College Works Painting - Page 6

TOPEKA, KANSAS -- I contracted with College Works Painting to paint the trim around the doors, windows, garage door and fascia, as well as the front door and side garage door of my house. Montana and the college works crew did a great job with the painting and finished in a timely manner. They even held off painting around two windows at my request as the windows were to be replace just a few days after painting.

There was an issue with the paint on the front door, so when Montana came back to complete the painting around the replaced windows he also repainted the front door until it met my approval. The crew was professional and they did a good job making sure that everything was cleaned up each day of painting.

OXFORD, MICHIGAN -- I contracted College Works Painting to paint the outside trim on my house very early in the spring so that I would be at the top of the list for the summer season as I wanted to list my house for sale. I was required to give a 25% deposit at the contract signing which I reluctantly did. When June rolled around and no work was started I continuously contacted the sales representative and received numerous excuses for the delay. Then in July he would no longer accept my calls.

Repeated attempts to resolve the issue through the main office in California went nowhere. Their resolution amounted to sending emails to the local owner. I finally contacted my local sheriff's office and was told that since they did no work and took my money that it was fraud and that they were going to seek criminal charges. When notified of this the sales representative immediately refunded my deposit.

I then contracted a professional painter from Angie's List who had the job done within a week, no deposit required. And get this, it was $800 cheaper. College Works could have sub-contracted this guy and pocketed the difference. This delay cost me valuable time in the short summer sales season and resulted in having to sell for less than similar houses sold earlier. My advise to you is to hire a professional and do not pay anything upfront.

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI -- Initially when I was learning about this program, I thought it was too good to be true; Get tons of experience, make a good amount of money, and be my own boss in a sense. I wondered what the catch was. I was told this would be hard but I really had no idea until I dived in. Building up a business from scratch while in school, dealing with the many no's it took to grow my branch, having my own clients and hiring my own employees; it was a handful. I came out successfully running a branch that ranked top 5 in our division. Lots of bumps and bruises came with it but I persevered. This program is not for everyone I will have to tell you. The mentality you need to have far exceeds most college age students. Going through it was the most rewarding experience in my college career and I now have job offers from tons of big firms across the country.

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO -- This College Works Internship, is one unlike any other. They train you to run a business. Now, obviously if you don't have the work ethic to run a business then you shouldn't be running one. Also this internship isn't for the average person, but it fits perfectly for others. I would do this internship again given the opportunity. They also plan out an end of the year trip to Cancun, Mexico, as well as fun contests throughout the year to win for the summer time. I have had a wonderful experience with this internship and I have learned life lessons from it. I am so grateful to cherish this experience with running a business.

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- I was incredibly skeptical about College Works when I was first approached about doing the program. I think any right-thinking college student would be. College Works recruits very aggressively. 19-year-olds aren't used to being recruited for an internship, especially one that is supposedly ranked so high and pays so well (Almost $10,000 they say the average intern makes). That is what got me a little uneasy. As great as I thought I was right out of high school, why would such an outstanding opportunity be recruiting ME? What college freshmen don't realize is that ll great companies recruit.

That's what you do if you want the best employees. And what I later found out, is that this isn't your typical internship where you do garbage work 12 hours a day, and leave the summer saying you got to "hang out" with a bunch of business people. You earn the money you make. Not everyone make $10,000. In fact, I know a lot of people who didn't. But I also know they didn't work as hard as I did.

I have to say, this internship is TOUGH. It tested me more than I had ever been before. In high school I played 3 sports, graduated with honors and was in clubs and all that jazz. I held a part-time job the summer after my senior year. I busted my butt to prepare myself for college. College Works brought new meaning to the term responsibility. I thought football practice and English homework in the same night was tough in HS. Then I was introduced to communicating with clients, scheduling sales appointments, creating marketing plans, sourcing and screening potential employees AND 17 credit hours worth of homework each night.

Not to mention, maintaining some sort of a social life as a college freshman. I gave up about half of the weekends during the spring semester of my freshman year to work on my business, on top of what I mentioned above. My friends thought I was crazy. At times, so did I.

I was relieved to get my finals out of the way so I could focus more on my business. It sounds odd, but with all the responsibilities I had, my life actually got MORE organized. It felt like I was in high school again, when I did everything, and I did everything well. It was tough balancing it all at first, but after a while I got used to it, and really started to get into it. So by the time I reached the summer, I was excited for what was ahead. Up to that point, I had really only learned how to source leads for my business and sell paint jobs.

