Modern Image by Design, Ottawa, ON

Our experience with Modern Image by Design (MID) has been extremely disappointing at best. After four months since MID disassembled our functioning kitchen, we have lost faith in this company to complete our kitchen renovation professionally . Rather than tell a long recounting of a four month story, I will try to list the main parts of the story from a consumer perspective. 1. $18500 + $1200 (accessories) paid to MID according to the contract. Work has been disappointing to the point other contractors brought in to fix the damage caused by MID have suggested legal action maybe warranted. MID has not delivered anything of any value and refuses to refund the money (Mark Sr has not provided a reason for the refusal). According to MID none of the product has been ordered so we feel like we have been robbed of $20000 dollars. We will be pursuing this in small claims court. 2. Despite having a valid contract, MID has completed approximately 15% of the work in four months. We have not had a functioning kitchen since May 9, 2022 today is September 18, 2022. This project was supposed to take 2 weeks and 3 more weeks for the countertop. They appear to continue work on other contracts without concern for our project. 3. MID took minimal precautions to protect our house. They never installed dust protection. We have spent a week (they were supposed to clean up but never did) trying to make our main floor livable again (we live in a bungalow). Every other contractor we have ever used showed respect for our house and property. 4. MID’s website claims a multi step approach. Our experience is that we did not receive the benefit of any of these steps. We never witnessed any capacity to professionally conduct any of the steps minus conceptual drawings. For example, the conceptual design review looked great on paper but they did not have the personnel to execute the work and Mark C Sr was too busy (not with our contract) to supervise the project. 5. Mark C Sr. has not been to our house since the sales meeting in April. His 12 to 38 years of experience (depending on the day) played no role in ensuring the “quality” of the work. Mark has never supervised staff so we never got the benefit of his experience. 6. MID seemed very poor at customer communication. Mark C Sr. continually made commitments in writing and rarely actually followed though. Further the company often blamed us in writing for their shortcomings. 13 of 40 tiles they installed were chipped. We were responsible for choosing bad floor tile from the retailer MID recommended even though MID ordered, delivered and installed the tile. Oddly, Mark Sr swore the tile was not defective. 7. We have hired small and local businesses for 10 of our last renovations over the past 15 years and two houses. Unfortunately, MID seems to use being a small business as an excuse for poor communication, poor workmanship and poor responsiveness. We strongly believe there are other “clients “ held captive by the hope of getting deposits back. For a business operating for 12 years, note the strange lack of reviews anywhere. 8. One member of the household has a degenerative neurological disorder and has severe mobility issues. MID is very aware of this issue and has not only failed to complete the project designed make the kitchen safer they have made our house exponentially more difficult for that person to move freely. We continue to live in a very difficult situation created by MID. We bought the small business and “I have integrity” routine. The relationship with MID has caused us financial, physical and emotional hardship. We are well past regret in ever hiring and paying this company. The saddest part of our story is that we paid dearly for this abuse.