Mackay Stone

Unreliable time wasters - cost me thousands of pounds in losses.

We had a number of people quote for our stone cleaning job. Ronnie provided the most competitive quote, and so we decided to go with him. We had our concerns about the way he runs his business from the outset - he regularly provided conflicting information, and seemed to contradict himself from one minute to the next but we thought it was just his age. He provided a good quote and seemed to know what he was talking about with regards to stone cleaning, so we over-looked the poor communication skills.

Initially he quoted saying that he had his own scaffolding that he would provide as part of the job. Then he later told me that he didn’t have his own scaffolding, that he only has a small amount of scaffolding and that it wouldn’t be big enough for our job. We agreed to get scaffolding in from a third party company, which was booked. We got Ronnie to confirm a start date with us and we ordered the scaffolding, which was put in place. The week before the scaffolding went up he announced that he wanted to meet on site again to discuss the details of the job, and so he met with our site manager on the Wednesday before the week he was due to start. At that meeting he confirmed what had to be done, and confirmed that he would be starting the following Monday. He called our site manager again on the Thursday, again confirming that he would start on the Monday. Our site manager had a missed call from him on the Friday afternoon, and then on Monday he didn’t turn up to start the job.

We chased him down by phone and email and eventually got hold of him. He said that because he hadn’t managed to speak to the site manager on the Friday afternoon he wasn’t sure if we still wanted him to do the job?! This is despite the fact it had been booked WEEKS in advance, he had been onsite the week before and spoken to the site manager again confirming everything. He said that his men were now out on another job, and that if we wanted him he could start the job the following Monday.

We assumed that he had overcommitted himself to another job, and was making excuses. Anyway, most contractors are booked a month or so in advance and so we didn’t have much option but to stick with him. He assured us that he would definitely start the following week. We pinned him down on it, several times, so there could be no ambiguity ‘yes, yes, definitely starting Monday next week’. We spoke to him on Friday to confirm - ‘Ronnie, you are definitely coming on Monday’ “Yes, yes, we will definitely be there to star the job”. I am now sitting here on a Sunday afternoon and he has just sent an email to say that he doesn’t want to do the job.

I am absolutely livid with this company. They have completely wasted our time and because they were meant to be starting the job we already have scaffolding in place which is costing me thousands of pounds per month to have up. It is going to be sitting empty for at least a full month before we can get someone else in to do the job at this stage.

Completely unreliable company and I would suggest that anyone considering appointing these people read this review and consider our experience before booking them. He has given me his word on several occasions that he was starting the job and his word is absolutely worthless. I am now sitting here thousands of pounds out of pocket because of their lack of reliability.

I would also point out that their only other online review is from someone who shares the same surname as the owner. Make of that what you will.