A person working for Van Pelt Contracting (VPC) was involved in burglarizing our home & stealing our car.
We hired VPC in June 2014 to mitigate & repair storm damage. Ceilings in 2 rooms had to be torn down & replaced. VPC advised us to leave for 4 days while the tear out was done b/c the rooms would be exposed to plaster, dust, insulation, & mold. We agreed, & left a key to our home w/ VPC so they could do the work.
While gone, our home was burglarized & our car stolen. A VPC employee arrived after we got home. The police asked him where the key to our house was; he indicated he didn’t know, that he had been leaving it in our mailbox unsecured, and that it was gone when he came to work Monday morning. The police asked who had been in the house over the weekend with him. He gave the names of people he let in the house, but couldn’t provide full names or contact info. One was a lady who VPC brought in to clean. After many attempts, we obtained the cleaner's full name from VPC & the KCPD detective assigned to us verified she had a criminal record.
The police caught those involved by tracking my stolen laptop using the “Find My iPhone” app. After obtaining a warrant, police went to the apartment from where my computer was sending a signal, identified items stolen from us, & took 3 people into custody. Each separately confessed to being involved in the burglary, & that in exchange for drugs, the cleaner told them she had been to our home, knew we were out of town, & VPC was leaving our key in our mailbox unsecured.
Even though a person working for VPC was linked to the crimes, VPC made no effort to make us whole. $75k of property stolen, $20k unrecovered & not reimbursed from insurance, & $4k paid in insurance deductibles. VPC also damaged newly finished wood floors & carpet, furniture, walls, & window blinds, which we'll have to pay out of pocket to repair.
Additionally: Poor communication; failed to timely perform services; overall lack of professionalism