Do Not Hire Junior Prates
I write this review to strongly caution you against hiring Junior Prates, of Prates Painting and Plastering, as your contractor. In the 4th week of our bathroom renovation we fired him, and up until that point the process up to this point was a stressful disaster. Here are just a few of the highlights of…
I write this review to strongly caution you against hiring Junior Prates, of Prates Painting and Plastering, as your contractor. In the 4th week of our bathroom renovation we fired him, and up until that point the process up to this point was a stressful disaster.
Here are just a few of the highlights of working with Junior and his wife Aida:
-We were told it would be a 1-2 week project. We wound up firing him halfway through the 4th week. We only have one bathroom, and had to use a friend’s for almost the entire duration of the renovation.
-Junior and crew repeatedly came incredibly late or did not show up at all. There was never any advance warning: sometimes, they would call 40 minutes after they were supposed to show up to announce they’d be late; other times, we’d have to call and wait for them to call back to learn what was going on.
-During renovation, his crew accidentally broke the wall into our NEIGHBOR’s apartment. Although they promised to fix the hole that night, which was in our neighbor’s linen closet and had covered their belongings in dust, they did not actually fix it until 2 days later. They never offered to pay for the costs of cleaning our neighbor’s belongings (money which we provided). They never apologized; in fact, we were later scolded by Aida that we did not sufficiently appreciate the extra work they had to do because of the hole. When they asked us to pay for a $60 Home Depot receipt and we asked to call it even since we’d give the neighbor’s exactly that amount for dry cleaning, we were accused of trying to cheat them out of money.
-We once came home to a completely unlocked apartment. No apology or acknowledgment when we brought this up.
-They installed our floor incorrectly, and then tried to blame us for it—they installed our daisy/hex pattern floor without any discernable sense of alignment or consistent spacing, and then claimed that we had walked on it too soon and ruined it. We made them re-do it; my husband had to stay home and help them count out the tiles so that they’d install it correctly.
-They ruined our personal property (a fan, stepladder, and dustpan were caked in plaster that they did not clean off; the fan was unusable afterwards); and two of our screwdrivers disappeared during the renovation. This may have been an honest mistake, but we received only hostility and denial when we brought it up. We have not received compensation for this missing and damaged property.
-They are shady about money. Our contract specified a payment at contract signing, one at the beginning of the work, one when the tiling was finished, and one at completion. The night before the renovation, Aida emailed us to have the first payment available in cash. (We didn’t, as banks were closed and we were uncomfortable with the arrangement.) All checks were made out to people (Aida’s personal name, the name of one of their workers) and never to the company. They begged us repeatedly for money ahead of when the tiling was done (i.e., when virtually no tiling was done), and were emotionally manipulative during this process (“You’re putting us in a position where we can’t pay our workers). And we gave them the final payment on the promise that they’d come to clean up the next day (which was stupid of us, yes), but then they never showed.
-We finally fired them after they did not show up twice when they were supposed to to finish the job. They claimed that all they had to do was take out half a bag of trash and that they didn’t see what the big deal was. The big deal was their word, but also that there was far more to do than take out a bag of trash. We tried to stop payment on the check, but the stop did not go through.
-The finished product was not a finished product, and we have no reason to believe that it would have been if they had ever shown up to “complete†the job, since they insisted no work was left. We took down 2 full bags of trash, as well as multiple construction buckets, paint, plaster, and caulking supplies, and pieces of cardboard and plywood. We had to hire a handyman to fix a few things that were put in incorrectly (sink and tub faucets). In the time since the renovation, we’ve had to scrape plaster off our bathroom door and the hallway leading to our bathroom, as well as scrape paint, grout, and plaster from every surface off the bathroom—the new toilet, the new vanity, the new tub, the floors, the wall tile, etc. My husband has repainted the door, which they left filthy and covered in plaster and nicks. We still have to repaint part of the hallway, as well as add a second coat of paint to the bathroom (which was specified in the contract but was clearly never completed). There are many signs of careless work: chipped and cracked tiles, unaligned fixtures, uneven paint lines, etc.
Stay away from these horrible people. This is a case where you cannot afford to go with the lowest bid. We checked references and browsed this site for information before hiring them, and although some people had warned us that Junior was new in the field and needed to be supervised, especially when it came to flooring, the reviews were generally positive. Nothing prepared us for the nightmare that this process was, or for the hostility and complete lack of professionalism that we encountered throughout the professionalism that we encountered throughout this process.
These comments certainly can scare a new person looking to hire someone to do plasterwork and framing…but I after speaking to his wife, Aida and Junior himself we were willing to at least get a quote from him.
Junior was on time for the initial quote and described in detail how he would repair my 3 floors of walls. The quote came that night in an email. They are both polite and efficient folks. I looked into his references and bottom line, he’s got the job.
