EHG Element Hardscapes Group, Inc.

I WOULD NOT recommend this company. We've had issues throughout the whole process. The company says it's based out in Chicago, which the owner told me that, but he stated they moved down to Florida. After the work started, I then find a review on Yelp that a person had an $8,000 loss from their work. They never completed it and still has the money. Mauricio Calderon (Marty) stated that he has been in business for 20 years and that his company is a million dollar business and that other companies went out of business because clients wanted to hire him, yet on BBB.org, it shows it has only been in business for 3 years. When you go to their website, there's no physical address listed on their site. That should have been a sign. He only had two other workers with him and half the time, one of them was always on his phone. The project stated in April and by July, it still wasn't done. The work progress was so slow, we couldn't use it for Memorial Day or the 4th of July. The quote made it sound like we were getting a deal, but we actually put more money in due to hidden charges. At first he made it sound like we were going to get a fire pit for free if we chose to hire him, but he turned it around to have us buy it and didn't even know that we also had to pay a lot to run the gas line and then a copper wire installed as well. He also said he had a lanai company that he works with, but when our project started, his guy somehow was not available. The price he put in his quote for the lanai was different. We had to find another company to get it installed and again had to pay a lot more for that because Marty didn't include the footer price in his quote. The footers was not lined up after the fact, but he kept telling us that he would work one on one with that company and meet up, but I was the one who had to do that. He didn't check the footer work and just started installing the pavers without noticing the pitch was not right. After they installed all the pavers, there were sooo many uneven spots that after it rained, it looked like a pool. Also the area where the gutters were at, mold was already building up on the pavers and it was only a month. He stated he has a 5 year warranty, but told him to fix the problem now instead of later. It didn't make sense. He came out and removed part of the pavers to redo it. It made it worse. He kept contacting me to pay the remaining balance, but I refused to because in the contract it stated that until ALL the work was done and he still had to fix that and do the driveway as well, which wasn't done. We paid him well over 75% of the work and he even asked for more money to order more supplies, which didn't make sense if he was a million dollar company...why ask? It's because he was slowly trying to get more money from us without us even know what his plans were....to scam more money from us. We sent him a certified letter stating that the next time he hears from us was from our lawyer along with a number of pictures that needed to be completed and we never heard from him again. I've tried to call, text and email for over a month prior to him asking for the money and never heard from him. We went to speak to a lawyer and had a letter composed stating that he needed to fix the problem or we would move forward with a legal action. We had the letter sent certified again and it was returned back to us so I would say this company is a FRAUD!!!! We hired a different company to fix this problem and found out that the pavers that EHG was laid out appeared to be old and was probably sitting in a warehouse and ordered through a 3rd party vendor instead of the actual company, Belgard. Marty stated that he was an official Belgard company and had an account with them. Apparently, this is not true. Found out that you cannot order small amounts of extra pavers. Belgard only sells in pallets, so I don't know where they got the extra pavers from. Also there were a lot of white spots on the pavers, which the new company I hired pointed out. It wouldn't come off and it was everywhere. All the pavers that was laid down from EHG was listed by the new company I hired. They assessed the area and stated that they didn't understand why thin set was used on some area, which wasn't needed and also how the buildup was done to level the patio. There were a lot of things done incorrectly and was poorly installed even though Marty would non-stop state that he's very meticulous with his work. I highly doubt that. We made a huge mistake hiring this company and fell for this con work. This is not a legit company. This guy is only out to get jobs that pay. I had a co-worker and he was just waiting on a quote for 3 months. Eventually he went with someone else. How do you have a million dollar company and you're the only one who answers the phone and not a receptionist or other workers. They only do one project at a time apparently. Another thing I was really upset with, one of his co-workers (the one who was always on his phone) decided to urinate on the side of our house. We got that on camera from our next door neighbor. Very unprofessional.

CONSUMER BEWARE--hired to do $8300+ worth of stucco and mason work--never completed the work or repaired the poor workmanship though he said he would--but never showed. Have reported to State who is contacting him at the 34th Street address if it is correct on his license. He lives in Fort Myers and does VERY POOR WORK--his staff on our job were sloppy and untrained in 7/8" stucco (per our contract) and didn't complete several other parts of contract.