College Pro Painters
Reviews and Complaints

We entered into an agreement with Peter DeBoer on June 6, 2018 to paint the trim on 502 W Spruce Street, Missoula, MT. The agreement stated that the job would be completed by August. Peter would not respond to phone messages, text messages or emails from our Executive Director or from myself. Because of the lateness in the season and Peter being unresponsive, we hired another painter. Peter needs to return our deposit of $1, 458.00 as soon as possible. The experience of trying to communicate with Peter has been beyond frustrating. Please let us know what steps we need to take to get our deposit returned to us.

Hello

I am complaining about the guy named Gardlean his number is +[protected]

My name is Nikhil Saini

It's a complain about how unprofessional he was. Basically he called me for an interview and after finishing it he told me How he was gonna follow up with the procedure and give me an email about everything this evening . I called him the next day and asked weather he hires me or not . He said I am hired and ask me not worry about anything he will send the confirmation in couple of hours but he does not I call him and ask him 2 more times and he still does the same thing and wanted my time and hopes . He was too busy to confirm the situation with me . I called him and told him that ok look sir I have other 2 interviews and they are expecting me to show up but that was like u don't have to that labour job u r hired by me . It's is just really unethical and annoying that how he was wasting my time and irritating me . And then I call someone from collage pro and ask to put a complaint so to handle the situation softly the guy who I called to complaint said he will make sure that your franchise owner reaches you by today. My franchise owner calls me and said that there is no chance that I am working in his team .

It looks really bad on collage pro because he was not a good representative according to me and he was disrespectful to me. I hope some proper step is taken to improve the reputation of the company.

Thank you

We brought in Matt in Belmont, MA from College Pro. He gave us two quotes. One on painting the house ($3700) and and the other on staining the deck ($700). We decided to go with staining the deck.
When we chose to do the deck he never called us back and never answered our phone calls.

They do NOT prep the surface prior to painting and then claim the warranty doesn't cover decks or steps. I have people come to my house and ask if my granddaughter painted our steps - the entry to our home. I am quick to let them no it was College Pro. They also did not call us to tell us when they were coming to paint, even though they said they would. And, I called to complain about the painting and was told I would get a return call. One month went by and, of course, no call. . I would never, ever use their service again!

Very unsatisfied services and management received from College-Pro Painting and Evgene Gotfrid Enterprises (franchise owner). The exterior painting of my two-stories home was not completed as per discussed and contracted. On top of that, damages were done to my property (paint on windows, floors; bend eaves; garbage and uncleanliness left behind; broken glass pane; etc...). Let's not forget that my privacy was not recognized and understood. The promised made by them during the verbal discussions held before the estimate and during the contract discussion were not delivered. Their "inexperience", bad management, questionable services, etc... were shown at many occasions and documented via emails -- at the end, I understood that the verbal was not to be relevant to them. The services and management of College-Pro Painting and Evgene Gotfrid Enterprises (franchise owner) are not recommended as this customer was very unsatisfied and disappointed to have believed them. [August 2014]

We had an appointment with College Pro Window Cleaning - the young gentleman was even kind enough to leave his mobile number. He did not show up and has not responded to emails. Just a head's up before anybody else waits around all day for a no show.

The workers were sloppy, leaving full paint jars open to dry out. The went into our shed to "borrow" a ladder without asking and left it dirty. 10 people show up but only 2 people actually worked. We had an estimate of 1-2 weeks to finish instead it took 9 weeks and they threw a tantrum about having to clean up there mess. The so called supervisor had to ask for more money because the had to "pay there workers." Also they painted most of my windows shut. After it was all done and we tried to file a complaint they just responded by telling us to go to small claims court. BUYER BEWARE!
-Disappointed in Port Angeles, WA

We contracted College Pro to repaint our 100 year old heritage home. They assured us that they had experience and expertise in this type of work. Once they started and we saw them using interior paint and interior drywall compound on the exterior walls of our house, we knew we were in trouble. College Pro sent another contractor to finish the job, but unfortunately, they just painted over the interior products, resulting in peeling, blistering and cracking the very same season, and became worse yet, the following year. We were promised that the house would be repainted, our landscaping repaired etc. but we have yet to see any work two years later.
As a retired pensioner who was planning to put the house on the market more than one year ago, I am bitterly disappointed and struggling to manage in this two story home. It is not suitable to put on the market without taking a large loss to compensate for the exterior condition.

College Pro Painters showed up with a crew of inexperienced painters. We had to keep checking their work HOURLY to catch errors & omissions and stopping them from painting damp siding (crew chief: "if the road is dry, the wood is dry"). One major section of the house began to peel miserably 22 months after the job completion.. A warranty claim brought out another 'crew' (one guy worked, one slept off a hangover in the truck), which re-scraped and re-painted the section, while getting the wall paint on shutters and brackets. Now, a year later (36 months after job completion, the whole house has peeling. It surely is a different quality mantra from when my son painted and then franchised for College Pro twenty years ago. Don't use this outfit!

