Shady Business Practices and Lack of Familiarity with Kiawah Island…read more
We hired Herlong to design a new home on Kiawah Island. The design process was relatively smooth and Steve was for the most part responsive taking our ideas into account. However, we did receive some push back that certain of our wishes would never be approved by the ARB. However, on a trip to Kiawah, we toured a few homes on our same street with the same features we were told were not possible. The lack of familiarity with the local ARB nearly caused us to unwillingly compromise on our dream home.
Additionally, while negotiating a contract with Herlong we requested that the balance of our retainer be refunded should we stop services at any time (see screenshot of email dated October 3, 2022). In response, Herlong agreed that the balance of the retainer would be refunded should we stop work on our project (see screenshot of email dated October 3, 2022). On July 15, 2023, we asked Herlong to provide an accounting and provide us with the balance owed on our account (see screenshot of email dated July 15, 2023). In response, Herlong indicated that the balance was a little over $8,000 (see screenshot of email dated July 18, 2023). Subsequently, we decided to terminate our agreement with Herlong (see screenshot of email dated July 23, 2023). In our email we
requested that our outstanding balance be applied against the retainer with the residual refunded to us (about $1,600). Many months later in September, Herlong finally responded to us requesting that we call things even apparently due to work that was not reflected in the accounting of July 18th . To be clear, there was no work performed between the time of the accounting and our termination of the agreement. Thus, their billing practices are either sloppy or we were charged for services that were never rendered.
Either way, it was clear that Herlong had simply run off with our retainer.
There are a lot of great architects in the Charleston area, we would skip this one.
