Complaint Review: Port Jeff Fence Port Jefferson Fence - Mt. Sinai New York

Emp - Sound Beach -- comparing the situation to somebody dropping plates and then returning them for refund is quite frankly offensive, as is titling your post "The truth at last" as if there has been any lie or misrepresentation (from myself) previously.

You talk about me as grasping for excuses as to why I'm not to blame, but the reality is, it is you (like your employer before you) who are grasping for excuses as to why I am to blame, and PJ Fence is blameless.

Your excuses fall completely flat.

You're right, I didn't mention latching issues for that gate in my original post, because I didn't perceive them at the time.  It's only in hindsight, after I had the gate repaired by a crew of my own, that I have had sufficient time to perceive such.  The reasons for that are simple: 1) The gate in question is infrequently used (the other gate, and a door to the house are the usual entry/exit points for the pool yard -- and let's remember, the top hinge sheared after just a month), and 2) after the first "fix" from PJ Fence, the gate was improperly hung, and so could never self-latch.  Accordingly, prior to the original post, I simply hadn't had sufficient time using that gate, to recognize that there was a problem that would cause it to not always latch.

Regardless, I'm not sure why you view my acknowledging that the shearing could have been caused by the gate failing to self-latch, as it was supposed to, as somehow fundamentally transformative to this issue.  It doesn't matter how you slice it, whether it sheared from wind while closed, or whether the self-closing/self-latching mechanism failed to properly latch it, subjecting it to wind, the problem occurred because of something that was clearly a legitimate warranty issue.

What's more, there remains a litany of other issues I listed that were also problems -- undisputed to this day, as to whose responsibility they were -- and despite being minor problems, still either required persistent effort on my part to resolve, or simply never got resolved by PJ Fence.  Take the sheared hinges off the table, and you still have poor quality work and awful follow-up service.

We still have BBB showing PJ Fence with an "F" rating due to unresolved customer complaints, then (almost 6 years ago) and now.  And btw, BBB bases its ratings on complaints in the past 3 years, so that means PJ Fence's rating today is the result of ongoing complaints, not just the same ones that generated its rating 6 years ago.  What's more, with BBB, a company doesn't even need to satisfy the customer to avoid a failing a rating.  They merely need to actually RESPOND to BBB.  PJ Fence doesn't bother responding.

If PJ Fence can't even be bothered replying to BBB, knowing that such will result in a published, failing rating, why would any prospective customer expect that PJ Fence will address any issues that they have?

Emp - Sound Beach, you lecture me on customer service, and how noisy customers get their way, regardless of whether they are right or wrong.  Believe me, I understand customer service.  In my past I have run customer service organizations, including a 500-person customer service call center.  I've seen and know both bad customer service, and good customer service, and I've seen many cases of both reasonably and unreasonably irate customers.

What you ignore completely here is that while I was persistent in calling to try to get resolution of the issues that remained unresolved, I didn't become an irate customer until 6 months had passed and the umpteenth instance of being told a crew would be out to fix the issues, only to have yet another no-show.  I'd call that pretty damned patient.  And all of my interactions to that point were determined, but polite, and over the phone.  I was not a customer who the owners/managers needed to simply shut up because I was making a scene in front of other customers, until I realized that such was the only way I might actually get satisfaction, and I became fed up enough that I became willing to invest some of my time to ensure that the vendor felt my pain, and to warn other prospective customers.

Frankly, $50 (even $200, for all of the remaining issues) is a trivial amount of money.  If the justification for your conception of this situation, and your argument, is that I invested 6 months of repeated calling, then going down to the store in person, preparing to invest time picketing, posting to this forum (and continuing to follow-up to this forum years later), all because I wanted to get over on a $50 repair that was my own fault, then you are deluded.

Yes, sometimes a vendor does things simply on the basis that "the customer is always right."  Sometimes that's the right thing to do.  Not for a minute do I believe that, in this case, I was asking for anything that was unreasonable or inappropriate.  But even if the vendor did believe that, we're talking about things that are so easy for them to fix, that if they cared anything about service and their own reputation for quality, they would have just done it anyway, to ensure a satisfied customer.  And even if they were not smart enough to recognize that, but had integrity, then they would have been upfront in saying "We don't think this is our responsibility, so we're not going treat this as a warranty issue," rather than giving me 6 months of the runaround.