College pro painters-told them house was going for sale neeeded job done in x amount of days due to real estate photos being taken.Arrived 5 hours late day one, day two worked late ran out of paint said forgot the door colour -I paid in full, they were to return to finish job next am. Morning of received a called to say she made a mistake in rate wanted 180 more dollars to finish job. - I said no sorry you quoted me last week andd I paid you in full she hung up on me and they never came back to finish!

I live in the Pacific NW and they wanted to paint in November and December to finish a job that should have been completed in September (including taking my door off for a few days). They finally gave up trying to force me to complete the project in the dead of winter (so they could count the sale for 2010). Finally contacted me in May 2011 to complete the job. All they wanted was to get contract signed off and did a very poor job of completion. Ruined my front door. Will cost me about $800 to fix. Do not use College Pro!

We hired College Pro to paint our 20' high entry way after we painted the living room and adjoining upstairs hallway ourselves. When they looked at the job and gave us a bid, they assured us it was no problem. They came out with a folding 8' ladder and a helper who was afraid of heights! They had to borrow our paint tray and liner since they didn't have one. They were unable to reach the ceiling and left the top 1"-2" unpainted. They got paint on the ceiling, oak railng and carpet. There are places where the white paint is showing though. I had to buy an edger so they could try to make the wall/ceiling seam acceptable. They acted like they had never seen one before. They left drip marks on the walls and two areas have ladder marks on them where the ladder was leaned against wet paint. We were told these marks would disappear once the walls dried.
They missed areas on the stairs and on top of some baseboards. They did not sand the walls prior to painting like you should for better paint adhesion.
I was a remodeling contractor for almost 10 years, built his house myself and worked for a painting supplier for 6 years. I know enough about painting to see they used the wrong roller cover for latex, they rolled the walls in the wrong direction and used tan masking tape instead of blue or green painter's tape. I suggeted they get taller ladders and an aluminum plank to span the entry and reach the ceiling. They had no idea what I was talking about.

Once I saw how horrible the job was, I stopped payment on my check. They admitted they underbid the job. They want to come back, sign a new contract and fix all of the problems. Wewill not sign anything for more money and really don't want them on or property. As it is, I will need to buy more paint once I have the walls sanded.

I don't even know where some people are coming up with this stuff. I really don't know how to counter these accusations as they just don't make any sense to me at all.

College pro is not a pyramid scheme. Do your research on what it means to run a franchise. Of course College pro does not warranty decks and things that it just wouldn't make sense for ANY painting company to warranty based on the severity of use. This site is for poor-sports who need a scapegoat for their problems I suppose.

Yes you may think I am biased as I am just starting up as a franchisee with College pro but in reality I was very skeptical of signing on based on the financial risks and the people bashing them on websites such as this. But I did what EVERYONE here should do and that is EDUCATE YOURSELF. Educate yourself on franchises, college pro's process(for all people involved), painting procedures and warranties across the board, etc. Of course College Pro ends up getting some franchisees who turn out to be bad seeds (as seem to be a lot on this site) and those people don't do well (screwing up people's homes) and then they don't make any money and then all of their problems are of course to blame on college pro.

Being that anyone can post on this site without being registered should be the biggest red flag to anyone reading that it is SO easy for anyone to come post ANYTHING on this site. They can post as many times as they want and anything that they want.

The biggest problem I can see here is uneducation. It's just sad really. This message most likely won't even begin to reach those people it is targeted at because they are just so set in their ways and have such miserable lives.

So keep this in mind when making a decision to use College Pro Painters; College Pro has been around for 40 years. 40! It is a company based on providing learning experiences in management to students. There sure seems like a lot of bad posts on here: and there definitely are but you're coming to a site that's BUSINESS is based on providing people a place to whine. Let's say there are 2000 complaints on here. College Pro has painted over 250 000 homes. Let's consider that maybe even 5000 more people were not satisfied with their painting experience. That's a whopping 2.8% people!

From my experience so far my faith in College Pro has only grown. I am currently only marketing (cold calling as they call it) and yes I have come across a few customers so far who haven't been overly thrilled with College Pro (some admit that they can't even remember if it was College Pro or one of the other student based painting companies) but for the most part people are more than thrilled with the work that College Pro has provided in the area (them, their neighbours, etc).

The negative comments you post on here will not slow College Pro down. There are far more positive experiences everyday than negative and the tenacious franchisees are going to continue to blind out the weak ones. Those managers are weeded out and the best ones stick around for years and then move up within the company or go on to run other successful companies.

