We met Mr. Romero with our contractor. We showed him that we had "pre-drawn" the house and needed it "finished" professionally. He agreed to complete a package and showed us a complete package of "non-engineered" plans. We explained that we had two items that we would have engineered and he agreed that this would be the most cost effective approach and told us to find an engineer who, "would be willing to complete just those two items (a retaining wall and a support)." We agreed to move forward.
Mr. Romero works a second job... Which we knew. I followed up, contacting him, providing additional information. Months past and Mr. Romero failed to return calls, etc. We paid him in full (he seemed trustworthy!). Finally he told us he was going on vacation and he asked us to come over and see the work "nearly finished".
The plans were missing MANY things and had some odd things added... For example... On a closet with double doors there was a fire proof door and a french door. A concrete walk ran right through the front porch. Much of the basic work had not been completed... General things that drafting companies do all the time (detail, etc.). He refused to work with our engineer. Our engineer became very frustrated and told us we were getting "ripped off". I tried to convince him to do the work and he said that he didn't understand what needed done. My contractor called him (this is now four months after the beginning of the contract). Mr. Romero refused to complete the work. I called Mr. Romero and he related that he had no intention of completing the work. He stopped answering calls.
Sadly for our family, the money was gone and the project was in worse shape than it started. We had to move on and paid a second draftsman who did a great job in a very short period of time. When we addressed the issue with the BBB (after Mr. Romero would not offer any assistance to our request for help, though he did offer that we could use one of his "friends" and he would staple their work to his work), his wife wrote a lengthy letter complaining about essientially everything but never addressing the fact that we had to have his work re-done because the county rejected it completely. The letter to the BBB made it very clear that this was not a rational, caring company that wanted to resolve the issue.instead, they complained that we called at night (uh... Yeah! He worked another job during the day), that our contractor was rude (which I don't believe, however, he was not happy that the company took our money and did no work), etc. It was basically an inflamatory letter that had nothing to do with the fact that Mr. Romero ripped us off, but instead tried to debate trivial issues with sheer volume and used ink and paper worthlessly.
We later found that the "references" that he gave us were NOT homes that he had drafted.
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