Wow Aida, your combative response and litany of (poor) excuses PROVES that the complaints above are valid. There are enough things to worry about when you’re doing a renovation; dealing with someone who doesn’t accept responsibility for their work – including the people you hired – shouldn’t be one of them.
too much drama…
To Prates Plastering and Renovation:
Always listen to your customer. Always bend over backwards for them cause they pay your bills and facilitate your business. Under no circumstance is it acceptable to argue and be combative with your customers
Rules of the land
(1) If they claim one of your men took their screw driver, apologize and buy them a new one no questions asked. It’s a $20 item. The damage caused by not replacing it is far far far greater. Why would you compromise your relationship on a perceived theft.
(2) If they claim you damaged their sink, and it’s a “reasonable” statement, apologize and offer restitution. It’s impossible for anyone to be 100% all the time. However you should be reasonable 110% of the time. You are in their space and you need to respect it at all times.
(3) If your client is completely unruly finish your contract to the “BEST!!!” of your ability and conclude your contract
(4) Only do what you know how to do. Apparently, Junior does excellent plaster work but has to subcontract everything else. Since he lacks the eye and can’t manage the quality control, he shouldn’t offer it to prospective clients. No matter the price. It will bring down his company like what the iceberg did to the Titanic.
Residential construction is a personal endeavor. Always be clean respectful and correct. Never be called a liar.
or anything about paint thinner dripping on a sink????? If you really did send an e-mail we never received it. I wished you had called, before assuming we got the e-mail and just didn’t respond. Please explain.
Finally we have Phillis, who we worked for last year I believe, and we just didn’t hire the right guys except for the floor guy who I think did a good job he just used the wrong type of finish instead of flat finish he did a glossy finish on the floor which had looked wonderful if he had used the right type of finish. But at the very end when we are getting close to finishing the job, workers did a few things wrong. Junior was going to fix it all right away but they didn’t let us fix it. We never advise any client to do a job without a permit, but some clients don’t want to spend money with permits so if you asked us about it, we say it is up to you and your responsibility. I was threaten on this job of getting sued to pay back all of the money from the renovation which was not fair at all with about 80% of work that was already done and complete and done well comparing to the amount of work that was left to do and be fixed, when they already were holding back a pretty good amount of a balance, so why would you want to sue me for all the money when most of the job was done and you still have plenty of money to pay someone else if you wanted???? I did not threaten anyone I just gave an example and asked him if he though it was fair for me to call the city because what he wanted to do was the same thing as me wanting to do that. I asked him to give Junior the opportunity to fix things and finish the job but of course they didn’t want that because I know they paid a guy by the day who probably took about 3 days to finish and probably saved about 50% of the balance. He then said he wasn’t going to sue me anymore and that we should just end our relationship right there and then because if he sued me then he would have to keep dragging a relationship and that’s how it ended.
My husband Junior and I don’t consider ourselves bad contractors. Bad contractors are people who are dishonest, they take your money and disappear. Bad clients exist too you know, they want you to work for free, they come up with excuses to not pay you either because they don’t have the money or they want to keep it on their pocket because they think contractors are rich or something and don’t need the money,and when large amounts of extra work pops up they want you to do it for free, they are a lot of ungrateful people out there. It’s not easy being a contractor, contractors are always being judged, we work with different people everyday every time and even though we want to satisfy everyone it just doesn’t happen that way, sometimes things don’t happen the way you want or plan. Human-beings are not perfect so no one is ever going to be able to satisfy the whole world.
I had never had anyone complain about Junior’s plaster work though which he does himself, it’s his strong point, clients are very happy with that, and though he knows how to do a little bit of everything else he has to hire other workers to help him and there were times where he just didn’t hire the right people. At present time now we could say we have found some pretty good reliable guys who do great work and hopefully it will remain that way but it takes time to find the right people. We are very hard-working and honest people. We have never taken anyone’s money and disappeared. We always want to complete a job and on time. If something happens, we will fix it and finish it anyway even if it takes us time.
We will always keep fighting and working hard for our name because God knows we are good people and we deserve this job. We will give our best to satisfy people with their renovation and give a reasonable honest price for it.
Junior and I do work together, and we find it easier and convenient to people to have me do all the phone, e-mail work, set up appointments, etc…while Junior is doing the actual work and prefers to speak in person, etc….
I hope people out there can be comprehensive and understand our side of the boat as well, every day we learn and have a new experience.
Thank you,
Aida and Junior Prates
Prates Plastering & Renovation
http://www.pratesplastering.web.officelive.com
914-562-2706/774-955-3804
I, Aida Prates would like to defend myself and my husband Junior from this posting because we are not horrible people and we would hate that people out there misinterpret who we really are. We like our job and the goal is to satisfy clients. It’s from our job that we get our bread so why would we want to ruin it.
We completed the project (from this posting) in 15 days, but we needed another day to do a final clean-up, pick up 2 bags of trash and tools. They made payment on a Friday I deposited the check on that day.Because I had already deposited the check on Friday that must be why stop payment didn’t go through. Junior was going to wrap up the job on a Saturday but had an emergency. Monday was the final day but Junior could only arrive at 10am, “kebertino” wanted him to go by at 8am and I told her on Sunday night Junior wasn’t going to be able to arrive at that time. I asked that we could find a time that could work for both of us so Junior could wrap it up. On Tuesday she e-mailed me saying she didn’t want Junior to go anymore and was going to stop payment on the check of $1,300 when 99.9% of the job was complete. We asked for them to have someone to open the door and let Junior in to do a final clean-up and remove the trash and tools, I even offered a cleaning but they said no, unfortunately. It’s not true Junior didn’t show up, we just weren’t agreeing on a arrival time and there was no way for him to get in the apt.
