Chan & Owen Equipment Service Co Ltd - San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago

On 20th July, I came into your office to pay for the rental of an excavator for three days as well as the mobilization fee. This was done because we were initially told that if the full amount was paid, the excavator would be made available to us from 21st July. Upon arriving at your office, we were told to wait for the invoice and after waiting for approximately thirty minutes, with no indication of what the process for payment was, we were then informed by Carl that the excavator would not be available until Friday or Saturday for the latest. We tried on several occasions to contact Carl in order to confirm the delivery date for the excavator. Numerous messages were left by my husband, contractor and I over the course of the following days with only a vague response from Carl. On Monday afternoon, after receiving no feedback from Carl as to the status of delivery, we contacted the office to request a full refund. Within ten minutes, Carl contacted us and we were told that the excavator would be made available to us from Tuesday morning.
The excavator arrived at 5:30 am on Tuesday morning with the assistance of Marlon. The excavator operator arrived and began operations by 6:00 am. The operator did the job smoothly and efficiently and accomplished a significant amount of work on the first day.
However, around 1:00 pm on Thursday afternoon, we were informed that the excavator had run out of diesel since 10:00 am that morning. It took several hours further to actually fill the machine, during which time, several trucks we had hired to take debris away were lying idle at our expense. As a result of the delay we were not able to complete the removal of the debris by the end of Thursday afternoon, and we were forced to pay for the trucks to return on Friday to complete the job. However, the excavator again ran out of diesel on Friday and we were unable to utilize the trucks. Therefore, we incurred another day of expense due to the fact that the excavator ran out of diesel.
At this stage, we had to continue work on the site and worked around the debris which should have been moved before. To make matters worse, the crew was hampered by the excavator which was left in the middle of the pathway to the land for the entire weekend. No arrangements were made to remove this excavator from our site. The delivery of material has to be cancelled at our expense due to the excavator which was blocking our entire driveway. After numerous calls, the excavator was eventually moved on Sunday afternoon.
It must be noted that Marlon and Bruce went above and beyond to assist us with the efficient use of the equipment which we rented with full payment in advance. Marlon was able to accommodate the request to move the excavator on Sunday 1st July so that we would be able to continue construction on Monday morning.
I would not recommend this company to anyone.