Complaint Review: United Water Restoration Group Inc.

Not only did they completely fail to do the job they were hired to do, they broke at least two laws in our presence and have attempted to cover up their mistakes with blatant lies forcing a they-said-we-said situation. 

Three days before Christmas 2012 my husband and I discovered mold growing where some water was leaking in the back of our closet. Unfortunately, we were feeling the pressure of our first fiasco as home owners compounded by the fact that I was pregnant with our first child and the fear of mold exposure prompted us to rush to have the mold remediated without first doing any homework. A plumber sent to us from our home warranty company referred us to United Water Restoration and we hired them immediately. The one red flag that ignored was when the technician they sent, Thomas Santos, gave us the estimate. He said that if we went through the insurance company the fee would double because that would require paperwork. In hindsight, this ridiculous statement should have been enough to send us running. We agreed to pay directly but we had already called the insurance company so they ended up sending an adjuster to review the situation after the work was completed. 

We hired United Water Restoration to remediate a relatively small area of mold and we informed the technician, Mr. Santos, that I was pregnant and we were seriously concerned with the impact the mold could have on our health. However, Mr. Santos took absolutely no precautions against cross-contamination. He failed to hang the appropriate plastic sheeting to prevent spores from travelling outside of the contaminated closet and into our bedroom. He failed to vacuum the remediated area (let alone use a HEPA vacuum which, we are now told, is the standard procedure). He ordered us to remove the entire contents of our closet but failed to advise us to contain said contents thus we exposed additional areas of our home to mold spores. The field supervisor sent when we later disputed the issue, Jason Bernard, told us that they had not done any of this because there had been no hygienist protocol specifying those requirements and that a hygienist isn't required to get involved when the area is less than ten square feet. In other words, doing the bare minimum is United Water Restorations standard procedure for small claims when they don't think an insurance company will be involved. 

After the remediation work was completed, our insurance adjuster came to review the claim and expressed concerns that the remediation job may not have been completed properly so we ordered air and surface testing from a hygienist. The testing was performed weeks after the remediation was performed and the level of mold spores in the closet was still at a seriously high level. Further, the hygienist found additional biological contamination at the wall base. In other words, Mr. Thomas of United Water Restoration didn't even successfully remove all of the mold from the wall! 

Then there are the two laws the company employees broke. First, the technician, Mr. Santos, tried to get us to pay by check stating that there was a service charge to use a credit card (this practice is illegal in Florida). When we contacted the company to state that our insurance adjuster felt the job may not have been completed properly they sent their field supervisor, Mr. Bernard who offered to give us a fake receipt so that we could lie to our insurance company and say we had paid more toward our deductible than we really had paid. Of course, that would be committing insurance fraud so we said no.

Now that we have informed the company of the hygienists findings, Mr. Santos and Mr. Bernard have resorted to lying in an attempt to cover up their wrongdoing. Mr. Santos now falsely claims that my husband ordered them not to remove too much dry wall or carpet and the field supervisor, Mr. Bernard, claims he never made an offer of providing a fraudulent receipt.

Mr. Bernard has now offered, on United Water Restorations behalf, to re-do the work and accept a smaller amount than originally agreed upon. However, the insurance company recommends that we use one of their preferred vendors and, obviously, we have no faith that United Water Restoration will do a better job the second time around. According to Mr. Bernard, because we have chosen not to allow them to remedy the situation, they must insist on being paid for the job they failed to do. We successfully stopped payment on the check however they are now insisting that we pay them something.