NOTE: If Armstrong Homes ever responds properly to my requests to:
1/ fix the remaining problems (including one new we just found out and reported two weeks ago (no response),
2/ apologize for insulting remarks made by their service employees to us,
3/ pay us for contracting work out they promised to reimburse us on,
we will most happy to modify this report towards their actions in the last six months, in a more favorable light and in accordance with whatever positive actions they take.
We live in a quiet area of Florida. We thought we were retiring into a peaceful world. The place is wonderful, except for the struggles to get our house fixed and repaired under the warranty to the standards we consider reasonable.
As it is, I would consider the house an example of sloppy workmanship, half-brain thinking by the installers and subcontractors (Bailey's, Bishop's, Torry's, and Porter's, plus Armstrong's own repair/warranty workers).
We closed on our home last summer. It took us seven days after closing to occupy the house. During that time, without notifying us, Armstrong workers came back into the house and (while they were supposed to be adding a concrete (covered with tiles) shower bench, bringing in a light fixture that short-circuited and a kitchen cabinet door that didn't match the rest of the shelving) changed the vinyl floor in our kitchen and breakfast area. When we occupied the house, on the very day our furniture was to come in, we found:
1/ Black/gray stains and discolorations all over the carpeting, especially the living room, master bedroom, and guest room. These discolorations were not there when we closed and did the walkthrough inspection.
2/ A black dust and black skid marks all over the vinyl floor.
3/ A seam in the middle of the traffic area, about ten or twelve feet long, glowing from sealant about one inch on either side of it.
The superintendent said he'd be back the next day to fix these things, wash the carpet, wash the floor. He never came back.
Finally, in January, after having made many phone calls, sent certified mail letters, and sending faxes to Armstrong, and after a key, special representative promised us our carpet would be replaced "because two or three more houses in the neighborhood have had the same issues, " and after a carpet inspector (after months struggling (Bailey's people kept coming, looked at the carpet, and said they didn't know what it was and that a supervisor or expert needed to look at the carpet) to get Bailey's to get one to look at the carpeting), we agreed to have our carpet steam cleaned.
The Armstrong representative assured us that Corporate had okayed our using our own carpet cleaner instead of their people, and that they would reimburse us. A month and a half half, three phone calls, and three personal visits to the warranty office had yielded zero results, nothing, NADA. We haven't been reimbursed for cleaning the carpet, and we get no response to our phone calls.
Some stains are begining to reappear.
The steam carpet cleaner told us that one of the stains in our guest room was caused by an installer's iron. The company accused us of having burned the carpet with our own iron.
Before the carpet was cleaned, during all the struggling to get attention to our problems, from Sept. To January, several of the Armstrong employees literally laughed at us, walked out on us, and accused (I understand they even wrote a report) that our dog had soiled the carpet with feces and urine. (Our dog is blind, almost 14 years old, and never walks around much on our carpet. We take her out every two or three hours. She did not soil the carpet, nobody from Armstrong saw such a thing, though they claimed they have witnesses, and the dog soiling the carpet simply did not happen.
The carpet expert report indicates a dust imbedded in the carpet. The best guess is that this was brought about by workers soiling the carpet with dirty shoes after the installation of the shower bench and the vinyl floor during the week after our closing when we were not in the house.
We have reported the sprinkler rain sensor as being inoperative several times over the last six months. A Porter's rep came and rewired it though it seemed obvious to us that he had no idea of what he was rewiriing. THE RAIN SENSOR STILL DOESN'T WORK.
The photocell, we just realized, for the light pole on the front lawn (turns the light on and off with sunset and sunrise) doesn't work. It never has. We reported it two weeks ago. We have received no phone call back even. No one has come.
Armstrong and subcontractor personnel have repeatedly shown up at our door, as early as 7:30 am, without an appointment. One Armstrong rep has reported this to the BBB (in response to my complaint about all this) as the Jimenez's unwillingness to let their personnel in to do warranty work (more about this). This simply is not true. Another diversion. Another unwarranted attack to justify their poor service and response.
Other happenings:
1/ A nail, about one inch long, stuck in through the wood of a bathroom cabinet, invisible to the eye, and in a very dangerous position to cause a possibly serious wound. They used nails through the wood to install the toilet paper holders. One inch long nails.
2/ Appliances that had to be swapped out because they were not the ones we ordered. It took, again, insistence, patience, and many many phone calls and visits to get them to exchange these.
One appliance malfunctioned within a week of being used. It was hell to get them to exchange it. Recently, we learned (we had handymen installing lights in our kitchen) that the microwave had been improperly installed on the wall and without using the bolts and safety installation kit that comes with the microwave. The handymen told us that that appliance might have fallen any minute on our hands or arms as we cooked.
3/ Sprinkler systems. Again, took over two months to get someone to look into this; that sprayed the street instead of the lawn.
4/ Missing shelves and back walls from the kitchen cabinets. The door that was ordered in late August, finally came in sometime in late October or early November. A missing flip-out drawer under the kitchen sink that we had repeatedly told our sales person was a must for us.
5/ It took almost three months for them to replace the light fixture we had paid for (and had short circuited at the time of moving). They kept bringing back the wrong fixture.
6/ Fans and ceiling lights were installed either way up high or so low that heads crashed into them. We had to pay someone to change the height in one of these. They kept laughing at us for even suggesting these lights needed to be installed at the proper height.
