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Review Highlights
“Great company and owner Benjamin and team!” in 32 reviews
“Quick, efficient, communicative service.” in 2 reviews
“We really appreciate his quick response and work for this needed work.” in 2 reviews
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About the Business
Business owner information
![Photo of Benjamin T.](https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/buphoto/Q1IRUMalWIbLRqHAxRlsWQ/90s.jpg)
Benjamin T.
We do small projects like Victorian windows, drywall, flooring, stairs, doors, & paint. Full description of our work manandavanhandyman.com or text us to schedule a free 8 am estimate at (415)636-6864.
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Ask the Community
Q:
Hi. I just got a new portable air conditioner and was wondering if you would be able to help me install and secure the window bracket vertically into a sliding window?
A:
No answers yet. Answer this questionQ:
Benjamin, Hi. We need to assemble a Cot and Mount a TV on the wall and may be some other " Move in" work at 94102 area. Would you be available? Cornelius
A:
Yes I am however next available appointment is Tuesday morning. Will this work for you?
Benjamin T., Business Owner
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Overall rating
46 reviews
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1 star
- S N.San Francisco, CA21216Jun 17, 2024
Ben repaired the concrete in front of our commercial space. He was responsive and initially came on time, for the work done. Why the 1 star then? His work didn't last 6 months. In addition, while we tested his fix when he was there and things worked fine, his work caused a series of door related issues later after the concrete expanded. I texted him with no response back. Wouldn't recommend. Photo is after the fix
Helpful 0Thanks 0Love this 0Oh no 0Business owner information
Benjamin T.
Jun 17, 2024
I’m sorry you’re unsatisfied with the work. According to my records you paid $300 10 months ago. I was engaged to patch the concrete to prevent a tripping hazard. I was clear that this was a temporary fix at installation. I was also clear that a proper fix required the removal of concrete no less than 2 inch down from the surface. You also didn’t want to shut down long enough for me to effect a proper repair. In regard to your texting me. My records show that you did not reach out before posting this review. Your last text was Aug 2nd of last year. My last response was Aug. 17th at 10:33 am then a follow up call November 3rd at 2:34 pm for 6 minutes. At that point you were satisfied with the work. Have a great day and I hope you have better luck finding a handyman fix your establishment in the future.
- Katherine C.San Francisco, CA32052May 16, 2023
I strongly caution you against hiring Ben. In replacing a door he significantly damaged the frame. Amidst a variety of other unprofessionalism that I have added details to below, I requested that the damage be repaired. Within a few hours, he billed me for more than the original estimate and refused to arrange for a time to repair the damage, despite my reasonable offer to reimburse him for out of pocket immediately. He proceeds to invoice me for the original amount and adds a 10% late fee for every month. This finally comes to a head when he sues me in Small Claims Court. Frankly, given Ben's unprofessionalism, I was grateful for the judge to help me manage this issue. So, unless you like settling up bills in small claims court, I would not engage with him. Below are more details:
Late January, I connected with ManVan Handyman via Yelp to install rain protection on my backdoor.
Benjamin came to my home and gave an estimate of 4 hours + materials. We scheduled the work for the following week.
Ahead of the workday, I asked Ben if I needed to prepare anything. He said nothing.
Ben arrives late and parks his truck with a dog in it on the sidewalk in front of my house. I am working in my office in the front of the house. I introduce myself and make it clear that I am available should he need anything. Ben makes unprofessional statements about my appearance.
After inspecting the area, Ben leaves my apartment, unlocking the front door without my permission, and then goes to purchase supplies. He returns by just walking in the now unlocked front door, without warning. His car is again parked illegally on the sidewalk with a dog in it. Dog starts barking.
Ben commences work. He does not lay down a tarp or do any preparation of the location. He proceeds to use a saw and damage the door frame. There is a crack in the trim surrounding the door on the front and back frame and a 1.5 inch gap between the molding and the floor. There is a lot of smudging and dirt and dust everywhere. See photos below. Ben admits that he made a mistake and mismeasured the door and there is additional work needed.
Ben has also invited a colleague into the house without my permission. Ben has also brought in his lunch and has created a mess on my kitchen table. His dog is barking from the car in the front of the house. A neighbor rings my doorbell and informs me they will call Animal Welfare if something is not done about the dog barking from the illegally parked car out front. When I tell Ben this, he replies, "you know, that's just the way it's going to be." I tell him he needs to address the issue immediately.
He says he will and instructs his colleague to finish. I ask Ben when and how he will complete the job, as there is much damage to the molding surrounding the door. Ben says he can have someone finish the job that week and we should identify a time via text message. Ben leaves to deal with his dog. I have to specify all of the cleanup items for the colleague. Dust is still everywhere.
