cost, refund the $14000.00 and move on with our lives.

I still have all of the beautiful wood shutters sitting in my warehouse, unable to use anywhere because of the fact that they are custom built for that one particular home. I think this shows Urban Abode's integrity - not that we were dishonest in any way. The last item I want to discuss is communication. The customers once left me a voicemail at 11:45 at night.

When I called back at 9:05 a.m. the next morning, I was warned by the husband that his wife was furious. I was asked to call her and talk to her. I did, and I was told that 'wealthy people expect a different level of service.' In fact, throughout the project I was told about how wealthy people deserved better and special service, and that we should be on call 24-7.

Urban Abode does try to accommodate our customers requests, but they do have to be reasonable. The comment that we don't return emails or phone calls is only true if you believe that calling someone 8 times in a row without them answering is the equivalent to 'ignoring' them. If I was on the other line, or in a meeting, I would often return to find that my phone had been called 6-8 times. Including my home phone number, where I had two young children at home.

Every single time I saw they called, or emailed I responded. (Keep in mind that the industry standard set by RenoMark program states that the contractor will call the customer back in 48 hours at the most! Not 48 seconds.) The feeling that all of us working on the home were beneath them, second rate, lower class people was continually how we were treated. We weren't trusted, although we never did anything to lose that trust.

What I will say is that I've never been so poorly treated by anyone before in my life. I've never had someone speak to me the way I was spoken to by these customers. Because large sums of money were on the line, I just shrugged it away and always dealt professionally with the customers. I was continually SCREAMED AT.

We were THREATENED, told that they would "END OUR BUSINESS", call "GLOBAL TV", and they SCREAMED OBSCENITIES repeatedly on the phone. I'm not exaggerating - I have recordings which I'd share with their own neighbors to see just how poor this behaviour is, but I don't wish to embarrass the customer with them. So, at the end of the day, we refunded them $14000.00. We also paid for their hotel stay immediately following the flood because the flood was our fault in some inexplicable way.

We discounted thousands off of the invoice in addition to all of that. The customers even signed an agreement that they would not make this complaint in order to receive the $14000.00 refund - but as you can see they mislead me and they were the ones who were dishonest. This is unfortunate, because customers on sales calls have asked about this complaint, and it costs my company business, a business I've ran with integrity and honesty from the start as a way to provide for my own family, and to give them the best future I can. I'm so thoroughly disappointed and hurt that the customers would have made these complaints, and so I must defend myself.

There are so many variable in home renovations, that things can go wrong, and sometimes delays can occur. We do what we can to mitigate these, and we always work with the customers to provide a more-than-reasonable solution. Our customers, and their referrals, are our businesses lifeline. If a mistake ever happens on a jobsite, we always take accountability and make it right, and in the end, I feel that's exactly why you should hire us - and disregard this unfair complaint.

With every project, we can look back and see how we can improve as a company, and this project is no different.

We wouldn't get order window shutters again, we would make sure the customers fully understand the implications of added work on timelines, and we would be careful to get into business with people who treat us with less professionalism then we treat them.