Stemar Restoration
Home Services in La Mesa, CA
Home Services • Contractors • Home Remodeling
Home Services in La Mesa, CA
Home Services • Contractors • Home Remodeling
8161 Commercial St.,
La Mesa ,
CA
91942
UNITED STATES
619-460-0020
Based on 1 reviews
619-460-0020
We had a house fire on October 15, 2008. Stemar came out with the Travelers insurance adjuster as the recommended fire remediation company as well as gave a bid to rebuild the home. Since our insurance company brought them along, we figured they knew what they were doing. They also bid on the rebuild of the home that they estimated at $236,000 (the final cost and settlement was nearly $600,000). After the fire, my family and I were so traumatized, we hired them to take are of the contents portion of the recovery process. They were supposed to separate all items between "salvageable" and "non-salvageable", document each item no matter how small and no matter which category the item fell in both in writing and photographic documentation on-site. They would throw away non-salvageable items and salvageable items would be returned to us after being "de-smoked" and cleaned when we were ready to receive them. We lost everything in the fire and just tried to keep our heads above water the months afterward. It wasn't until December 2008 that we started to realize something was very wrong. It became clear that they had no idea where our things were that were "salvageable". They told us that the project manager was on a "fishing trip" and couldn't be contacted who knew the whereabouts of our belongings. It wasn't until many weeks later that they located our things in a storage container. We also learned that they threw away our things without any kind of documentation. Being totally outraged with how they handled our project, we fired them and hired another restoration company that did a GREAT job, Contents Evaluation Specialists (Dwight Darbins, owner). Dwight was really like a savior to us after being victimized so much after the fire. Steve Marron, owner of Stemar, made the handover of our things to the new company very difficult. We soon found out why. When we opened up the container, our few things that survived were covered in soot and smelled terribly of smoke. They hadn't "de-smoked" or cleaned anything. So the things that did survive the fire had to be thrown away after spending many months in this container all the while being marinated in smoke and ash. After the new company took over, we were shocked to receive a bill of $24,000. The new company only charged $5,000. The invoice included fraudulent items such as charging us for THREE containers and storage when it was only in fact 1/2 a container that we eventually found. They charged us for implausible man hours (that we can verify because we found the project manager who wasn't on a fishing trip, but actually had left the company and worked for the new company), they charged for cleaning that never happened, "de-smoking" that never happened. We met with Steve Marron from Stemar to confront him with the fraudulent items, and I have his confession on audio tape that he had "dropped the ball". We asked him to adjust his invoice to work actually performed, and he agreed and said he would. We never heard from him again, we assumed because he didn't want to get in trouble with the law. It was a year later that we received a letter from the Tax Assessor's office that Stemar placed a mechanic's lien on our house for nearly $20,000 after not hearing from him after the February meeting. It didn't matter since you can't place a mechanic's lien on a home more than six months after the job had finished. All I can say is that Stemar turned our tragedy into an even bigger nightmare. I also found out that the only reason Travelers brought him to us was because Steve Marron used to be an adjuster at Travelers so he had obviously contacts there. If you have had fire or floor damage, I hope you get to read this before you make the same mistake. I have all the evidence to corroborate everything I have written here. I had even worse experiences with all the other vendors Travelers brought to me after the fire. All I can say is no matter how traumatized you are after a fire or flood, do your homework and don't sign anything until you know who you're signing with!
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