Rainbow International

ORIGINAL REVIEW: We had a small fire in the chimney and our insurance company suggested these people. WHAT A HUGE MISTAKE! They sent in a salesman who said it would take 10 days to 2 weeks to clean the two rooms that had fire extinguisher dust and smoke smell. There was no fire damage. But once you sign up all bets are off. It took over 3 months and the job is still not done after over a year! They "stained" our windows with whatever chemical they used to mask the smell on the walls and ceilings. Then they tried to clean it off. I have no idea what they used but I have 10 windows that are cloudy. My window washing company tried 3 times to no avail. They also sent a window washer out, again to no avail.

There were no supervisors on the job while the work was being done. I was there the entire time. It was obvious some of the workers didn't know what to do. In fact, one employee told me he was upset because he was promised training and never received it. I suppose that is why he did not take care not to slop the chemicals all over the place. I brought this to the attention of the salesman and he simply ignored it and stopped taking my calls. A couple of their employees also sent him pictures and he ignored them too.

I then contacted them through their web page and the vice president called me. He seemed concerned at first, even came out to see first hand. He kept saying it couldn't be their fault and he started ignoring me. But after a few months of being relentless he finally agreed to replace the glass in the 2 worst windows...until he got the estimate. He said they couldn't pay that much. He then stopped taking my calls again so I sent another website message and the president emailed me. He said it was not their fault and listed a few excuses which I refuted. He then went into hiding like the others. It is appalling indeed that they think they can get away with this and not fix their mistake! Above the law? We will see because we are suing them to make things right.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY unless you do not care about your property or belongings! The worst company I have ever dealt with by far. They also dented my leather couches, broke several items and left the floors a mess - we had to clean them ourselves. Lack of management, lack of training, just plain horrible work and some employees that worry more about their loud music, cell phones and lunchtime than doing the job. I could go on and on about the way they treated our belongings but suffice it to say that we cringed every time they came back in fear of what might happen next. USE THIS COMPANY AT YOUR OWN RISK, I WARNED YOU.

Their representative was then rude, condescending, patronizing, and confrontational with my wife. She was just asking him questions about the scope of the damage and trying to ensure that proper communications had been made and would be made to USAA (because that has been an ongoing problem). The conversation ended with him telling her that "You just want me to kiss your butt." He was then told to leave the property. 4 weeks after the first contact, we are in the situation of having very minimal work performed and very minimal information provided to our insurance. They opened up the walls and ran dehumidifiers and fans for a few days... guess that's something. Hopefully it's dry.

Three months after the incident, we have moved back into our home and have found that the plumbing under the sink is leaking, my husband is working on it. We had 3 Lavoler blinds apparently put in the trash, the gift card does not cover that expense. We also have several outlets without wall sockets coverings. The transition piece between the kitchen and living room is coming up. The flooring was put down inadequately in the living room leaving a gap, approximately ½ inch with no wood flooring by the entry doorway – concrete is showing. The endcap piece on the kitchen counter is loose. There is a cracked light switch plate in the kitchen. One of the rehung blinds is broken as three wooden blinds were initially throw out and got rained on. After expressing my concerns to the main office, Rainbow sent a gift card and a statement of apology.

They had a company come out and take all our furniture to storage and our piano to a storage place. They also had a company come out and clean our air duct system. I refused to pay Rainbow our insurance money until everything was completed (sans us having to hire our own contractor to comnplete the job.) Months later I get a notice from the air duct system people--Rainbow never paid them. A few months later I get another notice: Rainbow never paid the storage bill. A few weeks after that: another notice that Rainbow didnt pay the piano movers.

I had to go to each of these business, provide a receipts, evidence of check written and an itemized bill that I had paid Rainbow for each of those services. And it was in the agreement with Rainbow that they would use my check to them to pay the services they contracted with. To my knowledge, now 2 yrs later, none of those business got reimbursed. RIDICULOUS and a fraud. All I could do was recommend that those contracted business sue Rainbow and take them to court.