After removing old tile from walls of tub area we came to find out the wall that faced the neighbor’s apt was built in cement and was attached to the old bathtub so in the process of removing the tub this caused a small opening to the neighbor’s closet, which was more work no one was expecting and took time, though my husband made that area look better than before by closing the small hole, plastering and painting. He took 2 days because he kind of misunderstood what he was going to do first. My husband bought $60 of plumbing materials to be supplied by owner as stated in contract when he presented this receipt to them they said they had to pay $60 of dry cleaning to their neighbors, at this time then Junior said ok and they asked to called it even. We didn’t know they paid for dry cleaning, until my husband presented the receipt of plumbing materials they never said anything. They also said they were showing us the receipt for it but we never saw it.
The floor was suppose to be just regular mosaic as it was on contract, when Junior is about to start the floor he’s presented with some flowers, he doesn’t charge extra and does it anyway. But the floor gets stepped on, not by us or any of our workers, it was left to dry during the night but the next morning I get a call from her husband saying a part of the floor was not leveled and done wrong. When Junior gets to the apt. he sees the floor seemed to be stepped on and asks if anyone stepped on it and then they claim the flowers had to be done differently and that maybe the cat stepped on it. Because Junior was going to run over the completion date he agrees to re-do the floor tile which he purchases from his pocket to make up for the time he was going over. But Junior explained that he didn’t want to rush through the job and rather take a little more time but make sure the bathroom was done well.
We had our workers arrive 8am everyday and they did, we only missed a couple days of work but I did let them know in advance and if I’m not mistaken the workers only arrived late one day. Junior could not always be there at the same time of the workers (sometimes he had to get materials first, get a tool, run an appointment, etc…) but he was there constantly making sure things were done right. I hate how it was just summarized on this posting that no one was on time, that’s not true. And that it took me 40 minutes to call you back every time, when the only time I called in 40mins was on the Saturday we had an emergency????I knew they weren’t too happy with the time it was taking but I always asked if they were happy with the work (I spoke mostly with her husband) he didn’t complain except for the floor. I did apologize for things and told them that we wanted to make them happy and try to work things out with them. The job was being done right, the bathroom looks great, and we have pictures if anyone is curious to see. If we were such horrible people and the job was so horrible why did they make payment on the first place when they checked the bathroom before making the final payment???? She wrote herself “And we gave them the final payment on the promise that they’d come to clean up the next day.” So it was only cleaning and 2 bags of trash. I don’t understand where the other things came from and why they weren’t pointed out to us.
To:deanbh- Junior recalls last day of work at your place about 2 years ago and you were happy no? You even said we could use you as a reference, doors were not missed remember I think they were still being installed by this other contractor and you said you were going to call Junior to go paint them after the installation was done. And I never received an e-mail with pictures
I had a similiar HORRIBLE experience with Junior and his wife Aida.
I choose Junior Prates and his wife Aida Prates because of all the positive feedback about his work. They-and I write this because you will never speak to Junior, you call Aida then Aida calls Junior and talks to him and calls you back-were hired 3/20 gave them a deposit of 900.00 with work to commence on 4/20. Today is May 21st and I just fired them, let me explain what happened.
Junior never showed up on time, ever. Not 30 minutes but hours. He typically showed up at my house @ 4:00. would do a push with his saw guys(not carpenters) untill 7pm. When we would call and ask where he was, Aida would lie and say they were on their way.
He made countless mistakes, from wrong paint color, breaking light fixtures, losing antique molding, destroying a door, wrong finish on the wood floors, to just all around shoddy carpentry, not to mention the mess they left everyday.
When I fired him and his wife aida, I had paid them more to date than the contract required, they have threatened to call the city and tell them we moved a gas pipe without a permit, even though they advised us against us.
HORRIBLE PEOPLE, STAY AWAY.
Junior painted our place (new sheetrock from a bare studs renovation).
Turned out OK but was dissapointed that most of the painting was done by subcontractors (temp help?) and there were bits that were missed (tops of door achitraves etc).
I will say that Junior did a window sill plaster job that was fantastic, looked better than i thought it ever would.
Unfortunately the downside was they dripped some paint thinner into our bathroom sink….. and didn’t respond to requests to pay for the replacement when i emailed photos of the enamel was eaten away.
Having said that the price was right…. so what can you do?
so sorry what happen but for future reference try Dan he is located in bed stuy and he also stand behind his work he is very reliable his number is 718 485-1044 oh and he is licensed and loyal and he offers free estimates.
There’s a lot of bad contractors out there. We started doing our own work in the house. If you are handy, and have the right tools you will be amazed that you could do the job ten times better. It may take a little longer, but a least we don’t have to deal with bad workers.
If you need a good contractor in the future, try Eagle Contractors. He’s a reliable contractor, and does good work. He’s in Greenwood Heights/Sunset Park.