It was starting to get a little monotonous, although the prospect of growing my business larger and larger was strangely addicting. Maybe it was the competitive nature of it. Maybe it was the idea of constantly striving to improve. Maybe it was a combination of both. Either way, I was starting to enjoy what I did.

Once I got out of school, I was slightly overwhelmed with even more responsibility. On top of continuing to grow my business, I now had to interview painters, schedule design consultations with clients, get my equipment together, and start planning out my production schedule. Once I did all that, then it was time to actually fulfill the promises I had made to all these people who had entrusted me to beautify their most valuable assets. I spent time training and managing my painters. Yes, I said training.

College Works helped me with this. Painting really isn't that hard. It just takes a sort of blue-collar mentality and a little attention to detail. I had to make sure my painters were up to par. If a painter was bad, I fired him/her and found another one. It wasn't hard to find people looking to make some money. I also had to manage my business's profitability. This means budgeting labor and material costs on each project, and making sure we stayed within those budgets. I was in charge of customer service and processing payroll every 2 weeks so my painters could get paid.

Looking back on it, I can't believe I was given so much responsibility at 19 years old. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. After a while it got easier, just like the spring. I found some good painters, figured the whole profitability thing out, and eventually my business wasn't as dependent on me. I still worked, but nothing crazy. I had time to do other things that a normal college kid does in the summer. I had a ton of help the whole way. I had a district manager who helped me at each step.

I had meetings with her 3-4 times/week from start to finish. She worked very hard to make sure I knew how to be successful. Rarely did she ever do anything FOR me, but she was always there for advice (even if I immaturely ignored it sometimes). I appreciated that.

By the end of the summer I couldn't believe everything I had accomplished. I ran a $60,000 business. I had 15 different employees work for me. I sourced over 150 leads, executed over 70 sales appointments, and completed 20 projects, all the while maintaining customer satisfaction, painter safety, and profitability. There were other people who did a lot better. They ran bigger businesses, made more money, etc. There were others who didn't do as well as I did. Some of these people took longer to figure it out. Most didn't work as hard as I did. Now, College Works is the only thing job interviewers want to talk about.

No one with College Works ever lied to me. They told me that if I worked hard, I would experience more and gain more than anyone else my age. So I gave it my all, and that is exactly what happened.

TUCSON, ARIZONA -- I am writing because I am terribly disappointed and angry. We met the representatives for College Works Painting at the SAHBA Home Show in Tucson, Arizona in April, 2010. The young men were friendly, and personable, so we gave your name for them to contact us re: possibly getting our house painted. ** and ** came to our house for an interview, and they were pleasant, and seemed knowledgeable, gave us a spiel about how they wanted the customers to be happy, while working to learn the management skills they would need over time to run their own businesses. We felt that it would be nice to get experience, while getting our home looking better.

We reviewed the contract, made selections, and decided to sign (my husband signed) and we gave him a down payment check, with plans made for the work to start in early June. On June 6, ** delivered some of the equipment, and they were to start work on Monday the 8th, at 6:00 AM. That morning, 2 young men showed up as scheduled, ready to work--but they had no information about the job to be done, colors to be used, etc. They started the prep, and within an hour, they were out of supplies, so they called ** for more. He did not show up for over 2 hours with 1 5 gallon can of paint.

That was gone very quickly, and the workers were told that they had to get the job done so they could go get another one started. With no caulk, preparation was not being done, as Anthony had gone all the way to Ina for a tube of caulk. We live in Southwest Tucson. One of the workers finally got frustrated and started painting without the wall being prepared. The wind was blowing hard that day, and the sprayer did not have a regulator on it, thus, creating "gobs" of overspray everywhere. My husband caught it later.

The second day, only one worker came, and he was only going to paint the Fascia, but we showed him the sloppy work, so he started doing everything that he needed to do to make things better. Unfortunately, the metal screen door on the east side of the house which had been painted, looked horrible, had great big globs of paint and the holes on the screen were sealed. The house door has big streaks of pain, and we will have to paint it over. The contract stipulated that drop cloths would be used, none were. There is overspray all over our decking, and flooring, and paint strippings from scraping are allover as well. There are cigarette butts all over the yard.

** saw the shoddy work, and he came by twice that day, wanting the remainder of his payment, but my husband would not give it to him until the job was completed, as stipulated on the contract. When he showed ** the doors with the overspray, and paint globed screens, he spoke to his manager, and they took $50.00 off the priceWhoop de do. It is going to take more than that to remove and repaint the screen doors, as well as the house doors.

