De S. says, "In Sept 2025, over course 1 & 1/2 days, Roger worked about 5 hours total on 1 project: to shore up the section of door jam to make more sturdy so that when I when I slot the deadbolt into door jam section it would feel more like solid door protection. At project end, I noticed a slight glitch he'd created with deadbolt not aligning flush into the slot, but he instructed me to just push on the door so the deadbolt could more easily slot into his newly finished door jam section. Now, 2 months later (early Nov) , the temps have dropped significantly and not even his suggestion that I push on the door t help deadbolt slot helps. I cannot get the deadbolt to even enter into the jam slot. No amount of pushing nor pulling on the door will help to align the deadbolt with the door jam slot.
5 days ago, I reached out to Roger about the development. He immediately responded by typing speculative nonsense that: 1) this development must be a new issue (in other words not related to the project he did & concluded with the slight glitch) or 2) there must be debris in the slot, and 3) he ONLY DID WHAT I HAD DIRECTED HIM to do. In his typed reply, it never occurred to Roger that spewing idle speculation from his keyboard is not a solution to the issue, demonstrates a lack of professionalism, and that I have NEVER instructed him on how or where to reattach the metal plate position on his door jam (into which the deadbolt should slot). [If I had known how to shore up my door jam, I would have done it myself and never hired someone to do it]. In his typed reply, he said he was so busy that I'd have to wait about 5 days until he could arrive to look at & fix the issue. Of course, this means I still cannot use my door's deadbolt until it is addressed.
It is now day 5, about 1:30pm, and Roger has not even bothered to give me any ETA on his expected arrival time, nor even bothered to respond to my message sent yesterday to confirm he will still even be arriving today. I even called and left him a voicemail message this morning asking for a confirmation he'll still arrive today and an ETA. No response.
In the interim, I had a neighbor (engineer) come look at the issue. Neighbor quickly identified the problem. Neighbor said when Roger had done the door jam project in Sept he positioned & screwed in the metal frame on door jam a little too far R (which, apparently, is why Roger had instructed me at project end to push on the door to help deadbolt slot into that section. Neighbor said now that the temps have dropped, the alignment disconnect is exacerbated as the deadbolt is now only striking the metal frame around the slot and not going into the slot. Neighbor said the solution is to have the metal frame unscrewed, physically moved to the L so the deadbolt no longer strikes the metal frame around slot but, instead, creates a correct alignment with the slot so the deadbolt enters the slot. Neighbor added that putty will need to be applied to fill in holes of current wrong screw placement.
Would you believe I had also tipped Roger for his earlier work at project end (since he did not finish project in only a few hours as he had anticipated - he was also working me in around other folks projects too, causing him to be delayed in returning to complete my project. Please know that Roger never arrived when he said he would, and only after he failed to arrive on time, did he then leave me updated ETA and still never arrived when he though on the updated ETA.
I tipped Roger in Sept because I was just appreciative to have him return and finish the project that next day and he seemed kind. Now, I wish he had articulated then why the glitch was happening (his incorrect alignment of the metal slot frame with the deadbolt, rather than just instructing me to push on the door to insert deadbolt. I wish now that he had bothered to tell me the problem would become much worse when the temps drop).
Ladies, we can do better. While handymen hang out shingles to go into business, please recognize that not all are equipped with a threshold level of professionalism nor know how. This does not make Roger a bad person. I wish for him self growth, lots of it. When we are paying are money, we customers should have a reasonable expectation of receiving courteousness, appropriate level of communication about the project and any glitches they should know they have caused. I do not need them to be perfect but when they make a mistake, to communicate it to the homeowner and try to fix it."See more
