CY
Carlos Y
1 reviews | Active since Nov 2022
26 Jun 2023, 08:01
Terrible experience - read before considering
I wished I read the reviews in here before going ahead with Kelvin and his "group". I'm not sure if he has made up some of the "excellent" reviews but I'm extremely disappointed. We really tried to compare different quotes and gave him a chance as he was quick to quote and visit, however it is clear he is just up for quick.money and will not stand by his work as he initially said. The paint job he did for us was less than decent, after less than 2 months the paint is coming out because no proper wall preparation was made. I've called him and sent videos and pictures of the issues, his respond has been that he did what he had to and blames other issues not related as he simply painted over flaking old paint. I'm more disappointed than upset, I wish other people read this before making their choice with this person.
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Replies (3)
Magnate Projects's replyOfficial
27 Jun 2023, 09:16 It is really sad to learn that out of the 16 reviews on the bark profile 15 are positives and notably the one from Mr. Carlos is the negative one no wonder why he thinks the positive reviews were “made up”. It is also important to note that Mr. Carlos made use of the same platform to hire Magnate Projects after checking these “made up” reviews. What is also missing in Mr. Carlos’s review is that the job at his house included plumbing, tiling, electrical installations and inside house painting of passages, kitchen, living room, ceilings, etc. He has got an issue with a small patio section on the outside. All the painting for the inside of the house which constituted 80% of the painting job Mr. Carlos claimed he is happy with it. Why? Mr. Carlos took the advice of the same Kelvin to fix the rising damp issues before Magnate projects could start to paint. For transparency sake it was suggested another company takes the damp proofing job. It took almost one and half months after the painting job was confirmed by Mr. Carlos for Magnate Projects to start waiting for the damp fixed walls to be ready for painting. The advice was given with the hope that all the sections to be painted will be fixed to get rid of rising damp issues. This was clearly discussed with Mr. Carlos prior to the date of commencement. When it was time to get back on site to start the painting job and other tasks we noted only part of the inside of the house sections were fixed for dampness and nothing was done outside. The inside the damp proofing job was half done. Why – one can only guess what happened between Mr. Carlos and the damp proofing company. Mr. Carlos still insisted he wanted the rest of the house including the external walls to be painted which we did after a thorough preparation as best as we could. When asked why all the damp proofing wasn’t done on all walls as recommended his reply was to further ask Magnate Projects to quote for the remaining damp proofing. Needless to say, we politely declined and made it clear to Mr. Carlos that we will not guarantee the painting work if walls are not damp proofed as recommended. Mr. Carlos clearly underestimated the impact of damp issues at hand and we suspect he fought with the damp proofing company or he didn’t think the damp proofing cost are worth the money. The irony is that a few houses in the same street Mr. Carlos resides we did a similar project just after the lockdown giving the same suggestion to the client and we have never had a call back since. In conclusion, old houses in the Woodstock area where Mr. Carlos resides have very permeable walls and water easily seeps through the walls – lateral damp and rising damp are rampant in the area on most old houses. This is the reason most clients in the area take the option to gut down the walls or take the cheaper option we have recommended to Mr. Carlos. We have about 7 customers in the Woodstock and Salt River area we have successfully done similar projects. These references are available on request.
