Cumar

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY!!!
DO NOT BE FOOLED by their beautiful show room and large variety of stone options. In comparison to the other options in the area, they are fantastic when it comes to communication — they return your calls/​emails in a timely fashion and they answer your questions. BUT they don’t stand behind their work and take responsibility when they make mistakes.
I hired them to do a small project in my bathroom (it involved cutting four pieces from the same slab to match each other). The afternoon before my scheduled installation I received a call because my pieces were not going to be ready on time. I asked when we could reschedule the installation, and they called me back to let me know someone would stay late to finish the piece on time.
The countertop came out beautiful BUT the sink was installed very slightly off-​center. It’s admittedly pretty slight, but for such an expensive project, it should be PERFECT!
The shelves were supposed to be polished on the top and the bottom, but instead were only polished on one side and honed on the other — I never got a response from them when I asked about it.
There were very serious issues concerning the final piece.
During the templating, they damanged my wood window sill I was replacing (I had initially planned to repurpose this piece…). Upon mentioning this to the salesman, he said «it’s difficult to make a template.» If it’s too difficult for them to do their job without damaging my personal property, perhaps they should not be in this business?
The sill template they made was not shaped properly to fit where it needed to be installed. The template had multiple irregular non-​straight lines and small perpendicular cuts where there should not have been and it wasn’t even symmetrical. It looked like a child had made it. When I requested that these extraneous cuts be omitted when cutting the marble I was told that the template was made by a professional, which I am not, so we should not change it. He said that the template may not necessarily be an exact match to the space because they need to account for some small amount of space in order for it to fit in the spot. I, naively, listened. (In speaking with other experts later, I learned that this explanation was completely bogus and incorrect: the template should be an EXACT match to the space and that this is why they come and measure it prior to cutting the stone. And that’s why the template work itself is not cheap!)
I discovered a large crack through the slab (front to back) during the layout. To assuage my concerns that my pieces would be cut through the crack, the salesman marked it with X’s.
Ultimately, the piece was cut about a foot from where I agreed during the layout. It included the crack and excluded a dark, beautiful portion of the veins in the natural stone. Their excuse was that the layout was done incorrectly and that in order to fit the piece on the slab, it had to be moved over. They passed off the supposedly erroneous layout as an error made on my own behalf eventhough the layout was based on the template they made and the outline was drawn by their salesman — I only told him where to draw. Furthermore, this is no excuse to include a portion of the stone which is SPECIFICALLY marked to be EXCLUDED. If there was a problem with the layout, it needed to be communicated to me prior to cutting the stone.
Finally, the sill did not fit where it needed to be installed because of the sloppy, irregular shape (which, they were proud to point out, was the same shape as the template).
Cumar promised to fix the problem and made a proposal which would have somewhat improved the situation, but at an additional cost to me. I informed them that this proposal was a start for them to amend the situation, eventhough I found it grossly inappropriate that their errors would be at my expense. (At this point I just wanted it to be done and done well!) They got back to me to inform me they will do no further business with me (including this botched, outstanding project I had hired them to complete). They demanded that I pay them for the charge for the windowsill template which was used to exactly cut the sill that does not fit in my wall.
GO ELSEWHERE TO GET YOUR STONE WORK DONE IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT ANDY BY A COMPANY WHO WILL STAND BEHIND THIER WORK!
I have since hired an expert to determine if the sill piece can be salvaged. He had a solution for the crack, but in order for the piece to fit, portions would need to be trimmed, and large gaps would need to be filled with grout — completely unacceptable!
In talking to other people in the stone business, I’ve discovered that this project is not the only example in which Cumar failed to properly template their pieces and in which they did not stand behind their work.

When I did a major renovation (my 2^nd one in Cambridge) about 2 years ago, I searched quite a bit for a place that had a large selection of stone and would do a good job installing it for a fair price (my ideal situation). I ended up having a fantastic «one-​stop shopping» experience with Cumar!
I was specifically looking for green soapstone for kitchen counters. Cumar had an amazingly good selection of slabs in their warehouse yard (the size of an aircraft hangar, actually) — far more extensive than anywhere else I’ve seen except for that wholesale-​only place in Westwood that supplies a lot of smaller granite dealers (that’s where I went for my previous renovation — my old stone guy sent me there to pick out a slab I liked). Anyway, Cumar’s prices for the stone plus installation were significantly less than all the other quotes I received. I assume this is because Cumar both imports and installs the stone, thereby eliminating the middleman.
The soapstone looks great, and installation was flawless. I subsequently recommended Cumar to 2 friends, who also liked them. I dealt mostly with Bernard and a bit with Dave (the manager). The installers were Jackson, Robert, and a few others.

Short Answer: Do not go here for your Granite counter tops.
We went here, and at first, everyone seemed quite nice. Jared, our sales rep, was a little slow to get back to us on things, but the price beat everyone else’s. That was for a reason.
When our counter top FINALLY came (it took hassling them to get templating done, then they have about a 4 week lead time until the granite is cut and can be installed) it didn’t fit properly. There were huge, ugly seams, as well as half inch by inch gaps at the edges near the front of the counter that they filled with NEON green putty (our granite was green).
We called Jared the next morning and emailed him pictures of the horrendous counter, and even he acknowledged it was cut wrong. He said they would cut new pieces and come back to fix the work. That was two and a half months ago, and we haven’t been able to get him on the phone since. Our $ 10,000 counter top is ugly, and it seems we have no recourse but to complain on Unilocal.Do not believe them when they tell you «We are not done until you are fully satisfied with your new project.»