On January 29, my wife and I signed a contract with McQueen Custom Homes, Portland, OR (a dealer for Viceroy Homes of Canada) for a Viceroy Home framing package. We deposited $5,000.00 to lock-in a price if we would take delivery by December 15. Due to medical bills and other issues we were not able to follow through with the contract at that time. However, we were told that our deposit would be on file with Viceroy Homes and could be applied to any framing package we decided to purchase in the future.
In early January I decided to investigate again the possibility of building a Viceroy Home. Bob Hammell of Viceroy Homes told me that McQueen Custom Homes was no longer operating their Viceroy Distributorship, and he was looking after their existing customers. He also sent me a current price list and information on a special promotion offering 25% discount.in addition, he stated that we could take advantage of the special promotion with as little as a $5,000.00 deposit.
I followed-up with questions regarding our $5,000.00 that Viceroy already had and asked if it could apply to the special 25% discount promotion. I was then told that Viceroy would require additional moneys to take the deposit up to 20% of package price. I started wondering what in the heck was going on? Lets say I and someone else were looking at a $100,000.00 package — it would cost me $20,000.00 deposit to get that 25% promotion discount on that package, but only cost other people $5,000.00.
I started looking at the price lists wed previously received from Viceroy in more detail. When I compared their Feb. 2, price list with their Oct. 1, price list, I noticed that they had increased their price by 40% in eight months. Then they turned around and offered a 25% discount that would make customers think they were getting a great deal.in fact, when I questioned Bob Hammell about this, he said he was not aware of any price increase. Is he kidding? Note: I have documentation that supports all of this information.
After additional emails I decided not to pursue Viceroy Homes anymore and requested that Viceroy refund our $5,000.00 deposit. After many emails back and forth, and some that I did not even get a response to, we still have not received our deposit back and were told by Martin Velsen on March 2nd that our $5,000.00 deposit was non-refundable (basically no-matter - what). I realize the original contract we signed stated that the $5,000.00 deposit was non-refundable. However, I dont see how any company would stand by that in light of all they told me recently and the deceptive marking practices they are using. We went into the contract in good faith and medical bills keep us from being able to follow through. Furthermore, we have not received anything from Viceroy for our $5,000.00 deposit.
We have contacted the following people at Viceroy:
Bob Hammell, Viceroy Homes, Richmond, BC Canada
Martin Velsen, Manager Western Division, Viceroy Homes
John Hache, Viceroy Homes
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