Please note that DPI Painting & Maintenance is also listed in some places as D. Palumbo, Inc. Once upon a time in the long, long ago, D. Palumbo was a reliable handyman and painter. We lived in the same neighborhood. He and my wife met somehow and we hired him to pressure wash the outside of our home and our backyard fence. He did a good job, charged a fair price and all was well. When it came time to move, we knew we would have to have the interior of our house re-painted to correct and repair the fine workmanship of the homebuilders and their original contractors. Recalling that Mr Palumbo also did painting, we contacted him again and got an estimated price which we agreed to. The small complication was that the work would have to occur after we moved out of state. No problem; we have a property manager who would coordinate with Mr Palumbo to get him into the home as necessary to complete the work. It took longer than we had expected/wanted, as there was apparently a communication issue between Mr Palumbo and our property manager. Initially, I would chalk this up to our property manager as he is sometimes slow to respond to our own communications. Now — I’m not so sure. My wife and I have not actually seen the results of the work, but we have been assured by our property manager that it is acceptable. Hooray. After completing the work, Mr Palumbo contacted my wife for the final payment. The price was as we had agreed upon and included whatever taxes and fees were necessary. It was a final, inclusive price. My wife provided our credit card information and that was that. Or so it should have been. Mr Palumbo made a mistake. He had just recently set himself up with a Square Reader for credit card processing and had apparently messed up the settings. He ended up charging us additional sales tax. He realized this and contacted my wife to explain his mistake. He promised that he would either reverse/alter the transaction or refund us the money he overcharged us. He was apparently unable to fix the transaction so he promised he would send us a check for the difference. That was May 15th. It is now August 30th. 108 days have passed. In this time, my wife has sent 5 emails — all of which have been ignored. My wife has tried calling him. Phone calls go to voice mail and are ignored. In one recent attempt, my wife reached Mrs Palumbo. Mrs Palumbo apologized and gave my wife Mr Palumbo’s cell phone number. Mr Palumbo answered and said that he was in the middle of something and couldn’t talk and asked she call back in five minutes. Subsequent phone calls to that number went directly to a voice mailbox which was full. I have personally emailed Mr Palumbo and my own email has been ignored. DPI Painting & Maintenance is run by a very shady individual who overcharges, pockets the money and then refuses to make good on his promises when he can’t be confronted in person. UPDATE: It’s been over a year. We still occasionally try to contact them, but the Palumbos still ignore our emails and phone calls. Avoid at all costs! UPDATEDUPDATE: We’ve moved back to Orlando and I’ve finally seen the paint job he completed for us. Quite honestly, I never would have approved him saying it was done. While he only painted the walls and not the ceilings, he did not properly tape the ceilings, so there are spots of wall paint all along the edges all through the house. When we left, my wife had left a few small nails in the walls. I didn’t necessarily expect him to patch the holes, but I also didn’t expect him to literally just paint over the nails. Seriously. Avoid at all costs!