It's too bad there couldn't be a site praising any companies work that people could believe. But humans as a hole want drama and they crave negativity.

My purpose of this isn't really to promote College Pro. I'm just so sick of people not knowing how to function in the world (and why should they when the education system is so clearly flawed). If there is one thing I'm sure everyone has learned in school and should remember it's "caveat emptor". Remember this phrase in not only dealing with your purchases but every aspect of life. Don't just eat up what people tell you. "Learn the path, and then make your own path."

College Pro Painters took my money and never came to paint my house in Charleston WV. You cannot reach them, only an answering service that has no effect. The service will not give you a mailing address or a phone number of anyone at the actual College Pro Painters if they do exist. I don't believe it is an actual company but rather an elaborate false front. I am filing a suit with the WV State Attorney General' s Office. Buyer Beware! The answering service is very rude and staffed by a bunch of brainless idiots. This is awful.

I worked for College Pro in the summer of 2006. Our boss would, without fail, under budget the time it would take to paint a house. He also told us that we would be compensated for the estimated hours a job would take, not how many hours we actually worked.

Therefore, on some jobs, I got paid less than $100 for the whole house, or under $1.75/hr. On top of College Pro giving me slave wages, my 'foreman', who was an idiot and did nothing the whole time anyway, stole $1000 cash out of my glove box.

I had the money locked in my glove box because I was having car troubles and was going to the dealership after work and NEEDED THE MONEY TO FIX MY CAR TO GET TO WORK! When he gave me my $89 paycheck, he saw the money in my wallet when I opened it to put my pay check in. When we went to lunch, he was unusually interested in how my car worked, every little thing, including how to open the glove box.

After lunch when I was on the roof of the house, he asked me for my keys because he had 'forgotten something' in my car. For the rest of the day (it also, through some awful coincidence, his last day) he was acting strange, he took off his shoes, was smoking stupid little cheap gas station cigars and saying he should work undercover or something along those lines. After work I discovered the money was all gone, save $3.

Not only did College Pro pay me less than an indentured servant would hope to make, they stole my time, dignity and $1000. Never, ever, ever, ever trust or use College Pro. By the way, we did AWFUL work, and that seemed to be encouraged.

College Pro is AWFUL! Having them in to paint the interior of my Mother's home has been the worst experience EVER! I’ll give a short (keep in mind this isn’t even everything) rundown of what we’ve had to deal with.
- A supposed 4 day job is going on 2 weeks now.
- The supposed onsite manager had be absent most of the job (out getting his oil changed, etc) and even when you do try to call him he never answers his phone or says he didn’t get his message. Or, just today, he had some excuse that he couldn’t call to say he wouldn’t be working yesterday because his cell wasn’t working. Apparently his cell is the only phone of the face of the earth.
- They have pretty much destroyed my mothers home. They have spilled more than a gallon of paint on her carpet in one spot and tracked even more throughout her home (yet to be rectified), they have torn her bed skirts moving furniture (no furniture has ever been covered), they have gotten paint on ceiling fans, and now today they have ruined her brand new $3000 ivory couch by perching a ladder against it that had blue paint on it.
- They have outright lied about the painting (telling us there have been two coats put on walls where you can still see the original color underneath), and lied about everything from "I've called the carpet cleaners" (which we followed up with and he hadn't), to I've got the stipple machine here today (he did not).
- The paint job is shoddy at best (no electrical covers or light switch covers removed so covered in paint, it’s like they didn’t tape where walls met that were to be different colors so it’s crappy, they were supposed to repair a portion of wall and restipple and repair a roof and it honestly looks worse now than before).
- They have made appointments to be there to paint and chose not to show up (this happened even before the work started - red flags should have gone up).
We have tried contacting the customer service line to no avail, we try to call this little creep that's supposed to be the manager but Graham can't ever seem to answer his phone or return a voice mail. He calls to say he'll be on the job, we plan our lives around his hair brain schedule and then without a call or anything he doesn't show up. I will be contacting the Better Business Bureau about all of this and should it not be rectified, I shall be refusing them payment. I have pictures of the shoddy work, I have copies of the emails that are full of lies, and if they want to sue - have at it - I have the proof that they did not up hold their side of the contract. This has caused my mother health issues and enough is enough. If I had my way, I'd kick them on their butts and they should have to pay to have actual PRO painters come in and finish this job. They are the WORST people at painting and the worst company ever! Don't go near them with a 10 foot pole! I will most certainly be spreading the word (I work in a very close related industry) and be advising all that I know that this is not only a poorly managed company, but that the customer service to this point has been no good and the painters themselves are terrible.
To make matters even worse, throughout this ordeal, Graham does not answer his phone or return voice mail messages. Occassionally he will send a text to land line message (how professional), but today, after checking on his progress (the only progress was more paint on furniture and his lack of any business sense whatsoever) he had the nerve to leave a letter (yes, a letter, written on my Mothers paper which he would have had to snoop through drawers to find) saying that he had left early because he was distressed after I had stopped to check on the job. The fact of the matter is, if he was doing his job, there would have been no need for me to stop in anyway. This kid knows nothing about business, about painting, about customer service. He needs to be written up individually as he is incompetant and should not in any way, shape or form be dealing with the public or trying to do business. I will be there to ensure he is on time tomorrow and the job had better be complete (4 day job has been over 2 weeks now) and should it not be done, I will have inspectors out and more contact with the BBB with even more pictures of the damage this shoddy company has caused. DO NOT hire this company! Perhaps others groups may be better but if a kid named Graham is supposed to be the one overseeing the job - Run the other direction! At least it's very obvious the job is not being done to any type of standards and will never be complete so therefore payment shouldn't be expected. It would take this company probably another 2 months to fix any of the deficencies.

