City Concrete - San Diego, California

Mike E.

This post is regarding a job that was performed by City Concrete back in October 2017. There were many frustrations throughout the post completion phase after our backyard was completely redone. The job consisted of concrete, stairs, an upper level area, BBQ area (concrete countertops also) as well as multiple retaining walls and natural rock veneer. Turf was also installed by a separate contractor that City Concrete outsourced to.

In the end, after 8 months, we reached out to City Concrete (Tony, project lead) in order to address multiple issues, listed below:

1) Various severe cracks in the concrete in various areas throughout the lower level surrounding the BBQ area. Cracks large enough that smaller pieces of concrete were chipping off within the cracks and in some areas coming out of the cracks, leaving gaps in the concrete.

2) Retaining wall caps detached and loose. There were 16 total wall caps which were loose to the touch and a few could be lifted with little effort. I was able to record videos of these caps. In some cases, the grout was almost completely disjointed from the caps/walls and almost all had chips/debris of grout falling out.

3) Artificial turf was laying down much too flat, most likely due to there not being enough base sand worked into the turf, allowing the turf blades to fall flat rather than stand as expected. In a couple cases the stakes holding the turf in were coming out and my 2 year old daughter, at the time, actually removed one out and brought it to me which was troubling.

All of the above led us to request a resolution from City Concrete so that we could enjoy our newly renovated backyard without fear of accidents occurring as a result of the failing workmanship.

After multiple attempts to receive a reply and finally schedule a rework. City Concrete sent out a crew to “fix” the wall caps. Once complete, I inspected and without looking very closely could already tell that the rework was extremely shotty and without much regard for resolving the issues with any significant degree of workmanship, once again.

At this point, over the course of several months, both myself and my wife attempted to reach out to Tony in order to address. We also wanted the sever concrete cracking to be addressed at some point. Tony agreed that they would repour some affected areas after admitting that some cracking was most likely due to the lack of expansion joints, an error on the part of the crew that performed the concrete pour.

However, no further rework would occur as we were effectively “ghosted” by Tony and City Concrete. We were left with a sub par completed job which cost us $70k, which was very disappointing and obviously unprofessional on their part.

In the end, during the height of the 2020 pandemic, I proceeded to fix one wall cap myself which has once again come loose (after the rework performed by what I can only assume was the “B” or “C” crew as they laid little attention to performing the rework with any integrity once I noticed that old grout was never removed and hence not only did caps loosen again, soon after, but the “reworked” caps were no longer level with the others as they were set on top of existing grout/adhesive which made for a very noticeable and unflattering appearance.

I was able to use simple construction adhesive myself, after scraping the old residual adhesive before applying the new adhesive and that wall cap is now as solid today as it was over a year ago when I fixed it myself - while other caps remain loose, from the last rework by City Concrete.

Ultimately, the customer service experience was as poor as any I have ever experienced within any project or job I have paid for. Now, 4 years later the upper level of concrete, the stairs, the BBQ countertops and additional areas on the lower level are cracking severely.

Tony was unprofessional and condescending at many turns. City Concrete made no attempt to correct the errors they were admittedly responsible for. I would recommend this company to no one. If I could give 0 stars I would. Buyer beware.

Will T.

These guys came over and checked out my wall project. Everything was cool, nice guys. Had lots of good ideas. Then disappeared like a ghost. Called and left two voicemails. Total waste of time for all involved.

LH L.

Great job at my commercial approach and driveway. Will use them again.

S B.

Great ideas put into my design.