Issue: 1 prior contractor, money missing, weeks of delays and a huge mess to clean up… and subcontractors knocking on the door looking for payments.

This case involves a good family trusting an apparently good contractor, and finding out things were not as they appeared. The contractor was hired to replace a rotten and failing railway tie wall (very common – why we prefer to install block and concrete walls). The work proceeded well for a couple of weeks; the excavation and hauling were done by a sub-contractor (we do 95% of our own excavation and hauling); the walls were started in the right location and seemed to be rolling along… until week 3…

Only one installer and one labour were on site, and work ground to a near standstill. 2 weeks later, and barely 20% into the reinstallation, work halted completely. For 9 weeks, the owners were given promises, then excuses, then their calls went unanswered… and at some point over this time, the excavation contractor, the laborers, and the supplier all came knocking looking for money. HOW NICE!!

The contractor had been paid 70% of the price quoted (A fair price it should be noted), but had not paid out much if anything. At this point in the job, the carport was being supported by 2 screw jacks… and it was a HUGE carport, the side of the driveway was caving onto a 7-foot deep hole, and once again, no engineering was completed for the work.

We were contacted through a string of referrals. The Owners called the block manufacturer (Allan Block is made locally by CCI Industries), who called an engineer (Steve McKinney at TOOK Engineering), who referred us for the repair work. We met with the owners that night, had a proposal to them by the next morning, and were on site within 24 hours to begin work. They didn’t believe us when we said we’d be done in 3 days.

We were done in 3 days.

---- January 5, 2009

A letter to all prospect customers of “The Cavalry”,

{History} Well where do I start? We were unfortunately put into a situation with another contractor who completely took advantage of us, essentially stealing thousands of dollars. Our 3 week project turned into an 8 week nightmare of no shows, nobody being paid but he had our money. I realized something had to be done when subcontractors starting knocking on my door. I called a lawyer and we FIRED HIM!

{Solution} Then…we needed to find someone else, of course we were very nervous of being taken advantage of again. We called the Allan Block rep that came to the site offering advice. He wasted no time stating we needed engineering and referred us to Took Engineering. When Mike arrived he told us that he had seen this happen many times before and that we weren’t the only ones that had been taken advantage of. Although it seemed like a huge daunting task he said he knew someone that could have this job done in three days. What?? Three days no way we thought. What do we have to lose at this point? We called Greg Tunner and asked him to come out and check out the job. His company name was “The Cavalry”. When he got here…..Wow he was huge! And I thought my husband was BIG. He was amazing, super nice guy. We met at 7:30pm, he went back to his office did up all the paper work and brought it to us first thing in the morning. His crew true to name in the form of a Cavalry showed up just as if Holmes on Holmes would have. They all had a truly amazing work ethic and integrity; we actually couldn’t believe how quick it was all happening. Having spent weeks fighting with our first contractor, this was such a blessing. Really the point being if you want to hire a landscaping company and want the job done right, you would silly not to choose “The Cavalry”.

-Tia and Arno Zlamal