Let me tell you about my experience with Blueberry Builders. It started in about June of 2018, as we were contemplating building a restaurant.
They were recommended by a designer with whom we were working. Blueberry came on board, talked a mean game about their restaurant prowess, and promised us an opening date of October 1, 2018. This was a full build for a restaurant - plumbing, electrical, carpentry, woodwork, flooring, the whole nine. In-depth work. We retained them as architect and design-build contractor.
Blueberry told us that they would be doing all the work on the job. THey then turned around and sold the job to someone that the owner of Blueberry didn't know (he was referred by the foreman - more on him later). Blueberry had never worked with the sub, had never met them prior to the job, and later, when the police became involved, admitted that they didn't even know where the sub's office was.
Blueberry / their sub began work in July of 2018, and it was quickly apparent that they were not treating our job as a priority. Each day they'd send 3-4 guys to our site, and those guys would loaf around, do a few things here and there, and generally show a lack of motivation and eagerness.
During the course of the build, we discovered that Blueberry had missed the fact that we had a gas setup that didn't meet spec. Once this was discovered, we spent an additional $20,000 to convert to electric because the alternative was to wait another six months for Con Ed to get the gas working.
There were numerous egregious issues with their work quality, many of which are still affecting us today. As an example, we had some shelving which was designed to fit TVs. We sent over the specs on the TVs, with measurements, and links to a website with the TVs owner manual, description, and full measurements. The shelving was made incorrectly. Twice. We specified a rail on one side of our restaurant of a specific width. That came in incorrectly. When we pushed them on it, we discovered that their measurement to the carpenter was "between 7 and 8.5 inches". We were astonished that there was no specificity. They're an architecture firm. Specificity is what they're supposed to do.
Blueberry apparently didn't pay their sub-contractors. In fact, they treated their subs so badly (per the sub) that the sub came and stole furniture from our site, forcing us to go to the police to call the guy and have him return the furniture.
Additionally, the fact that Blueberry didn't pay their sub-contractors meant that every single one of them came to us for the money, and refused to finish the job unless we paid. So we paid three times. The first time to Blueberry, the second time to the guy that we needed to bring in under Blueberry to finish the job, and the third time to the sub-contractors that were telling us how Blueberry shorted them the money that was promised.
During this process, they had a foreman on the site who would show up occasionally, make vague promises about work to be done, and leave. When he physically threatened one of our restaurant's owners, we told Blueberry that he was not allowed back on our site. He was replaced with a guy who came in, made repeated racist comments, and generally followed the same pattern of vague promises and no follow-through. During this, we were in contact with the owner of the company, telling him that the pace and product was insufficient. He promised over and over to rectify the issues and get more workers on site. That never happened. Each time we'd complain, whoever was on site would refer us to the other people. If it was the designers, they'd push us to the labor department. If it was the workers on site, they'd tell us it was the designers' faults. It was a complete disaster.
We eventually had to bring in another contractor under Blueberry, as Blueberry made it clear that they would not be honoring the contract or finishing the build on time. Further, the work that they did complete was miserable in quality, and had to be redone numerous times.
All in, we opened six months late, and half a million dollars over budget. After some initial promises about his obligation and the damages due, the owner of Blueberry stopped returning calls.
In short, they lied to us, were incompetent in their measurements, observations, and building skills, left us to pay for their mistakes and their shorting their own sub-contractors, and then took off with the money and rejected the contract they'd signed. Cost us a year's worth of aggravation and over half a million dollars MORE than what we'd agreed to.
Do yourself a favor and run as far and as fast as you can from these guys. read more
