Three months after signing a contract, JoAnne Stover was left with a shell of what her deck used to be.
"When you come out of the patio door, you can practically just fall through," she said, pointing to the structure that only had a few boards left resting on top.
Almost all that was left when the In Focus team visited her home in August, was the framing.
"I was devastated. I'm so stressed. Every time I think of... say the work 'deck,' I'm just so stressed. I'm agitated. I'm like, 'Why is this happening to us?'" Stover questioned.
The plan was to replace the old boards with new composite decking. She says after paying around $2,300 for the deposit, she hadn't heard much more from Deck Helmet.
"They didn't come back. They took some of the material, some of the disassembled material and left the rest," she said.
Not too far away, Tammy Witt was dealing with deck problems in her own yard.
"He said this would last a good ten years and it hasn't even been ten months," Witt said, pointing to bubbles in the paint.
She hired the company in the spring to resurface her existing patio. It's an option that the company promises "transforms your old worn out deck to a beautiful low maintenance composite deck."
"Multiple appointments were made, they never showed up, they never called. We rearranged our schedules," she explained.
She called the finished project 'mortifying,' saying over 30 things needed to be repaired. She referenced boards popping up, bubbles in the paint, and water pooling.
"For the price of the deck and the pictures that they showed, you would think that it would be a brand new deck and we did not get a brand new deck," Witt said.
The In Focus team got in contact with Deck Helmet's CEO, who calls the incidents 'isolated' and says they are working to resolve any problems.
"My goal is to make sure every customer is happy, and if it's not, then I'm not doing my job," said Jason Apter, CEO of the company.
Apter sent a Deck Helmet team to the Witts' to fix all the issues. When we checked in on the progress, Witt told our team that everything had been completed over the weekend.
A team has also been working on the Stover's deck. As of Tuesday, the family tells us that crews were still working on their deck and that the boards had been delivered.
"We're solving the problem for them at the original cost and actually giving a discount on the original cost as well. And redoing the deck for them," Apter said of the Stover project.
After months of peeling paint, warping boards, and even no surface at all, the company is working to resurface old promises and are trying to make things right.
"We try to do our best, but sometimes we fall short." Apter said.
As of Tuesday, Deck Helmet had 64 closed complaints on the Better Business Bureau's website. Apter says last year, they did around 2,500 decks and calls the complaints a "tiny percentage" of their overall work.
Apter responded to the In Focus team quickly and wanted to make things right for the customers. He says they are working to make sure that if anyone has any problems, that they can get in contact with the right people from the company.