In any case, what you have succeeded in doing is to convince me that the culture at PJ Fence has not changed.  PJ Fence is still generating customers so unsatisfied that they complain to BBB, and PJ Fence is still not responding, even to the BBB.  And we have you, a current employee, apparently more concerned with arguing the physics of whether it is possible for hinges to shear while a gate is closed, and in alleging customer dishonesty, than in addressing all the other undisputed quality issues, and what is obviously inappropriate behavior and awful service from the vendor.

Fyi, Google currently shows this page as the #2 listing on searches for "PJ Fence" and "Port Jefferson Fence" and #3 on searches for "Port Jeff Fence."  Keep up the discussion if you'd like, and perhaps this page will make #1.

I'm confident that any objective third-party reading this thread will conclude that I have been honest and above-board in my actions and what I have posted.  I have no worries at all that attention to this discussion is going to make me look bad.

On the other hand, I'm hard-pressed to imagine that anybody will be sufficiently impressed by your arguments that they would take the chance of doing business with PJ Fence....

    J.S. I am not disputing the fact that there treatment of the situation could have been alot better. If they said that they would send someone out than they should have. Like I said maybe you got off on the wrong foot with them, who knows. I'm sure there are parts of the story that are left out because its the nature of most people to never admit when they are wrong. Anyhow my reasoning for "stirring the hornets nest", is nothing more than to prove a point and according to your last post, I've just done that. My problem isnt with your criticism of the service I know that wasnt right. But of course now you attack the workers also. Notice in all of of your earlier posts you mention nothing about bad hardware or maybe it was installed wrong but as soon as I give a valid argument as to why you were to blame, you have 100 excuses about why you're not. I knew the self closing thing was going to come up but that doesnt change the fact that screws magically shear off a hinge. You can say a thousand reasons but the most logical one is usually the right one. The fact that you cant admit that it even could be your fault just goes to show what we know about customers is right. 
    This actually reminds me of the dinnerware story. Man goes into store to buy a brand new set of ceramic dinnerware. Gets home and hes inside the house and about 20ft away from the counter he drops the box and all the plates shatter. Man now irate at himself decides hes going to bring it back to the store and get a new set. Man goes up to counter tells the clerk that these were broken when I opened them. The clerk says thats weird, you didnt notice the noise when you took the box from here. Man says no, they were broken when I opened them. Clerk says maybe you dropped them. Man gets mad now and yells, I didnt drop them! I want a new set. Clerk says sir the plates cant just break on their own. The man demands to see the manager. After the manager comes out and the man complains for another half hour the manager finally agrees and gives him a new set.
    The point of the story is that if you go into a store and complain long enough and make a big stink, eventually you're going to get your way. Regardless of the fact that it was your fault in the first place. And why is this? Because employers would rather quiet down the situation rather than have someone make a big scene at there place of business. Now you cant prove one way another whether or not the plates were broken already but logically it would make the most sense that they werent. Just as J.S. cant prove that it was a bad install or bad hardware but to him the reason for the gate problem is any other reason than that it was his fault. So we learned that the customer is always right even if the customer is wrong. 
    Now the same goes as to me not being able to prove that it was your fault. But what I can tell is that I have never seen it in 10 years, not once. Thats not a lie. That still doesnt prove anything but it does make me wonder. Oh and there is one more funny thing. If as you said "you would never lie just because you dont wont want to spend the fifty dollars" Then why not just spend the fifty dollars, the funny thing is that if you spent the measley fifty dollars to get it fixed none of this would have ever happened. But then again let me guess its "the principle" of the whole thing. So I ask you whats worse? Causing yourself aggravation by calling for 6 months and getting into arguments on the phone until finally someone pays for it for you or swallowing your pride and admitting that it could be your fault.

Neglected to go back and check the BBB to see if PJ Fence's record is any better, today.  Nope.  Currently rated "F" by BBB NY, on the basis of failure to respond to BBB on two complaints.  Complaints over what?  "Problems with Product/Service."  So it seems I'm still not only customer to have had problems with quality and service at PJ Fence.

You can see the BBB entry for yourself, here:

<http://www.bbb.org/NYC/Business-Reviews/fence-contractors/port-jefferson-fence-co-inc-in-mt-sinai-ny-31617/>

Emp - Sound Beach -- with all due respect, you should stick to discussing that which you actually have first hand knowledge of, before declaring that somebody else is misguided, or exaggerating, or whatever else you wish to claim.