I worked as a franchisee for Collegepro this past summer, and let me tell you - it was HELL! do not work here unless you are super desperate - I define desperate as in even McDonald's would not hire you to work for them. I was a freshman in college, and I never heard about Collegepro before. Having no money or job, Collegepro promised me both. All I had to do was sign on the dotted lines. Little did I know at the time what a big mistake I'm making. I have not heard about the bad reputation of Collegepro after being in college for a month. I didn't know that if you backed out of the contract, they would charge you $4000. But one of my friends backed out, and she did not get charged. You see guys, Collegepro is too scared to sue because they are afraid to get publicized about what a big scam company they are. They also said they will only take 25% of my revenue as royalties, but they took 36% instead. They charged 5% as liabilities (wtf is that anyways?!), and 5% for their call centre expenses. On top of the fees they charged, they ALSO charged 5% GST because the company does not want to pay their own GST. Anyways, I was working about 60hr/week for basically minimum wage, and it was hot and sweaty, and I was miserable. All that work for money? It was like selling your soul to the devil. They promise that you will learn many skills, but all I learned was how to perform manual labour. All the work entilled was calling customers (who were usually pissed off), booking them in the right time, doing the job (which was usually ###), and collecting their money at the end. By doing this job, some people actually LOST money from working for THEM. If you are a consumer reading this, please think twice about buying a paint job from an innocent college student - Collegepro manipulate students to say that so that consumers will be more likely to buy from them. You have to realize that most of the money is not going to fund the student's tuition, but to this big evil company. If you want to join me in putting an end to this evil scam, please DO NOT BUY from Collegepro. From this experience, I learned that 1) when something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, and 2) don't be so gullible, and cross-examine everything before signing a contract. I am writing this article because I hope that it will stop other people from signing with them.

I hired College Pro Painters in Aug/2009 for the worst paint job ever. Poor preparation by 3 painters due to lack of training re their Manager, Andrew Segovia who was no better. Filthy drop sheets, dirty ladders, poor quality paint and brushes. Paint spilt, roller marks on several walls etc. Never cleaned up after the 2 days there as per their contract. Rushed job, was scheduled for 3 days instead of 2 as the Manager had another job for them on 3rd day. One painter stood on my fireplace to paint. It took weeks to get the manager to come back and try and repair all the damage to the walls and never did. I sent complaints to the Better Business Bureau and to the Vice President Will Macmillan who took months playing telephone tag with me and to no avail, refused to refund me for the services never provided.

Please do not not hire this company unless you need a dog house painted.

I fully agree with all other dissatisfied customers. We had no general manager as stated per company guidelines.
It was a very bad paint job, not started or finished on time. The "franchise owner" had to fire the two painters ( and I use that term very loosely) and tried to finish the job and fix up their mistakes himself. He was in a big hurry to get his check and get out of town.

The siding on our house looks worse than it did before they started. And now in addition there is gray paint slopped onto areas of white, that were to remain white.

I wish I would have NEVER used this company. And it didn't come cheap either.

Please take my advise and don't hire them ever. You are welcome to visit my house and I will be glad to show you exactly what my complaints are.

It's too bad because I liked the "owner" Mike and was giving him many chances to make good on his word, all we got in return were excuses.

Fran G

Painted my deck three times (didn't put out a sign, and other works kept walking on it!), and the kid didn't even use the right kind of stain, so everything started to peel in days. Talked to the supervisor, and was promised someone would come back and redo the deck with the right materials. Never happened, and I even called back the next spring and was given the same promise again. DO NOT LET THE WORKERS GET AWAY UNTIL YOU ARE SURE THEY HAVE COMPLETEd THE JOB TO YOUR SATISFACTION--YOU'LL NEVER HEAR FROM THEM AGAIN! In the end, I spent another $300 to get the job done right by a professional!