Cons: bad faith, bad work, building safety code violations, rude customer service.
Pros: the company's own crew did good work.
Owners, retirees, met with Ross on site, their home, to build several concrete cobble stone projects:
1. front yard patio with stair & wall
2. backyard walkway and stair
3. driveway
Plans given on site.
Project entailed significant excavation, demolition and construction.
Ross indicated his company's crew would do the project and they would meet with owners and communicate about work progress at the beginning and throughout the job. He said he would be on site at times to manage the project to ensure quality (standard procedure for construction company).
A crew from a different company the owners had never heard of arrived at 6-6:30 a.m. (construction not allowed this early in neighborhood) and did not let the owners know they had started working much less who they were. And, they did not provide any review of the project prior to starting. Significant excavation and construction was completed before the owners even knew they were on site; and, some of the work they had done completely deviated from plans, was an obvious eyesore and, violated building safety codes.
Despite multiple requests, Ross never showed up on site to manage the project and resolve the problems. And, he sent a completely different company to do the work which was not discussed with, or agreed to, by owners. The
At one point, Ross told the female owner to "take a chill pill chick" because she confronted him with the bad work being done, the building/safety code violations, the extreme construction plan deviations and, sending an unknown subcontractor and so demanded he show up to manage the crew, the project and fix the problems.
He told the female owner to manage the crew or the crew could manage itself - the crew did not speak English and the lead spoke little English.
Trying to force a female client to "interface" with a foreign, non-English speaking male crew, to try to get them to correct their construction errors is rude, unprofessional, risky to the client and completely unacceptable - especially, when the crew did not want to correct the major construction mistake and did not.
Serendipitously, it ended up that the company did not receive any money up front and, in order to get paid, they had to fix the problems. They ended having to do the entire backyard walkway and front patio THREE TIMES, finally having to bring in their own crew the third and final time, in order to meet building & safety codes and to follow the plans. Parts of the patio still look bad due to severe staining and color mismatch.
Fortunately, the company's own crew was respectful, professional, responsive and did a good job redoing the project.
Examples of construction problems:
1. Patio stair riser 12" in height (the other 10 stair risers are 7" high) -
an extreme Construction Building & Safety Code violation. This occurred because the concrete foundation was not dug/poured/constructed to the specified & correct height.
2. Backyard walkway leading to backyard patio & stairs was 2-1/2 feet off-center, built right next to a stone wall and, built without a stair step. The Plan had the walkway leading up to, and centered on, the backyard patio stairs and had a stair step.
Recommendations:
* Make sure your Contract specifies EVERYTHING (including job management, no Subcontractors, high quality work, etc...) and hold them to it with consequences specified if they do not keep good faith.
* Know the building & safety codes pertaining to your project.
* Do not pay them anything up front, except for cost of materials, until they complete the entire job RIGHT and to customer satisfaction. Many Consumer Rights construction groups recommend only paying for materials or, at best, 10-15% of the total cost then, paying the balance after the project is properly completed and customer approved. Or, incrementally paying only for work properly completed to-date on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
* Have them sign-off on the detailed plans prior to start of work.
* If the company is professional they will have no problems with these recommendations since they know any savvy customer knows better.
* FYI: years ago Seattle was rated as one of the top 3 worst cities for bad construction work and scams - equal to New York and Chicago. read more