Reference: Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford...

We recently hired Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford, to rebuild a wall in our garden that had been knocked down by a storm.

We contacted him after getting a flier through our door, which claimed he had recently been made redundant and was looking to establish his own business.

We’d discussed the work with two other builders, one of who is an old friend who’s worked for us before. Sadly, he couldn’t do this job as he was to busy. Both other builders, however, told us this was a three-day job, maybe five days at most if we wanted to re-use and clean up bricks from the original wall.

So we employed Carl of H&M Building Services, Guildford, and the job took more than five weeks. The work would be started, then Carl and his colleague would disappear for long periods of time and wouldn’t be in contact, despite us leaving messages asking him what was going on.

On one memorable morning, after we’d expressed our concern that the job was taking much longer than we had expected, Carl arrived, worked for 20 minutes, then went missing for the next five days. Our phone calls went unanswered and all attempts to contact him were ignored. When he did get in touch, it was to explain that he’d had to leave urgently to attend to his other job as a contractor at a school – a job that we were not aware of and did not know would take preference over ours.

He assured us he’d be there bright and early the next day but when that came, of course, he was nowhere to been seen. Once again, days went past without him getting in touch, then we got an email in the early hours of Sunday morning saying he’d been in hospital.

Which was strange, as he seemed to be in rude health when I spotted him coming out of the Wetherspoons pub a few days before at about 11pm.

His non-attendance and reluctance to finish the work was a regular pattern, and for weeks we were left with a half-finished wall and little or no contact from him. Eventually, after more than five weeks and continued requests from us, the wall was finished. To be fair, the standard of the building work was acceptable.

What wasn’t acceptable, however, was the fact that the discarded rubble was never removed at the end of the job, as originally agreed, and, more importantly, the building supplies that were put in the school carpark at the back of our house were also not removed, as originally agreed.

So, if you’re thinking of hiring a builder in the Guildford/Woking area, my advice would be to use anyone else but Carl of H&M Building Services.

He’s unreliable, he offers excuse after excuse instead of completing work to agreed schedules, and he refuses to even have the decency to let you know when he’ll be working and when he’ll be finishing the work you’ve hired him to do.