Is it possible that the damage was caused because the gate was not closed?  Sure, that's possible.  Perhaps even the most likely case, given the nature of the damage.  But that doesn't contradict anything I said, and even if it were the case, it changes absolutely nothing about what prospective customers of PJ Fence should take from the story.  The fact is, for 6 months PJ Fence told me they would deal with the issue, repeatedly promising to send out a crew, but simply failed to do so.  It wasn't until I issued an ultimatum that there was any discussion whatsoever as to whether it was their responsibility, and then it was only them making the ridiculous suggestion that "perhaps a tree fell on it."

Perhaps they didn't debate whether the gate had been open because they knew they couldn't logically make the argument that you're trying to make.  You see, this was a self-closing, self-latching gate -- actually required by law to be such, because the fence surrounds a pool.  The only way the gate wouldn't have been latched would have been because the self-closing/self-latching mechanism failed to function properly -- certainly possible, given that it's very clear since the subsequent repairs I had made that the self-closing spring is not tightly enough adjusted to ensure the gate will latch when it closes.  But at a month after installation, failure ot self-close/self-latch would certainly be a warranty issue.

No matter how you slice it, this was a legitimate vendor issue.  And no matter how you slice it, if they thought it wasn't a legitimate warranty issue, then they should have been clear from the outset that they had no intention of taking further action, rather than giving me the runaround for 6 months.

As for the claim that perhaps I knew it was my fault and just didn't want to spend $50 to repair it -- please.  I think I spent three or four thousand altogether on PJ Fence work, as part of a series of over 200K of landscaping and interior renovations work.  In the course of all that work, I've had problems with only two vendors: PJ Fence, and a landscaping vendor who went out of business and disappeared, leaving a job unfinished.

So let's review here.  PJ Fence came to do work, and left the job in a state of having what seemed to me, at the time, to be multiple minor problems.  They made me work, calling multiple times, to get them to come out and address those minor issues.  And even when they came, they failed to fully address them.  They came out to repair the damage you were debating, but did a lousy job at that, not even bothering to check that the gate was aligned well- enough to self-latch once they rehung it.  Then they gave me the runaround for 6 months trying to get resolution of still-minor issues.

After this whole episode passed, I learned that the workmanship on the cedar stockade door they had made for me was of poor quality, also.  First the small piece of lattice they had placed over the hole in the door came apart, because it was shoddily stapled together.  Then the center board of the door came loose, because in cutting the hole, they left it affixed by just a single nail.  Just a few years later, I ended up having the door replaced by a different vendor.

Oh, and with Irene having just come through, I lost a few sections of cedar stockade fence.  Were they sections of fence that the prior owner had put in 25 years ago?  Nope.  Three sections of fence in the run of fence that had been replaced just 6 years ago by PJ Fence, as part of the 2005 job.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.  Could have been just luck that those three sections of fence came down, while other sections of original fence stayed up.  But you know, given my experience otherwise with the quality of PJ Fence work, I certainly wouldn't be betting that it was merely a coincidence....

Now to be fair, it's been 6 years since all this occurred.  Things might have changed at PJ Fence.  Or they might have not.  I know I certainly have no intention of finding out.  As for readers considering fencing work in this area, well, they'll have to decide for themselves.

(Was it really worth stirring this hornet's nest, Emp - Sound Beach?  It seems to me that all you have achieved by your posting is to show readers that PJ Fence is apparently still disinterested in taking responsibility for the quality of their work, and the quality of their customer service.  Oh, and breathing new life into a complaint and discussion that had been simply gathering dust for more than four years....)

    I have been an employee of Port Jeff Fence now for a while and I can tell you that this customers report is completely misleading and exaggerated. Let me start off by saying that the way my fellow employees handled the problem could have been better. Maybe things just never seem to click between the customer and the company. But the one thing I can say is that they were right about the shearing of the screws because it cant happen. I have never seen in 10 years of work due to, "high winds" as J.S. has said. What I can tell IS possible and the one thing that makes the most sense is that the customer somehow, just possibly left his gate open on more than one occasion and the high winds blew it with such force farther than it was meant to go and then yes it could happen. But if this was the case than most definitely it would be the customers fault and he just didnt want to spend the fifty dollars. These gates weigh no more than 20 lbs, so do you really think when its latched and not moving, shy of a hurricane of course, that the wind somehow sheared the screws right out. If you can answer that one than you are smarter than I am. There is no way unless the gate is foolishly left open. I know that this has been years since the first report but I just had to post because every time I read this I get a good laugh on how ridiculous it is. So anyone who might read this, just think about what I said and say to yourself is there any other way that you can think of that would cause this damage. Let me know.