Best regards,
Magnate Projects's reply27 Jun 2023, 09:16
Official
It is really sad to learn that out of the 16 reviews on the bark profile 15 are positives and notably the one from Mr. Carlos is the negative one no wonder why he thinks the positive reviews were “made up”. It is also important to note that Mr. Carlos made use of the same platform to hire Magnate Projects after checking these “made up” reviews. What is also missing in Mr. Carlos’s review is that the job at his house included plumbing, tiling, electrical installations and inside house painting of passages, kitchen, living room, ceilings, etc. He has got an issue with a small patio section on the outside. All the painting for the inside of the house which constituted 80% of the painting job Mr. Carlos claimed he is happy with it. Why? Mr. Carlos took the advice of the same Kelvin to fix the rising damp issues before Magnate projects could start to paint. For transparency sake it was suggested another company takes the damp proofing job. It took almost one and half months after the painting job was confirmed by Mr. Carlos for Magnate Projects to start waiting for the damp fixed walls to be ready for painting. The advice was given with the hope that all the sections to be painted will be fixed to get rid of rising damp issues. This was clearly discussed with Mr. Carlos prior to the date of commencement. When it was time to get back on site to start the painting job and other tasks we noted only part of the inside of the house sections were fixed for dampness and nothing was done outside. The inside the damp proofing job was half done. Why – one can only guess what happened between Mr. Carlos and the damp proofing company. Mr. Carlos still insisted he wanted the rest of the house including the external walls to be painted which we did after a thorough preparation as best as we could. When asked why all the damp proofing wasn’t done on all walls as recommended his reply was to further ask Magnate Projects to quote for the remaining damp proofing. Needless to say, we politely declined and made it clear to Mr. Carlos that we will not guarantee the painting work if walls are not damp proofed as recommended. Mr. Carlos clearly underestimated the impact of damp issues at hand and we suspect he fought with the damp proofing company or he didn’t think the damp proofing cost are worth the money. The irony is that a few houses in the same street Mr. Carlos resides we did a similar project just after the lockdown giving the same suggestion to the client and we have never had a call back since. In conclusion, old houses in the Woodstock area where Mr. Carlos resides have very permeable walls and water easily seeps through the walls – lateral damp and rising damp are rampant in the area on most old houses. This is the reason most clients in the area take the option to gut down the walls or take the cheaper option we have recommended to Mr. Carlos. We have about 7 customers in the Woodstock and Salt River area we have successfully done similar projects. These references are available on request.
Best regards,
CY
Carlos Y's updateReviewer Update
27 Jun 2023, 19:54In response to Kelvin's unfortunate points a more detailed explanation. I'm very disappointed with paint job Magnate Projects did at my house.
I am only writing this review to warn anyone who is interested in acquiring their services.
We had numerous companies quote for the job but we ended up choosing Magnate because of the punctuality and the great reviews.They did a few things which includes a small undersink plumbing fix, installed two ventilators, installed two sanitary fittings, installed splashback tiling in the bathroom and did quite a bit of painting. We are happy with everything except the paint job they did at our house.
It is clear that they are not finishing contractors.They might be good with the wet trades like plastering or skim work but it's clear that they are not qualified painters or tilers. As a quantity surveyor I have worked on numerous refurbishment projects and I have never seen a company such bad quality finishes.
The first red flag was when they installed the splash back tiling without doing any wall preparation. The paint and cretestone was flaking off and I have pictures which show that no proper wall preparation was done before installing the new tiles. Unfortunately I only recieved the pictures after the tiling was done and there was not much we could do about it.
The second incident was when the new ceiling paint were pealing off after they painted it. Once again no proper surface preparation were done. The existing ceiling paint had some paint flaking off and it was clear that they just painted over it. The existing mold were still visible through the new paint and I had to ask them to back to fix it. Kelvin had numerous exuses for this which includes us not making cleaning materials available for the cleaning of the ceiling. That came as a surprise to me because we paid them R6966 for materials and we only to provide the paint,tiles and sanitary ware. We all know the cost of some paint brushes,turpentine ,tile glue and some electrical wires doesnt add up to almost R7000, they could have bough the cleaning materials but inisted tgat I provide it.Until today the ceiling is still intact but the quality of the paintwork is not neat at all. There is little patches were the new "fixes" were done.
The third problem which bothers me to date is flaking off of the external paint. Kelvin blames it on rising damp but it's clear that it's not rising damp. There is a clear difference between paint flaking off because of rising damp and paint flaking off because of poor surface preparation. The paint outside is flaking off because of poor wall preparation. The bright red paint from the previous owner is still perfectly intact and the new layers of paint are flaking off. It's also clear that they didn't prepare the burglar bars for new paint because finishing quality it horribly uneven and you can see where the paint was previously flaking off. With painting surface preparation is extremely important and they clearly didn't do it as it should be done. There was clearly no pride in the work paint work.
