Applegate Alexander & Co in Orpington

Very rude and aggressive plus poor communication. We had an escape of water claim and hired him due to the good reviews on Checkatrade. Tony (owner) seemed to be fine, but once he was given a large sum of money he became boorish towards us, our neighbour and other tradesmen we hired for different work. He also left our front door open with nearly £1000 worth of flooring in our empty home. A neighbour discovered it and when asked about it, the owner claimed she was lying. Despite being given plenty of time to finish his work (several weeks), on the day other tradesmen came to do their job he showed up with no notice to us and told them to stop working until his job was done! We asked for a quote on work outside of the insurance job he was doing for us to redo our bathroom. Without warning or authorisation he removed not only all of our wall tiles, but disposed of the sanitary ware. We had been moved to alternative accommodation and were not always in the property to oversee everything. He then tried to charge us over £1000 to retile a 17sqm bathroom (with us supplying everything) and several hundred pounds to remove them. And charged us nearly £200 to dispose of everything. We felt we had to negotiate with him as he was already given a large sum of money by the insurance company and told him to give us the balance to redo the bathroom. The floor he installed was not done correctly and moves when you walk on it, but he refused to remedy it. He claims he gives a 12 month guarantee, but will not honour it. We put everything in writing to him and he said to meet him at our home. He came into our home, handed us a letter. He then turned his back on us and told us to read the letter and reply. We asked to go step by step and he told us we had to do it his way. He kept talking over us. My husband asked him to lower his voice as it was early in the morning. My husband did not want to disturb the neighbours and went to close our front door. Tony threw our keys, pushed my husband and wrested control of the door from my husband. He then claimed he was assaulted and my husband tried to kidnap him. And said we were rude and ignorant. Despite being paid around £13,000 he did not put loose wires back into place, did not put our bathroom door back on, tiled all of the bathroom floor including under where the bathtub was being placed and then refused to put it to rights. We had to pay the other tradesman to redo his mess up. Further, he told us to pick out paint from Dulux. We did this and then he sent us an email saying the paint was mixed and we had to pay over £100 extra as the paint was not covered with no prior warning asking if we wanted to go ahead with it. While we were satisfied with how quickly he started to work and the tidiness from his workmen, the whole experience left us feeling very stressed and we cannot recommend him due to his behaviour, lack of listening skills and refusal to discuss any issues or rectify them. It was clear he was out to engineer a confrontation so he could claim he is unable to return to the property in the future if there are issues to be dealt with. He is proud of his ratings, but beware. There are better tradesmen out there who know how to treat their customers with respect.