The next day I receive an invoice from ManVan Handyman for $1200 to cover the first day of the work and materials. Note, this work that resulted in damage to my door frame was already above the original estimate.
I reply saying the I will gladly reimburse for any out of pocket expenses that they send me receipts for. However, I note, I will not pay for any labor until the project is completed.
The person on the text (I believe it is the colleague who came to clean up) replies by saying this is not their policy and they will not send someone to complete the job until the original invoice is paid.
I request a phone call, and on that conversation I reiterate my offer to:
Reimburse for any out-of-pocket expenses if they can send me copies of receipts
To schedule a time for the team to complete the job
I note that this job needs to be completed with professionalism as there were multiple issues with the service provided by Ben initially
The person on the phone says they will talk to the team. I follow-up a few days later, they say they will not schedule a time to repair the door and that I must pay the entire invoice. They continue to send me invoices for work, and are include a $120 / month late fee. This late fee is far beyond a reasonable amount and represents a 100% annual interest rate on the invoice.
In the meantime, I have contacted an alternative contractor to repair the work on the door. Their estimate is $800 for materials and 8 hours of labor at $127.5 / hour. So $1820 to repair the damage they caused.Helpful 12Thanks 6Love this 1Oh no 6Business owner information
Benjamin T.
Jul 9, 2023
We are a Yelp guaranteed company for up to $2500 but you need to pay the invoice before you can be reimbursed by Yelp. All you needed to do was pay the invoice and I would have come back to finish the job.
- Mark N.Santa Rosa, CA3375Mar 16, 2023
Great company and owner Benjamin and team!
Very very happy with the personal attention, care, communication and professionalism that they provide.
Several jobs completed, small and big jobs.
Highly recommend.Helpful 1Thanks 1Love this 0Oh no 0 - Sylvia Y.San Francisco, CA2466133Apr 5, 2022
I hired Ben about a month ago to install some drywall and to replace a bathroom faucet for me. He did a decent job on the drywall and didn't charge for material costs like a lot of other contractors did. The one star comes from creating a mess and damage as he performed his job. He dented my ceiling and walls and did a shoddy job at covering it up/he did not let me know. As for the bathroom faucet, he only decided to install the faucet and not the drain and left metal shavings literally everywhere (again also didn't let me know he only performed a portion of the job).
On a separate note, I wfh and I stepped ups stairs for a couple minutes. When I came down he was sitting at my dining table where I work, with his mask off eating lunch and using my mug as a prop for his phone while he was laughing at some news video. Overall just really bad etiquette.
If you hire him, I'd monitor him closely, make sure he cleans up after himself and set ground rules beforehand.Helpful 6Thanks 1Love this 1Oh no 2 - David L.San Francisco, CA25210Sep 8, 2021
I hired Benjamin to install a shower door in my newly remodeled bathroom. Long story short, he dropped one of the panes of tempered glass. The glass exploded up to 10 feet in all directions leading out of the bathroom, cracked the new shower pan, put numerous small nicks into the walls, and scraped up the floorboard. Ben also had to go to the ER, having been cut on the arm by the glass. I don't fault him for the accident, but my review centers around all the elements that led up to the accident and the aftermath.
- Carelessness: After I helped him bring the shower door into the apartment, he unpacked it and leaned one glass pane against the wall while he went to install the other one. I wasn't in the room, but I heard a crash. When I came out, I realized the glass had slid out against the laminate floor, only stopping because it hit one of the legs of my couch. On the way down, the glass scraped off the corner of my wall as well as the edge of a glass shelf. The shower pane also had some chips in it from this incident. When Ben came out, he was speechless and didn't acknowledge his mistake or offer any way to resolve the issue. I told him I'd contact the company to see if we can order a replacement pane. We decided to carry on with the work, installing the glass and replacing it with a new, undamaged piece at a later date.
- Lack of attention to detail: For one of the installation steps, Ben had to cut a stainless steel tube. He did this inside the bathroom with a handsaw. While watching him, I noticed that he kept knocking the wall tiles with the end of the tube while cutting. I later found a pretty large chip in one of the tiles that was likely a result of this (and not the glass falling). There were lots of other small things like leaving red markings on the grout that I was not able wash off (even with a Mr. Clean Eraser) and the shower rail not being level (causing the the sliding door to slide around on its own).
