CertaPro Painters of Milwaukee

Save yourself the trouble. I have used other certa-​pro franchises in the past and have been happy with the process. Not this franchise. The consultation was pleasant, but things went down hill after that. The scheduling process has been a nightmare. I have called them six times to schedule my appointment and no success yet. They are always out of the office… either a holiday… to late on a Friday… on another call. They never return messages. Their accountant seems to be in the office, because they had no problem cashing my deposit. I won’t be going through with the paint job. I have little confidence in this service. Its too bad, the reason I am willing to pay a premium to avoid flaky, undependable contractors.

Had I known more about CertaPro upfront and been shown honest feedback from customers who had a less than satisfactory experience, I would’ve turned and ran quickly from these hacks.
Let’s start with the initial consultation. Ben came to our home, spoke with my wife and I about our exterior painting needs, walked around our house, made general pleasantries, and provided us with an estimate very quickly. Unfortunately, this was the high point of our relationship with CertaPro. We were shown a binder full of projects and customer reviews with 4 and 5 ratings (on a 5 point scale). What they won’t show you, and what you won’t find on their website, are reviews from customers who gave a rating of 3 or less. My review? Not on their website because I gave them a 2. So warning number one: ask for a completely unedited list of reviews to get the real story. Of course they’ll show you the good reviews.
Warning number two: CertaPro does not employ their painters; rather, they subcontract all of their jobs to local crews looking to make some quick money. My suspicion of this fact was confirmed by Cindy at their office, who told me they subcontract their jobs. The lack of accountability from our crew, and from CertaPro in making sure a quality job was done, was pathetic.
Start to finish, the job took about 2 months. Among the long list of problems, I got home one day to find the trim of our home had been painted chocolate brown instead of the black color we chose during our color consultation. Ben told us we would have to pay $ 600+ to correct this. Even when we provided proof of our email exchanges with our color consultant, we still had to fight to get it resolved at no charge. I’ll spare you the boring details about the shoddy scraping job, the thin coats of paint on our trim that needed to be retouched not once, but twice, the excuse that some of our downspouts couldn’t be painted behind because removing them would cause the gutters to fall, and the laughable attitude of the office manager, Craig, when I told him I wouldn’t be paying them a dime until the job was completed to some level of satisfaction.
Do yourself a favor: Find a local painter who takes pride in his work. The extra few hundred dollars you might pay will be well worth it. If you still think you want to work with CertaPro to save some money, question the hell out of everything they tell you upfront and make sure you inspect the work before you give them a dollar.