Our next door neighbor hired Certapro Simi Valley for a job which included painting their side of shared property fence and replacing 2 posts. Without getting our consent, the site supervisor and other crew wrongfully entered our property and did almost all of the construction in our yard. In addition to trespassing, they made changes to our property, again, without our permission. They dismantled the fence and strewn it across our lawn along with piles of dirt, pieces of cement and splinters of wood. They dug holes so far from the fence that they busted our sprinkler pipe. Then, rather than building a mound and sloping the concrete away from the posts as was done originally, Certapro simply filled the holes with cement ridged at the top, taking away a chunk of our lawn. Plus, the 2 new posts were installed onto our property so they were not in line with the rest of the fence.

When we came home and saw our yard trashed, we promptly notified the neighbors who brought the foreman over the next morning. He agreed to make changes and let us see the fixes before the fence was reinstalled. We asked him for a business card. He said he didn’t have one on him but would get one. However, while we were gone from 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM, Certapro once again came on our property without authorization, covered the cement with dirt, put back the fence and, in the process, cracked most of the boards on our side, including the two new posts. In addition, they not only failed to re-install the bottom rails but took them without our approval. Meanwhile, the foreman left the premises and didn’t leave a business card. When we pointed out our concerns to the site supervisor, he gave us no contact information but said they’d be back Monday.  They never returned.

We later learned that Certapro is only licensed as a painting contractor. But since the company charged the neighbors less than $500 for the posts, Certapro didn’t need to meet the eligibility requirements imposed by the state of California for fence contractors. When we wrote a letter to the owner, Matt Hampton, he claimed to know nothing about the situation. After we presented photos showing the construction not on the client’s property but on ours, he apologized but did not say what would be done to prevent future violations. We, therefore, wrote to the franchise operation’s headquarters and informed the CEO, Charlie Chase, of our experience. We also requested that the company adopt measures not permitting its franchisees to disregard local laws. We never received a response.