- Lack of ownership: When Ben dropped the glass pane, his very first reaction was a loud "That's a manufacturer defect!" In my mind, the glass shattering is clearly a result of the drop combined with the earlier incident of the glass sliding out. At no point throughout the entire work and aftermath did Ben seem to take ownership of what happened. He blamed the difficulty of the project and the manufacturers. I admit that installing the shower door should have been a two person job. I don't think I realized the scope of the work. However, Benjamin should have advised against continuing if he felt like the job would be too difficult. While I appreciate that he wants to finish what he's hired to do, he puts both him and the work in jeopardy by not making these professional judgments.
- Poor crisis management: Ben naturally (and understandably) had to run out to the ER to deal with a bleeding arm. After he was patched up and deemed okay, he sent his assistant some photos of his condition which she forwarded to us. However, he did not say what we should do in the meantime. My girlfriend and I ended up cleaning up the glass (we continued to find glass for weeks after the incident). When he came back from the hospital, one of the first things he did was ask us to pay him for the three hours he worked. He did not thank us for cleaning up after him, examine the damages, or make any offers to rectify the situation.
Overall, Ben is probably fine for small projects. And when things go right, he's probably perfectly competent at what he does. But what I've come to realize working with contractors and handymen throughout a bathroom remodel process is that what happens when issues crop up (which they always do for larger projects) is almost more important than anything else. Ben's work and attitude did not inspire confidence.
I do want to leave this review with one positive note: His secretary Cathy was extremely apologetic, professional, and responsive in helping me sort out the issue with their insurance. In addition, their insurance was prompt in reimbursing me for a replacement shower door and the labor needed to install it. I was also going to have the floorboards redone (which they also promised to cover), but I have not been able to arrange that work yet. All the other nicks and scratches I am either trying to fix myself or just live with them.Helpful 9Thanks 0Love this 0Oh no 0 - James L.Walnut, CA585Jul 9, 2023
Very happy with the process and outcome of working with Ben. I needed help anchoring a massive bougainvillea to an exterior concrete wall. Ben was quick to respond for scheduling and available to meet soon also. He listened to what my goal was, proposed a better solution than I originally had in mind, and was able to start later the same day. His pricing was transparent and reasonable. He clearly communicated throughout and completed the project well under the time than he'd originally estimated.
Helpful 0Thanks 0Love this 0Oh no 0 - Ben Z.San Francisco, CA019Nov 3, 2022
TL;DR
Like others have mentioned, Benjamin's only good quality is his availability. Benjamin came in for a simple wall patching and failed to fix the wall twice. When we asked for a refund, he said no, remarking that he has "a lack of empathy" for his clients.
Edit:
Seems like Benjamin has replied and lied about his work. Please see the other 1 star reviews people have made for him, feel free to review the snapshots of our conversations with him and don't fall for his lies. My hope is that you'll avoid the same pitfalls that we did.
Cheers,
Ben
Long Form:
We had Benjamin come in and fix two holes in our wall. On his first attempt, he taped over the larger hole and then plastered both. After blasting them with a heat gun so they would dry, he painted over them. There were many things wrong with this first attempt:
- You could clearly see the dent left in the wall from the smaller hole, since he didn't use enough plaster.
- You could see the tape through the paint for the larger hole
- Many, many bubbles formed in the plaster of the larger hole
- Even though his website says he specializes in retexturing, he didn't do any. - His paint job was completely different from the rest of the wall.
We asked Benjamin to come back and amend his work. In our later conversation over text, he emphasized doing this "for free", as if it's some sort of extra perk, when instead fixing his own mistakes should be a given. Then, he mentioned he'd have to come back to follow up and so he could properly sand and paint the wall. If that was the right way to do it, why didn't he do it the first time?
Again, there were many issues with his work:
- Both of the holes developed even larger cracks than his first attempt
- He plastered over huge sections of our wall unnecessarily, leaving more for us to sand down and repaint.
- He used tape over the larger hole, when cutting it open and adding new gypsum board was required. He admitted this over text.
After contacting many other contractors and reaching a consensus that our wall would have to be redone again, we asked Benjamin for a refund. He responded with unexpected vitriol, talking about how we were judging his work before completion. I cannot emphasize enough: Benjamin was already on his second attempt at fixing a simple problem when he said this. He had already declared the work over and done with. Then, he blamed our existing wall, the only thing he didn't need to fix, for the cracks that had formed in his patch. He said that because the crack appeared after he left, it wasn't his responsibility. If the drywall he put in cracks while drying, isn't that his responsibility?
For some reason, he also threatened to take longer to finish the job, saying "I told you this job would have taken another hour to complete and I would have capped it at an hour, but that ship has sailed". He is now attempting to hold our wall hostage and extort us for another $280 for a wall he has already left wrecked twice. When asked about this, he glosses over having already ruined the wall once, instead saying it's not fair to judge him on his unfinished second attempt, which has cracked already, requiring a third attempt.
