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We LOVE & Highly Recommend Service Magic! Here’s why…
February 8, 2012 by Keith French · Leave a Comment
We recently needed a new interior door installed. To our surprise NONE of our colleagues had a good handyman they could recommend. Of course they’ve all worked with several, as have we, but bottomline it came down to there was NO ONE anyone could recommend and trust that they’d do a good job at a fair price.
So the first thing we did of course was a Google Search for local Handymen. We anticipated the job should be around $300-400 material and labor.
We talked to Handyman Matters who over the phone said they would charge a minimum 5hrs labor at $88.00/hr & charge in 15 min increments thereafter. This was just for labor and the cost of the door, frame & lock would be on top of that. So that’s $440.00 minimum without the materials! We thought we could do better.
We talked to another Google search company who over the phone said it would be a $900.00 door. We didn’t even bother writing their name down.
So Keith decided to give Service Magic a try and gave them a call. A live person answered the phone and asked us what we needed done. The rep did a quick search and he said 2 companies came up and he offered to connect us to one right away. He was willing to stay on the line if we wanted to also be connected to the second referral, but we just told him to email us the info.
So we spoke directly with Ed Nelson of E.W. Home Improvement, Inc. and he came out that same day to provide a quote. We did end up calling the second referral from Service Magic, but just ended up playing phone tag. When Ed’s proposal came in later that day at $290.00 material & labor…we signed on the dotted line and gave him the job!
Ed Nelson is a great guy and he said he’s got some 13 teams working right now, is an approved franchise with Home Depot, and his company is getting back into full renovations themselves as well. All of his contractors are thoroughly checked out…says he has to decline over 50% of applicants due to criminal background unfortunately, but they all get screened thoroughly.
Ed’s company installed our office door within 3 days time. He didn’t require an up front deposit for such a small job. His contractor had it done in LESS than THREE hours…two hours & twenty minutes to be exact! He was clean, professional, well spoken and the door looks like it’s been there forever (other than looking brand new)!
To make this story even better, the day after we first spoke to Ed, we had a client need an emergency service on a steam boiler on a Saturday. We called up Ed and he got us connected with his “boiler guy”, Kevin Purnell, right away. Kevin came out that same day and provided a quote with the job being complete in less than a week for a brand new boiler. We knew the price he quoted was a good one, but at the client’s request he wanted some other quotes.
We did call two other professionals to get additional quotes for comparison. The first one was a contractor we had used before and his quote was a couple hundred bucks cheaper. But when we asked for his license & insurance information, both were expired. Can’t blame our client at all who didn’t want to take any chances for such an expensive job!
The second referral came as a high recommendation from a colleague and he quoted a similar price but couldn’t get started on the job until about 8 days later.
So the job went to Kevin and he even offered to do a payment plan for the labor part of the job since it was an unexpected significant expense. He also said he’s the only one with a Category 1 Master’s License (not sure what that means exactly and we may have said it wrong, but bottomline he had his stuff together).
So can you tell we are quite pleased with Service Magic and the quality of referrals that they provide?! Their system is efficient and we will definitely be using them again! If you give Ed Nelson or Kevin Purnell a call, please let them know Keith & Shannon French referred you!