Complaint Review: East Coast Contractors - Kearny New Jersey

East Coast Contractors is located in Kearny, NJ they provide services for bank owned properties by completed all the maintenance work. These properties are owned by such banks like Citi Mortage, M & T Bank, Bank of America, etc. the properties are serviced through the largest property management company in the America called "Safeguard Properties". East Coast Contractor is a direct contractor for Safeguard Properties to perform the maintenance work on properties here in NJ, and some parts of Philadelphia. East Coast Contractors is owned by Marshall Cruz and the Vice President is Sandra Caballero, who by the way is one of the biggest liars you ever want to talk too.  East Coast Contractors has tons of homes to maintenance for Safeguard Properties and therefore all of the work is sub-contracted out to much smaller compaines looking for work.

There is no fee to sign up and work as a sub-contractor for East Coast Contractors (ECC) but you will need $500,000 general liability insurance, which wasn't a problem and that is the norm in the world of performing contracting work. My small home improvement company was looking to pick up work, especially with the down economy homeowners aren't really hiring home improvement companies so, I thought what do I have to lose? Well, I found out pretty fast I had lots to lose working for these crooks. Sandra took me though all the training materials, explain the job really well, she told me the pay is weekly for my area (South Jersey) verse the contractors in North Jersey that are paid only on 1st and the 16th of each month. I thought to myself....how nice to get paid weekly. Sandra told me every Friday the check is either mailed out or I could come pick the check up from the office in Kearny,NJ. Sandra also sent via email the pay dates which I seen for the first 4 weeks you don't receive a check because Safeguard Properties usually takes up to 30 days to pay the main contractor, which is East Coast Contractors. I thought to myself wow, this might be a little difficult not getting paid for 30 days plus having to buy all of my materials to complete the work. See, when you are the contractor or sub-contractor you must buy all materials to complete each job and working for East Coast Contractors who gets all of its work from Safeguard Properties, there is a pay list showing how much each job actually pays except for jobs that you must bid on and that is where all the money is.

The first sign of trouble is when the 30 day wait from our June 10 start date for our first check, which by the way was very hard to do but we made it simply by taking monies out of my IRA to get my business back making money. Sandra mailed the check out on time but when the check was received on Monday is was for the wrong amount. The check was short by almost $1,000. First of all, it is very hurtful to wait 30 days for payment only to see the check is off by $1,000 plus you have more expense daily to keep yourself working such as, fuel, supplies, lunches, and truck repairs, payroll of employee's, not including wanting to use some of your profits on household bills. I called Sandra immediately to tell her the check was wrong with mulitple invoices unpaid. I wanted an explanation as to how was the check wrong when the invoice dates run from Sunday to Saturday each week? Sandra's reply was "the system we use for your daily work orders and invoices the cut off date is Saturday of each week, but once we mark it ready for office the system doesn't mark the invoice as ready until the next day, which is Sunday of the new week." I told Sandra, well when you run the invoices for payment run the invoices from Sunday to Sunday to make sure you get all the invoices that were closed out on Saturday. I told Sandra I have to many expense to not receive all of my money for the week. Sandra said ok, she would make sure all of my invoices for the week would be paid. You see, Saturday is the busiest day to work, you will have as many as 12 work orders for the day which can boost your weekly income.

East Coast Contractors use a system called Property Preservation Wizard to create your work order and your invoice. The work order that comes from Safeguard Properties, East Coast Contractors do not want you to see that actual order because they don't want to pay you the correct amount of the work order. What East Coast Contractors will do is get the order from Safeguard Properties then chop the order up and split it between numerous sub-contractors that they use. Then once the work order is completed and you call into the office and have the photo's approved that you take in Photo Direct the invoice is created by East Coast Contractors. In many cases if you don't ask ahead of time how much the work order is payin you won't know until the invoice is created in the system by East Coast Contractors. The reason why East Coast Contractors will not on most occassions tell you how much the job is paying because they don't want you to turn down the order. In many cases eithe Ruth, Rosalba, Mibel, Niva including Sandra will lie about the amount of the job just to get you to complete the job only for you to see the invoice states a different amount which is lower than what was quoted by them.

Sandra and Rosalba will lie and tell you the homes you go out to perform work on will only be performed by you since they are in your area but you will find out quickly that isn't the truth. You will be sent out daily to perform inspections on these homes to report damages to bid on, the bid is placed by East Coast Contractors with you having no knowledge of the bid amount. The bid comes back from Safeguard Properties to perform the work and East Coast Contractors will give the work to another contractor or if they do give it to you they pay you peanuts. You don't know how much they are keeping because you never see the bid, you provide the measurements for the damages and they bid it for you and keep mostly all of the money.

