We built a house with Robert B. Construction. Construction was going reasonably well until the beginning of May when realizing the company was losing money due to a three-month delay of flooding and weather. Our builder threatened us with paying his interest and extra mortgage payments if we did not stay with in his deadlines. He also said that he could move up the closing date with out our consent.
Overnight our builder's customer service reversed by locking us out of the house and not giving us a key, making it impossible to deliver our purchased material for the home, to order the cabinets we wanted practically with in our allowance, and not being able to order the carpet we wanted which was well with in our allowance.
We have very low quality cabinets in which the laminate is coming off underneath the sink and cook top due two beads of water all with in a day and a half period (our cleaning products are not corrosive and mostly natural-Shaklee brand). The cabinets are made of particle furniture board. One base cabinet is completely incorrect, a shelf is jaggedly cut, in the Master Bath the tub surround is cheap and also jaggedly cut. The carpet the builder chose for our custom home was more expensive and lower quality then the carpret that we wanted. I have no idea what the warranty is on this carpet or what type was ordered.
Upon moving into our new home we found out the builder boarded up the basement utility door as an extra measure to prevent us from delivering our hard flooring material, lighting, appliances, bathroom fixtures, etcetera that we purchased. We could only visit the house with an appointment with our realtor taking much time, requests and efforts. We were directed to contact the builder through our realtor causing more delays creating more work for our realtor. Communication was hampered. We resorted to peeking through the windows to see if the building process was going well. There was always the implicated possibility of being arrested if we snuck in to deliver material the builder gave us a deadline to deliver.
I did not feel comfortable even approaching the house - eventually our house that we hired a contractor to build. If we did not meet the deadlines the builder explained to us they would purchase their own (low quality probably) flooring. He wanted my husband to miss work during the day in order to deliver material. My husband and I would sign a document giving us access to the garage, yet we would be locked out twice not able to deliver material or paint following through on our verbal agreements to the builder. Do we leave the wood flooring on the porch, the lighting as well?
The builder gave us impossible deadlines to fulfill.in trying to fulfill them and working on the demands the builder gave us our family and my pregnancy took a huge stressful toll suffering much.
Being so ill during my pregnancy I had a very challenging time keeping up falling asleep while driving and passing out at another time while sleeping. Most hours and days I had trouble breathing, suffocating having to push forward meeting the builder's demands. Most of the time I had to push through my worsening symptoms because I could not take the time to keep my sugar levels intact. Our eldest son having a serious illness could not be taken care of properly and became unstable very quickly because I could not maintain his medication. My other 14-year-old son was taking care of two babies and himself. Being pregnant, ill, having a double kidney infection collapsing twice due to blood sugar issues and in the hospital twice due to this illness. My husband lost much weight and could barely keep up with the unnecessary demand of our builder. He was running out of energy.
My baby was four weeks premature due to the stress. Loading up heavy tile to deliver it on time did not help the pregnancy.
Due to all their demands, I could not properly take care of my pregnancy and my health or my family.
My second son missed out on team pictures, school parties and baseball parties with team mates due to him helping my husband with jobs our builder promised to do. My husband and I could not keep up. I have permanent loss of memory and the confusion and frustration made it worse as I struggled to finish writingpapers for my graduate work and two exams. I could not keep up intellectually. We were nickled and dimed running out of funds for food at the end of the month for several months receiving help from a local food shelf.
My husband took several days off from work his work performance suffering due to the demanding unnecessary workload that was created. A relative gave us a significant amount of money to help us through this housing process and the closing.
The Friday before our closing date of July 15th the builder leaves us a voice mail message in regards to being tired of this crap. He spent four hours going through the numbers with us and we were not to question any more numbers. If we did he would put the house on the market taking it away from us. We realized through this whole process there was always a chance we would mess up and not receive the house losing a total of $70,000 in the deal. We felt like pawns in a very unfair and cruel chess game. If we lost we would be homeless with five children renting a weekly motel room while trying to find an apartment to rent monthly.
After closing and moving in we noticed some laminate coming off due to a bead of water underneath the sink base cabinet. NO plumbing problems.instead the contractor sent over the plumber and now is asking us for $150.00 more from us.
The builder did not respond to my message by calling us to inquire more about the challenge. He is saying I am harassing him and will seek further action if I do not call him during business hours instead of leaving a cordial voice mail during the night when I am better able to make calls.
The bricklayer, a few weeks after closing, contacts my husband at work informing us he has not been paid. He mentioned our builder knew that he had not been paid even though there was the agreement our builder would pay him before closing.
For all of our unnecessary stress, work, efforts that were thwarted, mental anguish etc, we are asking for our cabinets and carpet to be replaced and one garage door opener. Many lies were said and the truth twisted to make it appear my husband and I were causing our builder more than the usual challenges when it comes to building a house. We are also missing one garage door opener that is on the print and lead to believe it would be installed by closing.
We would like this company investigated fairly in order not to put another family or human being through a horrendous nightmarish experience. This company is very calculated, unscrupulous, dishonest, and unethical. The company was concerned about losing much money in building our house during weather delays and decided to make it look like we were at fault for all the delays. This company choose to swindle a customer over this customer giving it much future business making up for it's lost revenue due to unforseen weather delays.
Since Complaining to professional organizations we have received much retaliation. It is very coincindental that we had child protection at our door step one week, the next week animal control out to check on our dog, complaints through our neighborhood association, and two untraceable phone calls of unknown origin before and during the week child protection appeared on our doorstep.
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