When Kelvin first came to quote for the job he insisted that it was issues in the roofing that was causing the water damage to the bottom of the internal walls . After much consideration we decided to get a damp specialist who did my neighbours walls to inspect the walls and he knew exactly what to do to fix our walls because it was indeed rising damp. The Dampproof specialist missed a few walls because he didn't quote for it. That being said Kelvin did not paint any of the walls that was not treated by the Dampproof specialist because it wasn't part of Magnate Projects quote.
I would recommend Aqua Dampproof to anyone for any rising damp repairs, they provided a great service at our house and it was pleasant to work with the owner Dayne Grobler.
I would not recommend Magnate Projects to anyone because it's clear that they are trying to do things that they are not qualified to do. They were not the cheapest so we expected quality but all we got was excuses , blame shifting and poor finising at our house.
I hope they can employ experienced painters so no-one will experience any of the issues we have experienced with them.
I am only writing this review to warn anyone who is interested in acquiring their services.
We had numerous companies quote for the job but we ended up choosing Magnate because of the punctuality and the great reviews.They did a few things which includes a small undersink plumbing fix, installed two ventilators, installed two sanitary fittings, installed splashback tiling in the bathroom and did quite a bit of painting. We are happy with everything except the paint job they did at our house.
It is clear that they are not finishing contractors.They might be good with the wet trades like plastering or skim work but it's clear that they are not qualified painters or tilers. As a quantity surveyor I have worked on numerous refurbishment projects and I have never seen a company such bad quality finishes.
The first red flag was when they installed the splash back tiling without doing any wall preparation. The paint and cretestone was flaking off and I have pictures which show that no proper wall preparation was done before installing the new tiles. Unfortunately I only recieved the pictures after the tiling was done and there was not much we could do about it.
The second incident was when the new ceiling paint were pealing off after they painted it. Once again no proper surface preparation were done. The existing ceiling paint had some paint flaking off and it was clear that they just painted over it. The existing mold were still visible through the new paint and I had to ask them to back to fix it. Kelvin had numerous exuses for this which includes us not making cleaning materials available for the cleaning of the ceiling. That came as a surprise to me because we paid them R6966 for materials and we only to provide the paint,tiles and sanitary ware. We all know the cost of some paint brushes,turpentine ,tile glue and some electrical wires doesnt add up to almost R7000, they could have bough the cleaning materials but inisted tgat I provide it.Until today the ceiling is still intact but the quality of the paintwork is not neat at all. There is little patches were the new "fixes" were done.
The third problem which bothers me to date is flaking off of the external paint. Kelvin blames it on rising damp but it's clear that it's not rising damp. There is a clear difference between paint flaking off because of rising damp and paint flaking off because of poor surface preparation. The paint outside is flaking off because of poor wall preparation. The bright red paint from the previous owner is still perfectly intact and the new layers of paint are flaking off. It's also clear that they didn't prepare the burglar bars for new paint because finishing quality it horribly uneven and you can see where the paint was previously flaking off. With painting surface preparation is extremely important and they clearly didn't do it as it should be done. There was clearly no pride in the work paint work.
When Kelvin first came to quote for the job he insisted that it was issues in the roofing that was causing the water damage to the bottom of the internal walls . After much consideration we decided to get a damp specialist who did my neighbours walls to inspect the walls and he knew exactly what to do to fix our walls because it was indeed rising damp. The Dampproof specialist missed a few walls because he didn't quote for it. That being said Kelvin did not paint any of the walls that was not treated by the Dampproof specialist because it wasn't part of Magnate Projects quote.
I would recommend Aqua Dampproof to anyone for any rising damp repairs, they provided a great service at our house and it was pleasant to work with the owner Dayne Grobler.
I would not recommend Magnate Projects to anyone because it's clear that they are trying to do things that they are not qualified to do. They were not the cheapest so we expected quality but all we got was excuses , blame shifting and poor finising at our house.