Gary, I don't doubt that you've had good experiences with PJ Fence. Your repair experience was two years before mine. Could be that things were different then. Could be that you got lucky and I got unlucky. Could be that they recognized you as a repeat customer and likely future prospect, and gave you some extra TLC. I can't say which it was, but what I can say is that I was more than reasonable in dealing with them. Heck, I waited 6 months and endured repeated promises to send out a repair crew, only to have nobody show, before I finally told them I had had enough. I can also say that I'm clearly not the only one who has had a problem with them. If you look them up on the NY BBB website, you'll find that, as of today, they show 7 complaints in the last 3 years. 2 resolved to the customer's satisfaction, 2 to which they responded but the customer remained dissatisfied, and 3 to which they have not responded. In the last 12 months, it's 2 complaints, both of which they have not responded to. The BBB rates them as having an unsatisfactory record, as a result. This, of course, represents only the people who actually complained to the BBB. Note that I'm not counted among these, as I never filed a BBB complaint, having succeeded in at least getting reimbursement from them for the repairs I had performed at the time, after threatening to picket their store. (In the intervening time, I've had further problems with the wooden gate they made for me. The lattice work over the decorative hole cut in it -- which was just stapled in place -- fell apart and off. And the center board cut for the hole also fell off, because it was left with a single nail holding it in place after they cut the hole. I did my best to hammer it back into place. At this point, I can't be bothered hassling with them, so I'll probably just get a new gate, from somebody else, to deal with the problems.) At the end of the day, it's undoubtedly a good idea to take any comments, good or bad, coming from an unknown person on the internet with a grain of salt. Accordingly, I recommend that anybody considering using Port Jeff Fence not take my word for it, but check their BBB record for themselves. You can find it by putting in their phone number (631-331-2448). Good luck!

I have had 3 fences installed by Port Jeff Fence over the past 5 years on investment properties that I own. I have 4 dogs and do most of the work myself to rebuild houses and then resell, so the first order of business is having a fence put up so I can take the dogs with me. The second fence that I had installed by PJ fence had some problems with the gate after about 2 weeks. I stopped in at PJ fence and spoke to Kevin. He said he would have to look at it, but he would get out to the property in the next day or two. The next day he called me and said that the problem was related to the soil conditions but he would have a crew out in the next few weeks to add some extra cement to hold it better. Two days later I went there around 11 Am and the crew was just packing up. They had replaced the gate, 4 posts and 2 sections of fence. They told me that they added extra cement and should be no problem now. That was in may 2004, and the gate is still standing straight. When I sold the house the new owners loved the fence. Since then I have used PJ fence 1 more time and had no problems. I am getting ready to do it again and looked on google for their website so I can call them again and ran across this report. I will use Port Jeff fence for all my fencing jobs because of the way they treated me. I can't speak for the person who made this report, but it doesn't sound like the same company that I dealt with. Guess you can't please everyone, all the time. Just wanted to add my 2 cents. G.H. Middle Island, NY

I proceeded to secure independent repairs for my fence and gates. It turned out to be a difficult task to find a reputable fencing contractor who was willing to come out to make repairs for a fence they did not install. So I ended up engaging a pair of excellent carpenters who I had used on a renovation project. A whopping two hours and $200 later, my repairs were complete (save for touching up the paint on the ornamental aluminum gate and fence). So I faxed a letter to the owner of PJ Fence (whom I had spoken with twice previously in trying to arrange repairs), explaining that, as I had stated I would do, I had engaged another to perform the repairs, and that I now expected them to reimburse me for the cost, and to supply me with suitable tough-up paint. I warned them that if I did not receive such within a week, I would proceed to picket their store, to ensure that prospective customers were aware of my experience, and their BBB record. I included the invoice, a copy of the check paying for the repairs, and a copy of their online BBB report. This past Tuesday marked a week, and I was making my plans to go picket their store tomorrow morning (Saturday) -- had already printed up signs to tape in the windows of my car, which I planned to park in front of their store. But tonight I found that they had mailed me a check for $225! (Presumably, the extra $25 was to cover the costs of touch-up paint, which they did not include.) So, some satisfaction at last! Posting as encouragement to anybody else struggling with a vendor who isn't living up to their obligations....