Our home was actually LESS safe after hiring Baby Bodyguards. They left piles of sawdust inside and outside of most of the areas where latches were installed. This includes outside our pantry (where our daughter crawled past often) and inside the drawer where her food and dishes are. Everything I found wrong afterward and complained about was met with a long, defensive excuse. When I sent Fred photographs of all of the sawdust piles, his "solution" was to explain how he uses paper towels to clean up the sawdust . That's customer service?
In a wall where it took eight attempts to drill for furniture anchors, we were left with eight 1/2" diameter holes. Upon recapping the 'work' in person, Fred said "It was hard to get into that wall, so we drilled into the wall on the side" with no mention of the fact that upon closer inspection, I would find holes requiring hundreds of dollars in patching, spackling and repainting the EIGHT attempts they made and left without mention, which were visible behind our nightstands (how many times must one drill into a wall to realize it can't be drilled into?) To this, Fred said that we had "other holes in our apartment already". This is how they treat someone's home if it has "other holes" in it?
I booked the appointment via email and made the error of not looking on their website so I didn't realize there was a $40 Manhattan "upcharge" (never mentioned in all of the emails about costs). They were at least 45 minutes late to the appointment. I don't see the benefit of an upcharge to come here when they can't be even close to on time and then blame the weather. My husband went into work late that day to be able to meet with them, and they screwed that up for us too.
Fred kept insisting we would receive a detailed "PDF"- everything we should do to our home would be in the PDF. We never got the PDF and other moms I've spoken with about this experience have also said they never received this supposedly invaluable document either.
In his long list of excuses, Fred said that at that time I was unable to see the benefit of his services. It has been several months and after having to pay a different (reputable) handyman to fix the EIGHT holes that Fred left us with, I still see no benefit to having hired Baby Bodyguards. The corner guards have all fallen off, leaving sticky residue (but no protection) on my furniture. The "slide" type of outlet covers that they used do not keep plugs plugged in.
Fred's initial offer to "resolve" the damage that he caused was $50 but he "would not paint" (so his solution was to leave me with eight large white spackle patches on my recently painted brown walls?) and then after further explanation of what is actually required to restore the walls and clean up after them, he gave a $240 'discount'. This didn't cover the repair (by almost $100)
We paid $640 (900 s.f. apt) for latches, 7 furniture anchors, 5 blind cord tiebacks, some outlet and doorknob covers when I could have had a handyman come (on time) to do the same scope of work without the 8 holes in my wall and piles of sawdust. He advised against using toilet locks, tub spout cover and a stove guard and instead suggested I give my daughter a gentle steam burn to teach her not to touch stoves. I haven't met anyone since who thought this sounded like a good idea. Much of his advice was that we get rid of our things and where I asked if he had advice on how to handle an outlet in the nursery where we keep a few things plugged in, he suggested keeping a chair in front of it.
My advice: buy the items yourself and hire a handyman. Unless you want an excuse laden, late arriving person who leaves your apartment in far worse condition than he found it. I've worked for several architecture and interior design firms for 17 years, and I guess I have a different work philosophy about how to treat people's homes. It was always our job to leave them in at least the condition we found them in. Regarding my project, Fred left it in far worse condition and then gave repeated excuses about it.
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