When work started on the house the workers had to move items to our garage including our big screen tv that a painter ended up getting paint on! When it came time to pack back in I told them that the spare bedroom could stay packed and I would unpack that myself. They ended up not unpacking other things that I asked them to. Before even unpacking things we noticed that a floor lamp and small side table were missing. These items were way too big to be in any of the boxes. So we asked about them. They said at first they didn’t have them. A few days later when we asked again they said that they had the table and broke the lamp. So basically if we didn’t keep asking about those items they were just not going to say anything about them. Shortly after that we saw where they had ripped a leg off of a tv stand and then they boxed up the broken leg. We also never found the curtain rod that was in our daughter’s room.

At that point I also noticed that my Fitbit and charger were missing along with other random items and that they had broken our desk that has a hutch and since we moved back in our washing machine wasn’t working right. They sent someone out to “fix” the desk. The guy made it look good but when my husband got home and we tried to move it back in place it started bowing out and one spot that the guy made look better with glue, came back out. They are now trying to say that the desk had previous damage. I told our project manager and the guy that came out to fix it where it did have previous scratches on it and I told them that I’m not even saying anything about that because that was there but we have moved this desk several times and NEVER had it bow out like that. If you look at it, it’s because they messed the back of it up and now it’s not as sturdy as it was before.

They sent a company out to look at the washer. This company came out 4 times… The first time the guy said that it was one of the legs and that it looked like it had been dropped. The second time they came out they couldn’t get the leg off and told me that they didn’t have the right tool for the job. The third time and after multiple attempts to get the leg off and failing to do so they said that it was something internal and decided that it wasn’t worth replacing. If it was replaced it may or may not fix the issue. These fine “professionals” had to come out a fourth time because the guy that came out the third time forgot to plug back in some wires. So now Rainbow is saying that it isn’t their fault that the washer isn’t working right. Sorry but I don’t trust these “professionals” that had to come out 4 times and didn’t really seem to know what was wrong at all.

If the washer was the only problem that we had I might would believe that it was just an age thing of the washer. But they have broken so many other things and lost stuff to where I believe that they dropped the washer and caused it to start having problems. Before they moved it we never had an issue. Throughout this whole thing we have been patient and nice. I started getting upset with them when the pack out manager was ignoring us. When he finally called me back and I asked about the almost $90 they owed us for the floor lamp, broken tv stand and the missing curtain rod he told me that the person to sign the check wasn’t there! I have a hard time believing that someone wasn’t there to sign a check for over 6 weeks! When I asked about all the other broken and missing items he told me to make a paper trail and email him and our project manager a list of items. We did that along with prices of everything. Didn’t hear anything.

That’s when I decided to call corporate. The lady I spoke to told me to email her the list of things. She also told me that she would be back in touch with us about the items. Pretty much everyone that I have spoken to on the matter makes the excuse that the pack out manager is new. So just because he is new it’s okay that we have over $1000 in missing and damaged items?! After not hearing anything for 3 weeks I called corporate again and tried to talk to the same lady. I was told she was out of the office and this other woman took my call. I told her what was going on and asked if the other lady had any notes about the issues going on. She said no and that she knew nothing about it. Later into the conversation she begins to change her story and says that the owner told the managers not to call us back because they are saying that they don’t have our missing items.

I then ask to talk to the owner or someone above her and make sure that she understands that if she is saying that they didn’t lose the items then we need to file a police report because that means they stole them. She puts me on hold and comes back to say that the owner declined to speak to me and that if I want to file a police report about the missing stuff that I could go right ahead! I have NEVER in my life had a manager or owner not talk to me over an issue this big! I also tried to tell her that I had the entire conversation recorded but she hung up on me. My husband did a short review shortly after I got off the phone and of course the owner jumped on there to defend himself. Why couldn’t he just take my call like a professional person and see what he could do to help resolve the issues?! People like this are truly scum of the earth! The only reason people use their service is because something like water or fire damage has happened.

So we not only had to deal with our home being destroyed by a pipe burst but now we are out over $1000 in items that weren’t even damaged by the water! We are planning on filing a police report soon and I will post this review everywhere that I can in hopes that it will save other people from all these issues. I hope that no one ever has the need to use a company like this but if you do, do yourself a huge favor and don’t go with Rainbow International Restoration!