Filed with the Better Business Bureau and Angies List
BBB Complaint ID#: 91179264
I bought my home in March. The seller disclosed that foundation repair had been done on the house in April and that a lifetime transferable warranty was available. No conditions were stated. My house now has 9 cracks in the walls and all of them are on the side of the house where the contractor installed 10 pilings. The contractor obviously did a poor job and will not correct the problem. I have sought assistance from the BBB but the effort was fruitless because the contractor is not an accredited member. The contractor advertises that their foundation repair work is "designed for a lifetime." The job they did on my house lasted 7 years. They do not seem to care. I invested nearly $300,000 in my house and now it has foundation problems despite the fact that pilings were installed which the contractor claimed to last a lifetime. I checked with the foundation repair association and it appears that many do not have the 90 day reporting requirement. They also could not offer an explanation of the purpose of such a requirement. The contractor should be required to include in the advertisements that the warranty is subject to certain conditions.
September
I bought my home located at 7301 Ridgemoor Lane, Plano, TX 75025 in March. The house was constructed in 1995 and the seller was the original owner. The previous owner stated on the sellers disclosure that foundation repair had been performed on the house in 2004 and that the lifetime warranty was transferable (see sellers disclosure attached). No conditions or requirements were stated on the disclosure document.in Jan. I called the foundation company, Advance Foundation Repair, LLC, to inquire about the transferable warranty and to ask if there was anything I needed to do. They told me I was too late... The warranty had to be transferred within 90 days of the title transfer of the house! I told them that I was unaware of this requirement and then I asked the purpose of this condition and/or the relevancy of this condition to their warranty, i.E. What difference did it make who was occupying the house as long as it was being used as a residence. Advance Foundation Repair refused to offer an explanation. I then asked for a copy of their contract with the previous owner. I received a copy by email in Jan and noted the 90 day transfer requirement.
Advance Foundation Repair installed 10 pilings all in the south side of my house in 2004 at a cost of $4,200 (see copy of work performed). I contacted Advance Foundation Repair recently again about the warranty and they offered to reinstate it for a $250 inspection fee an additional $500 fee for them. I objected to paying something for which I should have been charged $10. Once again I asked for an explanation of the 90 day reporting requirement but none was given. I then asked Advance to agree to binding arbitration with the Better Business Bureau but Advance refused. They claimed that their contract was with the previous owner and that they felt no obligation to arbitrate the issue with me even though I am the damaged party. I reported the matter to the Better Business Bureau to see if I could find another remedy and they made some suggestions but told me they were not able to help because Advance Foundation Repair is not an accredited member of the BBB. I also checked with the Dallas Foundation Repair Association and found that Advance Foundation Repairs 90 day warranty transfer reporting requirement is not used by some other foundation repair companies and they could not offer an explanation about the need for this requirement. Finally I verified with a few other foundation repair companies that they did not have this requirement in their contract.
Advance Foundation Repairs add on KRLD radio emphasizes the Lifetime nature of their services and the transferability of their warranty. They do not include any conditions that state the transfer must be done within 90 days of the sale of a property. The add also states that their repair service is designed to last a life time.in my opinion this borders on fraud and is misleading. If they want to insert a condition such as an unexplainable 90 day reporting requirement, then they should at least state that their warranty is subject to this condition. Furthermore, the nature of the sale of a house makes complying to their unpublicized and unexplainable warranty transfer requirement makes the transfer unlikely, i.E. An owner usually has an agent and the buyer usually has a different agent. Are all these parties going to pass on information about an arbitrary warranty transfer requirement which the contractor imposes but refuses to explain? Probably not.
Advance does poor quality work as evidenced by the multiple cracks in the walls of my house after only 7 years of the foundation being repaired and which supposedly was designed to prevent such occurrences. To date I have 5 cracks in walls on the south side of my house which is where Advance supposedly put the 10 pilings.
I invested a little less than $300,000 in my house with the belief that the foundation had been repaired in a professional manner and that the foundation company would stand behind their work. Obviously I was mislead.in closing I would like to say that Advance Foundation Repairs is not a responsible company. An ethical company would be concerned that their work did not meet professional standards. Advance Foundation Repair is not concerned about the quality of their work and chooses to avoid their professional responsibility.
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