I hope they can employ experienced painters so no-one will experience any of the issues we have experienced with them.
CY
Carlos Y's update27 Jun 2023, 19:54
Reviewer Update
In response to Kelvin's unfortunate points a more detailed explanation. I'm very disappointed with paint job Magnate Projects did at my house.
I am only writing this review to warn anyone who is interested in acquiring their services.
We had numerous companies quote for the job but we ended up choosing Magnate because of the punctuality and the great reviews.They did a few things which includes a small undersink plumbing fix, installed two ventilators, installed two sanitary fittings, installed splashback tiling in the bathroom and did quite a bit of painting. We are happy with everything except the paint job they did at our house.
It is clear that they are not finishing contractors.They might be good with the wet trades like plastering or skim work but it's clear that they are not qualified painters or tilers. As a quantity surveyor I have worked on numerous refurbishment projects and I have never seen a company such bad quality finishes.
The first red flag was when they installed the splash back tiling without doing any wall preparation. The paint and cretestone was flaking off and I have pictures which show that no proper wall preparation was done before installing the new tiles. Unfortunately I only recieved the pictures after the tiling was done and there was not much we could do about it.
The second incident was when the new ceiling paint were pealing off after they painted it. Once again no proper surface preparation were done. The existing ceiling paint had some paint flaking off and it was clear that they just painted over it. The existing mold were still visible through the new paint and I had to ask them to back to fix it. Kelvin had numerous exuses for this which includes us not making cleaning materials available for the cleaning of the ceiling. That came as a surprise to me because we paid them R6966 for materials and we only to provide the paint,tiles and sanitary ware. We all know the cost of some paint brushes,turpentine ,tile glue and some electrical wires doesnt add up to almost R7000, they could have bough the cleaning materials but inisted tgat I provide it.Until today the ceiling is still intact but the quality of the paintwork is not neat at all. There is little patches were the new "fixes" were done.
The third problem which bothers me to date is flaking off of the external paint. Kelvin blames it on rising damp but it's clear that it's not rising damp. There is a clear difference between paint flaking off because of rising damp and paint flaking off because of poor surface preparation. The paint outside is flaking off because of poor wall preparation. The bright red paint from the previous owner is still perfectly intact and the new layers of paint are flaking off. It's also clear that they didn't prepare the burglar bars for new paint because finishing quality it horribly uneven and you can see where the paint was previously flaking off. With painting surface preparation is extremely important and they clearly didn't do it as it should be done. There was clearly no pride in the work paint work.
When Kelvin first came to quote for the job he insisted that it was issues in the roofing that was causing the water damage to the bottom of the internal walls . After much consideration we decided to get a damp specialist who did my neighbours walls to inspect the walls and he knew exactly what to do to fix our walls because it was indeed rising damp. The Dampproof specialist missed a few walls because he didn't quote for it. That being said Kelvin did not paint any of the walls that was not treated by the Dampproof specialist because it wasn't part of Magnate Projects quote.
I would recommend Aqua Dampproof to anyone for any rising damp repairs, they provided a great service at our house and it was pleasant to work with the owner Dayne Grobler.
I would not recommend Magnate Projects to anyone because it's clear that they are trying to do things that they are not qualified to do. They were not the cheapest so we expected quality but all we got was excuses , blame shifting and poor finising at our house.
I hope they can employ experienced painters so no-one will experience any of the issues we have experienced with them.
I am only writing this review to warn anyone who is interested in acquiring their services.
We had numerous companies quote for the job but we ended up choosing Magnate because of the punctuality and the great reviews.They did a few things which includes a small undersink plumbing fix, installed two ventilators, installed two sanitary fittings, installed splashback tiling in the bathroom and did quite a bit of painting. We are happy with everything except the paint job they did at our house.
It is clear that they are not finishing contractors.They might be good with the wet trades like plastering or skim work but it's clear that they are not qualified painters or tilers. As a quantity surveyor I have worked on numerous refurbishment projects and I have never seen a company such bad quality finishes.