Sandra, Rosalba and the owner Marshall Cruz will make sure you don't make over $3,500 a week because they don't want to pay you. The materials to complete the work is expensive, the fuel for your truck to keeping running back and forth to Trenton, Hamilton, Philadelphia, etc. along with your employee's, becasue there is no way you can complete the work alone, you come home with peanuts.

Now back to getting paid on time, our second check we didn't get until a Wednesday of the following week because Sandra lie about when the check was being mailed out. The check should be mailed out every Friday but for our second check received from East Coast Contractors the check was mailed out on a Monday afternoon causing me to not receive the check until Wednesday, and yes the amount was incorrect. There were 4 big invoices that wasn't paid. I sent Sandra an email once again about the late payments and how this effects my workers and my ability to buy supplies to continue to work. Sandra replied how sorry she was for the incovienence and also said the missing invoices would be on next weeks check. Of course, I was upset for I really needed all of my money to continue working and to pay my employees. The next week came around and this time I didn't want any excuses I wanted my money on time, so my daughter who works for me I called Sandra and told her my daughter would be there for our check. Sandra replied back, fine and even emailed me the address for my daughter to come pick up the check.

My daughter gets there and the building is a shack, there is drug users running in and out picking up supplies, checks, etc. Now mind you I live in Deptford and Kearny is a 2 hour plus ride, my daughter gets there and Sandra tells her that her boss (Marshall Cruz) left out and didn't sign the checks yet, it was 2pm in the afternoon. Sandra then told my daughter he (Marshall Cruz) would be back at 4pm. My daughter waited 2 hours for Marshall to show up and sign the check, which he did but yet again the check was incorrect.

To summerize up the payments from East Coast Contractors is simple, the payments are alway late because Sandra will lie about mailing out the check, and the paymentw will alway be incorrect because they intentionally leave out invoice. I have never received a payment on time, unless I went to the office which they don't like you to do, this is why Sandra started telling us the check was mailed out on Thursday which is lie. The check will never be for the correct amount.

Another under handed trick East Coast Contractors will play, they will give you an work order that already bid on, came back to perform the work, you weren't the contractor that preformed the bid, but they give it to you anyway and pay you much less than the actual amount. East Coast Contractors gave us a trash out on a home where we didn't do the bid, they claim the debris was 40 cyd but when we get there the house is fully furnished from roof to floor in every room, including the garage and shed, the total cyd, which is cubic yards was actually 210 cyd. Rosalba, Sandra and Marshall were like," well you must do the order for the amount on the work order becasue that's what the bank approved."

I had a feeling it was a lie for there is no way the three of them couldn't have looked at the previous inspection photos and not see that there is over 40cyd in that home. Here is what I now believe, they were paid by Safeguard Properties for the 210 cyd but only paid me for 40 cyd and pocketed the rest. I truley believe East Coast Contractors have been doing this on all of my invoices.

Sandra on a separate occassion paid me by handwritten check, with no date on it knowing the bank wouldn't accept the check. I didn't notice it because I didn't open up the envelope until I got into the bank and gave it to the teller, only to find out there was no date on the check and the check was handwritten not computerized like before. I was so mad and hurt for one, my company is honest, realible, and always complete our work. I felt that Sandra and East Coast Contractors were disrespecting me by not paying me on time and by not paying all of my invoices and by tampering with the actual invoice payment from Safeguard Properties.

 East Coast Contractors have sub-contractors that go into the homes and before completing the inspection they do damage to the home to gain more work. East Coast Contractors know of this pratice for they have the sub-contractors do the damages so they can bid on the repair work to keep them in business. East Coast Contractors also file fake police reports to submit in to Safeguard Properties only to have the same sub-contractors that commited the theft to do the repairs. These sub-contractors are stealing pipes out of the walls, AC units, hot water heaters, heaters, and creating big holes in the roofs, taking off shingles on the roofs, anything to cause damage to the home so they can bill Safeguard Propeties to do the work. This is direct fraud for many of these home are government bank owned homes such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, which means taxpayers like you and me are paying for it. The other banks such as Bank of America, M and T Bank, Citi Mortgage, etc. when damages such as water damage, mold, roof repairs, etc. are reported into the bank they receive the money from the homewoner insurance policy that the bank keeps on these properties whcih is causing every homeowner an increase in premiums from East Coast Contractors fraudently activties.

There is more I could post but I have reported East Coast Contractors to the Better Business Bureau, to Safeguard Properties, the Better Business Bureau, the New Jersey State Attorney General's Office, and the Country Prosecutors Office in Hudson County, NJ I don't want another honest, dependable, hard-working sub-contracting company like mine to get taken for a ride by these crooks like I did. Oh, one final thing Sandra went from signing her emails as Vice President to Company Represntative & Compliance Administrator as of this week, such crooks. I am still owed over $4,000 by East Coast Contractors and I plan on figting them to the end.