In reality, my husband accepted the deal only because he was not feeling well, was burning up with fever, and could hardly function. I was at work, came home to find the mess. My complaint is that the management, those above **, ** as the student intern, have no consideration for doing what they claim, and the contract protects them really well. Money is the object, and the work was not worth what was done--10 gallons of paint, and 1 gallon of another color is worth much less than the amount of money that we will have to spend to "fix" the mess.

If I had read these reviews, we would never have contracted with them, and they certainly will not get any referrals from us. Even if the Student Interns are getting experience, the method through which they are getting it is unscrupulous, and totally a scam! Please, if you are considering using this company, DON'T. They have no conscience, and consideration for homeowners who work hard to save for payment, and end up getting lousy service.

We did not complain to the company because after reading reviews, we figured we would have to end up paying more fees, which would have only angered us moreso we figure if others can read about our and other's experiences, we gain more from it. Thank you for posting.

I was looking for a summer job in my town (which has a very limited seasonal job market), so when I got hired on to College Works Painting (CWP) as a painter I was really excited. I really like manual labor, and painting is a new skill that would be fun to learn. But the unprofessionalism of my employer made the job lose its fun really quickly.

First off, there was really poor communication between the employer and the employees. When I got hired, the employer asked me if I "would be okay doing a little marketing here and there? It's a good way to get some money before you actually start painting." I said sure. To be honest, I don't really care what I'm doing as long as I am getting paid.

But, it turns out, I wasn't getting paid, and the marketing wasn't optional. I had to market for four hours every week with no actual reimbursement beyond a measly commission. Now, this of course is legal (they don't have to pay for work if your total pay at normalizes to at least minimum wage), and you can require people to market if you want. But neither of these factors (the lack of pay and the requirement of marketing) were not communicated to me upon hiring.

But more importantly, the company (as one might expect from something run by college students) is really unprofessional. We had to attend this training to learn how to paint. We had to drive to the next town over (it's about two hours away) for the training. We were supposed to be there at 7 am, but we (being driven by our employer) didn't show until 8:15. Yet even the district managers weren't there yet, and nobody cared that we were an hour and fifteen minutes late.

The training consisted of us helping paint one house. There were about twenty five painters from all over the region, but one ladder, one paint gun, one paint brush, and about three rolls of masking tape. So those of us not lucky enough to have one of the few supplies were subjected to being yelled at by the supervisor running the training for standing around doing nothing.

The training was bad in other ways, too. I was lucky enough to be on a team with somebody who had painted before, and spent a lot of time pointing out the mistakes to me and, before he was criticized by him, to the supervisor. For example, people would place plastic drop cloths over shrubs so they don't get all painted on, but you're supposed to leave at least one side open so the shrub can "breath". That was never mentioned, so all the shrubs ended up completely covered for hours in the hot sun. They're probably dead now.

I quit after the training. Yet, Oregon labor laws required that I be paid for my training within five days of quitting. I waited two weeks, and still hadn't gotten paid. So I called my supervisor. She didn't answer, and didn't return my message. I called her again a few days later. This time she replied, and told me she would bring my money that day. It turns out she had thrown away my paper work before even entering it to the "system", so she would just have to pay me a flat rate, an estimate of how much I should have been paid. It's been a week now, and even though I've called her a number of times, I still haven't gotten paid.

If you're a college kid looking for some summer work, don't apply at College Works Painting. You'll end up frustrated at the unprofessionalism of your supervisor and the lack of communication in general, and if you quit you'll probably end up having your wages stolen from you.

GROSSE POINTE PARK, MICHIGAN -- I had a bedroom and my dining room painted by College Works. I was skeptical at first but Conner let me see a house that his company did. It wasn't perfect but we thought we'd give him a chance as long as we told him what our expectations were. He said he could meet them. The estimate was lower than expected which worried me. In the end, it was better than expected! There were some little details that needed to be cleaned up and they did them. I would highly recommend them.

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- Sam and his crew painted our bedroom and it looks great! They came in on time and left when the job was done leaving no mess behind. I would definitely recommend him to anyone who needs any painting done!

JACKSON, MICHIGAN -- Sam and his team did a great job painting my bedroom. Him and his crew were very professional throughout the whole process! they came in, finished the job, and cleaned up very well before taking off.