Rubens Custom Painting

Tried for over 3 months to get them to come back under their «industry-​leading» warranty to fix some defects, but they say they’ll be right over and never show. Numerous times.
Come on Ruben! You say «you’ll paint our castle right.» What’s up with that?

Ruben renovated our SF property and primary home in Redwood City. He is very creative and intelligent — not your usual general contractor. He has bachelors in Chemical Engineering and understands probability better than most math graduates.
He is honest and will do his best. Like any other great contractor, he can sometimes be over committed but at the end of the day, he gets the work done and the end product is of high quality. We would use him again and we are very happy that we came across him.

Thanks Ruben for the work you did at my house. I am so happy with the painting work. The house looked great. I look forward to avail your services again. Thanks

Rubens Custom Painting did quite a bit of work for us before we moved in to our condo. Got rid of the popcorn ceiling (yuck), retextured and painted walls, added crown molding, mirrored closet doors, lots of electrical outlets, and spot lights for our art. They installed the new washer dryer, which required a permit and HOA approval. They did a great job and I have since had them repaint the walls. I intend to use them in the future and would highly recommend them.

Rubens Custom Painting just completed a major painting and upgrade to our 4 bedroom house in Campbell. they painted the entire interior of a 2,100 sq. ft. 2 story home, updated all smoke alarms and radon detectors, calked all surfaces and base board, installed beautiful new crown molding, upgraded a bathroom, repaired and stained large yard exterior fencing, repaired screens, replaced bathrooms with low flow toilets and much more. The job was completed in less than 10 days and the crew cleaned up with no mess. Excellent job. Placed the house on the market and received numerous compliments as to the quality of our home thanks to Ruben. We received 3 offers within 2 weeks of listing and sold for a premium over list price.
Very happy customer!!!

I give Ruben one star because you can’t give ZERO!!! Every single word here is true. This is a joke, Ruben’s people are messy, they smoke on the property and he job is terrible. On top of everything, they destroy your stuff. Once you sign a contract you are never able to reach him, he lies and has an excuse for everything. He uses refurbished appliances and all is a horrible waste of your money, time and your mental health. STAY AWAY and check BBB ratings and warning.

We used Rueben to paint our house and the end product came out fine. However, the paint started peeling and we have now had to get our house repainted (by someone else) due to large sheets of paint peeling off. When we tried to get Ruben to touch-​up the house the first time the paint started peeling given his warranty, it literally took us threatening to contact the Better Business Bureau before he would come out.

After reading all the reviews on Unilocal I couldn’t believe Ruben’s ratings. We just had our home painted by this company and they did a fantastic job. Our house required a great deal of prep work as we just had all new windows (33) and trim put on our large 2 story house. He also repaired minor dry rot that was found.
They completed the house on schedule and the price was great.

Ruben was recommended to us to install new hardwood flooring throughout our new home and to dome some painting and other minor repairs prior to moving in. Unfortunately the quality of work was horrible. Our floors are unevenly stained with dark and light spots throughout the house, putty used doesn’t match the color of the floor, top coat has bubbles/​hair embedded in it, poor quality wood was used with knots in it.
The condition of our house upon moving in was a nightmare. They left a pile of garbage in our garage, didn’t install any of our doors, dented our brand new unused washer, cable was «installed» without any outlets, just holes in the baseboards with wires coming out, our upstairs bathroom was locked with a sign on it saying «don’t use» (you don’t want to know what we found when we unlocked it), no transition pieces were installed at our doorways or transitions to tile floors, two guys were still painting when we arrived with the movers, and a cleaning lady and child were in our house just starting to deal with the sawdust covering the entire place. On top of this Ruben himself is incredibly rude and disrespectful, claiming that we were unreasonable to expect these things to be fixed trying to make us feel like he did us a favor by giving us «free housecleaning» for a house that was spotless when they started and even after cleaning still had sawdust everywhere.
For 5 months we tried to get them to correct issues. Some were corrected, but unfortunately the quality of the staining and the floors and other issues were never remedied. Every time they came to fix something they just broke something else.
STAY AWAY!!!

Great disappointment! I agree with an earlier post: best sales, worst painters! Not even 3 years since it was painted, our house is a sad cookie! Three inch pieces peeling away! Reaching Ruben by phone is a sadly executed game of telephone tag. «I’ll call you back in 5 minutes» turns into … never.
We’re looking at small claims court to recoup at least something so we can have it done right.

Might be good idea to check the Better Business Bureau’s review:
Their recent grade for this same company «Custom Paint Works» aka Rubens Paint with same phone contact phone and owner has a grade of «D.»
Five complaints filed with the BBB in the last three years, two involving guarantee/​warranty issues and three involving problems with product/​service. If we’d known earller, we’d have filed the complaint via the BBB to try to help resolve it.
Ruben Citores has contacted us twice via Unilocal messaging.
In short, he said: «I read your comment and have no idea what project this was. «
Ruben continues: «I would love to learn more about your complaint and try to correct whatever issue you had with our performance. At the same time, I would like to point out that since 2010 I am in the charge of the quality control of the company and solve any possible issue with the past project. «
Interestingly, Ruben has always been the proprietor (hence the name Ruben’s Custom Painting), yet says he’s only in charge of quality control since 2010?
Well, it’s an effort for Ruben to attempt to make amends, though in early 2010 he chose not to respond to the City inspector’s phone calls or ours after both we and the city inspector contacted Ruben just to verify the ICBO/​ICC# for the particular cool roof paint he used. We spoke with Ruben to inform him the city wanted to obtain his paint product information. In the end, he gave the city and us the runaround. All he needed to do was be honest and we’d accept our mistake of choosing his company. Caveat emptor.
We already accepted the fact that the house paint job was not going to live up to the warranty claims, but since Ruben did not cooperate on the cool roof paint info, the city was forced to fail our inspection for lack of ICC/​ICBO certified paint products for a cool roof. We’ve since corrected this by hiring a licensed contractor whose work passed the city’s inspections.
In our response on Unilocal messaging to Ruben, we’ve let him know that we’ll post a few photos of the proposal and partial invoice to show that we were indeed customers of his several years ago.
BTW, his contractor’s license is for Painting & Decoration Only.
The proposal photo shows they also do Shingle Roof Restoration, Drywall repairs, etc. In fact, there are other necessary licenses to do such work if the work is over a certain amount (currently $ 500 or more for labor and materials). Just a tip. If the overall project is over $ 500, the contractors must be licensed in all specific types of work (see Minor Work Exemption under
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They sent out their best sales team but worst painters. We had paint on the windows and areas where they’re not suppose to have paint.
Now like other clients our paint is also fading, chipping and we paid extra for the extended warranty. We met w/​owner during one of the home shows and brought this issue to his attention — no response.
Don’t use their services, they’re only good at selling.

We used Rubens to paint our house 5 years ago. We experienced peeling after about 4 years, but luckily we had also purchased a warranty. It took quite a long time to get Reuben to repsond to my calls about getting it fixed. However once I engaged with Reuben he was quick to fix the problem and we have had the issue resolved and the house looks much better.