We needed to build a barn for our animal rescue and began by googling to see what was out there. That was the last week of October. I contacted several, asking for further info. This company was first and only one to respond, very quickly, very cordial, seemed to pay attention to details. Once the salesman got on the phone, some of the pricing changed (went up—surprise!), but it was still pretty reasonable. Turns out the first person was a "marketer, " and the "salesman" didn't seem to be working from the exact same page, but I guessed it was close enough. We are easy going decent people, and we (more importantly) needed the barn built before the very wet cold Texas winter hit.
It was difficult to get them to give me a written breakdown of the costs, dates, and specifications, but since it had all been contained in emails (except the dates), but that did not seem germane for that point in our discussion. My husband got involved when the details became firmer, and they focused on him from then on.
I was pleased to know that a deal had been struck, because I wanted to get that barn going. Within an hour, we learned that this company had so many complaints against it that our credit card company (USAA) had automatic stops on charges from them. They in turn said they were going to break down the $2,500 deposit into $500 increments, so that they could essentially sneak the charges through. At that point, we said no. This was too important, too expensive, and their behavior, in total, was shady. (Credit card fraud, essentially.)
Just under two hours after my husband faxed the signed contract, we both sent emails and he also faxed a statement to them, at the numbers and email addresses we had successfully used earlier, and informed them that the deal was off. We were specific: you do not have our permission to bill our credit card, do not deliver anything to us, do not, do not, do not.
If someone comes to your home—which is essentially what a telemarketer does, albeit via telephone and, in this case, interstate—you have three days in which to stop the contract and the deal is off. These people have been persistent in calling and threatening. We have been calm and direct, they interrupt, we ignore them and continue to clearly state our position, and they hang up.
The last several calls have come from someone identifying himself as "an attorney" and "from the legal department, " but he doesn't sound very well educated and, frankly, were he an attorney and were there actually formal remedies they could take, they would not, we believe, continue to harass us by phone. So add probable misrepresentation of legal status to our experience.
Since this has occurred, we dug deeper and have found (much of it since our experience which went south on 11/4), very bad experiences similar to ours, cheap materials that no way are "tornado resistant." When we did finally find specifications as to metal gauge and such, it's less than substantial.
They lied. They tried to force money from our credit card. They continue to harass us by phone.
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