When asked to empathize with the predicament he'd left us in, Benjamin said "I leave my emotions out of my business, thank you for noticing my lack of empathy". For someone who espouses integrity as a business value, Benjamin certainly displays very little of it.
We are now worse off than we were before, since we still have to hire another contractor, who will have to cut out Benjamin's poor workmanship over the hole itself, sand down the rest of the wall he ruined, and then do what we had originally hired Benjamin to do.Helpful 1Thanks 0Love this 0Oh no 0Business owner information
Benjamin T.
Nov 3, 2022
Valued customers, I trust you will see this for what it is without my comments.
As always, for customers that are willing to see a project through; I will always produce 5 star results. Even for clients with high standards and exacting specifications. Keep in mind my time is hourly and I only give refunds when I screw up or take longer than I expected. I believe the crack was caused from the client touching the wall too soon after I had fixed the wall. I got to the garage and rushed back to add a layer to cover the crack because of this. I scheduled a follow up appointment and the crack surfaced again. I asked for $280 in advance to cover the time of removing a 16” x16” square and repeating the process since leaving my work alone proved to be too much to ask.
Celebrating 5 years of serving San Francisco and maintaining a 4.5 star review for the duration of that. - Gaby O.San Francisco, CA029Jan 18, 2023
TL;DR: We hired Benjamin to recaulk two showers and a bathtub. In less than 90 days, his work had significantly started to fall apart (see photos) and the deterioration has continued rapidly. When informed about this, Benjamin offered a partial credit that wouldn't fully cover the amount of time required to fix his work (he charged $460 originally but only "credited" us $240). If we took up his offer, we'd essentially be paying him more money to "fix" his unsatisfactory original work as it has to be completely redone. Interpersonally, Benjamin has come across as slightly unprofessional which has added a layer of discomfort to the entire engagement. Based on our experience and other 1 star reviews, working with Benjamin is a gamble that I wouldn't recommend taking.
More detail below:
1. Benjamin's work lacked attention to detail which resulted in ugly work. We actually didn't bring this up with Benjamin initially because we were more concerned with functionality rather than aesthetics.
2. We hired Benjamin to reseal our bathtub but a gap remains. The caulk in the showers has been consistently falling apart. Within a couple of weeks, Benjamin's work started to deteriorate. By the 3 month mark, it became clear that we would have to hire somebody else to redo Benjamin's work.
3. When I contacted Benjamin about the issue, he didn't offer to fix the issue free of charge. Instead, he "credited" about half of his original charge ($240) to our "account" (we paid via venmo). Essentially, if we wanted him to fix his work, we would have to pay him more money. We would risk falling into a cycle like the ones described in other 1 star reviews where we'd be paying Benjamin to continuously fix his own work.
4. The email exchanges with Benjamin bordered on sassy, passive aggressive, and unprofessional in tone. They were't bad but just added to an overall negative experience.
5. Benjamin left a big mess, and we had to clean up after him.
6. He was very talkative which wouldn't have been an issue at all had he performed fast/high-quality work.Helpful 2Thanks 0Love this 1Oh no 0Business owner information
Benjamin T.
Mar 25, 2023
Customer waited three months before asking for a refund after they had hired someone else to fix the work. I credited their service account $240 that they can still use for any other issues. This is more than I feel is necessary but we are a reasonable business that wants to foster lasting relationships with our clients.
We do not issue refunds if we are not given the opportunity to rectify the situation. Especially, If you wait three months to contact us.
I purchased a new product that I had not worked with before due to the application location and gap.
Big Stretch Caulk is the product and given the gap between the tub and the tile I felt it was the best choice at the time. I no longer feel this product lives up to its name.
Never in my life have I ever done a bad caulking job as this is a skill I develop working on C-5 Aircraft in the USAF.
It’s my business and I will be sassy with whomever I choose to be sassy.
I agree that with anyone else this could become a continuous process. Unfortunately, I know myself very well and feel confident in my ability to do a simple task like caulk a tub.
Please, Engage us in a conversation before you hire someone else. If the work is unsatisfactory. Give us a call before you hire someone else.
We will not issue refunds if we are not given the opportunity to rectify the situation.
Benjamin Arthur Turman
Owner - Fernando S.Sausalito, CA3304Jan 25, 2023
Ben has been responsive, personable and a great guy doing the job right. Prices are fair and outcomes are solid.
Helpful 0Thanks 0Love this 0Oh no 0 - Mach B.San Francisco, CA1051Jan 3, 2023
Fixed my door! Great personalities, clean, efficient. Responds quickly. Works at an hourly rate.
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