Glendale firm’s license revoked
*Cal Repair Services Inc. has license taken away for five years following hundreds of complaints.
By Robert Chacon, News-Press and Leader

Glendale News Press
Published July 27, 2005

GLENDALE — After a more than two-year investigation, the state
as revoked the license of a Glendale-based company for five years
following hundreds of customer complaints.

Following a six-week hearing with an administrative law judge in
Sacramento, the California Contractors State Licensing Board found
that Cal Repair Services Inc. and its Chief Executive Officer Zohrab
Mkhitarian had committed several infractions, including forging
signatures on license applications, misrepresenting information on
license application forms, failing to get necessary permits for work
and charging homeowners for unnecessary work.

The license will be revoked effective Aug. 10, pending an appeal by
the company.

The 3-year-old company will appeal the decision, Mkhitarian said.

“Essentially, the [board] left thousand of customers without
warranties,” he said, claiming that the company with its headquarters
on Brand Boulevard serves about 50,000 customers a year. “The
license will not be revoked. We are going to fight it. It’s an
idiotic decision.”

Cal Repair, which does a majority of its business as Pick Red, has
had more than 150 complaints filed against it with the Better Business
Bureau, and numerous others with the Contractors State License Board.

“This has been a long investigation in to the company,” said Pamela
Mares, spokeswoman for the board. “It has been several years and it
has been a maze of different interweaving webs.”

Cal Repair does business under many names, and each off-shoot has
had complaints filed against it, Mares said.

“They are a big company with a lot of businesses and it gets real
confusing,” she said. “We have all kinds of different people with
different licenses sharing facilities and phone numbers and customers
but every time it comes back to Cal Services.”

But receiving complaints is just a natural part of doing business,
Mkhitarian said. “When you serve 50,000 customers a year, you will
get some complaints,” he said. “I’ve had people call and say they
only want a white guy to come to their house. These are the kind of
people we deal with some times.”

Many of the complaints are without merit, and customers with
justifiable complaints have been refunded their money or jobs have
been repaired, he said. The company has only responded to 50% of the
complaints filed against it, said Katie Mitzner, spokeswoman for the
Better Business Bureau. “You would expect that a company that big,
doing that many jobs would have a higher level of competency and a
lot more duty and care for its customers,” said Gary Almond, general
manager of the bureau.

The company is one of the most egregious violators of state contracting
laws he has seen in a long time, he said.