7/ Missing electrical and TV outlets. Wiring was found in the attic. Bishop had never guided the wires to the proper locations. Walls had to be punctured to correct this.
8/ Missing light switch in the garage to control, as per blueprint, the lights outside the garage.
9/ Wrong window glass in one of the bathrooms. Took until January, five months, to get this done.
10/ Shower head installed at 85 inches, way higher than standard, above the floor. Wife fell and ended up in the ER because of this. Someone from Torry's promised to take out a wall tile and bring the pipe down (instead of trying to replace the outside the wall pipes, which is simply not the right way to resolve this) properly. The day after, we got word that Corporate Armstrong had issued an edict that we were to be happy with one of the outside, patch measure pipes and that they would do no more work on this. The Preferred Warranty People say they do not cover this.
11/ Grout and tiles on the shower have been replaced twice by Bailey's. The grout keeps turning beige, gray, and almost black in spots. We've asked that we be allowed to get our own subcontractor and that Armstrong reimburse us. Preferred Warranty ordered this fixed. It hasn't been addressed. We even wrote a recent letter in late February/early March suggesting we go to ARBITRATION. ARMSTRONG HAS NOT EVEN BOTHERED TO REPLY.
12/ We demanded a written apology for the comments by Armstrong employees that our dog soiled the carpet and that we weren't letting workers in (The workers kept either showing up without appoinments, or making us wait for hours until we simply had to leave. When the problem became so bad that we knew they simply seemed incapable of fixing the remaining problems, we told two employees to go home (after the Torry's supervisor had promised to fix the height of the shower stall and then Corporate changed its mind).
During the building of the house they tried to charge us extra for bathroom cabinets that were not the ones we had been promised. Two weeks prior to closing, they did charge an additional $360 or so for extra carpeting needs (they remain undefined, but we closed because we needed to move out of our previous house that had already been promised on a certain date to our buyer).
A letter to BBB didn't seem to do much good. An Armstrong employee simply reiterated in his rebuttal to our letter that we didn't let people in, and that there had been witnesses that had seen the dog soiling the carpet. The burnt mark in the guestroom remains there, with Armstrong's Director of Operations asserting that we did it with our own iron.
Preferred Warranty doesn't cover the carpet, or the shower height.in fact, if one reads the Preferred Warranty one discovers that very little is actually covered.
We did manage to get Bailey's (through Armstrong) to eliminate the wrong bench they had installed in our shower. We had asked for a small, triangular bench on one corner of the shower stall. They kept not hearing us, from the sales people to the coordinators, to the superintendents, to the warranty people, to the corporate office. When we managed to get the bench removed it turned out they had built it with two by fours, and SINCE THE TILE CAULKING WAS SO BAD THAT IT ALLOWED WATER TO LEAK INTO IT, THE TWO BY FOURS WERE ALREADY MOLDY BLACK AND READY, SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE, TO POSSIBLY CREATE A PROBLEM OF SMELL AND MOLD ALL OVER THE STALL.
I gave Armstrong until January 13 (going by memory) to fix the problems (certified, return signed letter). It hasn't happened. Since I went back in late February, contacted them again, asked them for arbitration, and have tried to at least get them to negotiate without success (iron mark, grout in the shower, height of the shower head), I cannot even reopen the question of renewed activity of dust/soil in the carpet. Thus, this report here, which I will be more than willing to change if Armstrong takes care of the items that should be taken care of.
But, they don't seem interested in replying to any of our recent personal requests, faxes, or phone calls.
By the way, a house down the corner from us did have the carpet changed because of issues that we were told (by the Armstrong man) were similar to ours. The Armstrong rep, back in November-December, did promise us that our carpet would be replaced and that all items would be taken care of, to our satisfaction.
It just didn't happen. It's not happening.
I had a triple bypass less than two years ago. I have hypertension, and I don't need this aggravation in my retirement. I've considered lawyers. I still haven't disregarded this possibility. We're trying to keep ourselves healthy and avoid the stress that does so much damage to arteries, heart, etc.
I've had to pay for a swinging, two headed shower to solve the shower height problem. I paid for the drain cover (it was totally covered with cement or grout) in the shower stall. I paid for the steam cleaning of the shower, and we've been subjected to insults, even accused of insulting one of the Armstrong employees with whom our relations were excellent (we even hired him to organize our garage on his time off, and we gave him a 27 inch TV set for a woman he knew). This was another huge lie invented by someone to, I can only guess, divert attention from the issues: fixing the defects and the sloppy workmanship.
It has never been explained to me why we had to pay extra money for the carpet at closing time. The explanation provided didn't account for the fact that we were never told in advance that this carpet would require extra dollars to install.
Anyway, here we are, trying to survive our retirement and dealing with all these struggles just to get our house built the way Armstrong proclaims in their web page:
("At Armstrong Homes we build more than homes we build communities; and, Chris and Scott have been building the highest quality commercial buildings and homes in Marion County for over 28 years.")
By the way, this Armstrong company is not to be confused with the one in the web doing business in the Midwest (Oklahoma-Kansas?).
I don't know yet if Small Claims Court might be the answer. The State of Florida doesn't seem interested. They wrote us a letter that they don't deal in this sort of thing. Maybe the Federal Government?
Eladio
Ocala Area, Florida
U.S.A.
0 comments