When Top Professional Construction called for an appointment responding to our ad on Angi about renovation of our front porch, I sent them pictures of porch and the extensively rotted wood in several places that would need to be removed. They said they could do the job and sent Jake on 8/4/26.
We walked Jake through the porch and pointed out very specific items that were of major concern to us and told him the outcome we wanted which is to have the porch not rebuilt but renovated. He was very comfortable with what we wanted and said they d have no problem satisfying us. We were very pleased because most construction companies were saying the work was too difficult and time consuming. Jake told us exactly what we wanted to hear. He said they would be glad to do it for $18,500.00. My husband and I were so impressed by Jake that I signed his handwritten contract on the company's form and gave him a check for $8,500.00 that same day.
On Wednesday, august 12, around 9 am 3 Hispanic men showed up, asking me what they were supposed to do. I told them to call their boss and left for my appointment. About 1 hour later, my husband called me to say, Eric, the son of the owner, was at the house. He said we needed additional floorboard support (I disagree) and new front steps which would cost $12,000.00. When we showed the steps to Jake, he said they d take care of it. This additional cost is about 2 thirds the initial cost estimate, which now is $26,000. That is outrageous. It looked like Bait and Switch to me. I wanted out of the contract, but my husband was terribly intimidated. We are both in our 70s. We negotiated it down to $8,000.00.
The workers were left on their own, without instruction. I had to stop them and wait for Eric because the concrete support for the porch was not in the right place. Then I saw them struggle to decide how to do the front stairs. I had to stand right there so they don t just repair what was there. I stopped them from putting a slab of rock that was too narrow on the first step. I found a supplier so they could get the right size. I was very disappointed witnessing all that.
Then, Eric insisted that the addendum to the contract was a new contract and he needed to be paid $8,000.00, the cost of the new contract, on Saturday 8/15. He came right to my face and reprimanded me for emailing his secretary about typing our original contract which we could barely read and sending her a payment schedule based on work completion which I wanted to include in the contract. He flatly refused to write down a payment schedule and insisted his word is good enough.
After the workers left on Saturday, we discovered that they had disregarded the terms of our contract. The first item was to replace the rotted sill beam under the columns of the porch; they covered it with new fascia. At this point, I texted Eric that I'm getting a lawyer to look into our situation.
I returned home yesterday afternoon, 8/17, and found a TPC's worker, Secondo, working on the porch. He had removed the 4 columns and replaced 2 of them with jacks. He showed me the huge hole in the roof beam and explained he will have to take that piece out. Obviously, he was not instructed, per our contract, to remove all of the roof beams and put new ones. The materials I saw outside were fascia boards which he had come to install.
We found out that Jake was a salesman, well placed to give offers that are too good to be refused, while Eric comes later and finds a way to hike the estimate. There's no evidence that Eric or any higher up in his company ever looked at our contract. Workers are sent to go by their instinct and do their best