The first red flag was when they installed the splash back tiling without doing any wall preparation. The paint and cretestone was flaking off and I have pictures which show that no proper wall preparation was done before installing the new tiles. Unfortunately I only recieved the pictures after the tiling was done and there was not much we could do about it.
The second incident was when the new ceiling paint were pealing off after they painted it. Once again no proper surface preparation were done. The existing ceiling paint had some paint flaking off and it was clear that they just painted over it. The existing mold were still visible through the new paint and I had to ask them to back to fix it. Kelvin had numerous exuses for this which includes us not making cleaning materials available for the cleaning of the ceiling. That came as a surprise to me because we paid them R6966 for materials and we only to provide the paint,tiles and sanitary ware. We all know the cost of some paint brushes,turpentine ,tile glue and some electrical wires doesnt add up to almost R7000, they could have bough the cleaning materials but inisted tgat I provide it.Until today the ceiling is still intact but the quality of the paintwork is not neat at all. There is little patches were the new "fixes" were done.
The third problem which bothers me to date is flaking off of the external paint. Kelvin blames it on rising damp but it's clear that it's not rising damp. There is a clear difference between paint flaking off because of rising damp and paint flaking off because of poor surface preparation. The paint outside is flaking off because of poor wall preparation. The bright red paint from the previous owner is still perfectly intact and the new layers of paint are flaking off. It's also clear that they didn't prepare the burglar bars for new paint because finishing quality it horribly uneven and you can see where the paint was previously flaking off. With painting surface preparation is extremely important and they clearly didn't do it as it should be done. There was clearly no pride in the work paint work.
When Kelvin first came to quote for the job he insisted that it was issues in the roofing that was causing the water damage to the bottom of the internal walls . After much consideration we decided to get a damp specialist who did my neighbours walls to inspect the walls and he knew exactly what to do to fix our walls because it was indeed rising damp. The Dampproof specialist missed a few walls because he didn't quote for it. That being said Kelvin did not paint any of the walls that was not treated by the Dampproof specialist because it wasn't part of Magnate Projects quote.
I would recommend Aqua Dampproof to anyone for any rising damp repairs, they provided a great service at our house and it was pleasant to work with the owner Dayne Grobler.
I would not recommend Magnate Projects to anyone because it's clear that they are trying to do things that they are not qualified to do. They were not the cheapest so we expected quality but all we got was excuses , blame shifting and poor finising at our house.
I hope they can employ experienced painters so no-one will experience any of the issues we have experienced with them.
Magnate Projects's replyOfficial
27 Jun 2023, 20:42Mr Carlos we've seen numerous posts of reviews on all online platforms from yourself and your wife. In this "warning" message you start by admitting that you're happy with everything except for painting. Then you start mentioning that you are unhappy with tiling again. It's clearly a witch hunt clearly contradicting yourself. We are not going to add on top of what we've already mentioned which we both discussed. The fact that we have positive reviews on all these platforms is a testimony of our abilities including a lot of painting projects. The fact that you refused to take the advice given is what led to this impasse. All the other issues raised here meant to tarnish Magnate Projects reputation is something we refuse to dwell on. With respect to the platform and all our clients, yourself included, we will not make any further comments. Thank you
Best regards,
Magnate Projects's reply27 Jun 2023, 20:42
Official
Mr Carlos we've seen numerous posts of reviews on all online platforms from yourself and your wife. In this "warning" message you start by admitting that you're happy with everything except for painting. Then you start mentioning that you are unhappy with tiling again. It's clearly a witch hunt clearly contradicting yourself. We are not going to add on top of what we've already mentioned which we both discussed. The fact that we have positive reviews on all these platforms is a testimony of our abilities including a lot of painting projects. The fact that you refused to take the advice given is what led to this impasse. All the other issues raised here meant to tarnish Magnate Projects reputation is something we refuse to dwell on. With respect to the platform and all our clients, yourself included, we will not make any further comments. Thank you
Best regards,