This company and it's president has caused such a burden on my family that I can not warn you enough to stay away from their services. I will go into full detail about the lengths they have taken to abuse our trust as consumers and use of contracts and manipulation of written and verbal information to greedily deprive us of our happy home.
We purchased a house that needed a gut renovation in mid-2015. In advance of the purchase, and to secure the contract, DAF's president paid $50K in violations that the house incurred from the previous owner. In exchange he secured a contract with us to renovate the property for approximately $350K. During this time, the made us sign an AIA- that is a separate contract that they said would protect US in case of defaults on our established agreement. That is a false statement as you will learn in the following details. We agreed to monthly payments for which they would complete the job in a 6 month period.
Work did not commence until 2 months into our contract. We are not savvy on rules of the construction industry or any type of legal matters that deal with these kinds of contracts and allowed them to manipulate us with change orders and accusations that we were delaying the process with changes. They never tried to work with us through out the 4 months that they "worked" on the house. I quote because they were not consistent with their work schedule and many times they only had a handful of workers on site. I was always there to receive them, as there was NEVER a foreman or supervisor on the site to oversee the daily activities.
During the time they were there, they received sanitation violations that I PERSONALLY had to vacate at the Environmental Control Board hearings. They never once acknowledged these fines.
The final straw came when we realized they were not framing windows on the attic level of our house. Upon inspection of suspiciously shoddy work, we noted several loose windows had been covered up and that is when DAF decided to accuse us of breaching our contract. I had requested a meeting with the Supervisor. When he arrived, he shouted at me and removed all of the workers from the property and removed all of the equipment they had stored there. Later that day, I received an email headed "TERMINATION OF WORK". Any interpretation of this email will tell you that they are terminating the contract. In that email, the president of the company stated that he would be taking legal action against us, which he did.
We were required to have hearings through the American Arbitration Association (AAA) because of the AIA contract that we signed. After months of planning, we were able to have our hearings.
During this time, we found a new contractor and completed the interior work of the house. The exterior, however, remains in dilapidated condition, with holes on the stucco from scaffolds that were hung through the walls and the roof that was installed by DAF subcontractor has several leaks and needs to be completely replaced. Some of the windows were also damaged from scaffolds that were built through the structure of the house. Our contractor had to replace ALL of the plumbing and electrical work. DAF has yet to remove the permit for the electrician that was hired to do the work. The did not request inspections for any of the work they did and they did not self certify that the work was done to code. Our house was left without doors and debris all along the front and back of the house. There was no running water or electricity coming into the property when DAF terminated the contract.
All of this was brought to the attention of the Arbitrator during the hearings. Approximately $95K was paid to DAF for their services. They brought the claim that we owed them $150K and 20% in losses, claiming that we removed them from the property on the day I met with the supervisor and terminated the contract. They brought witnesses that stated that I was the one to tell them to leave. NONE of those witnesses were on the property when I met the supervisor. The supervisor claims he was not on the premises, however, I HAVE A VOICE RECORDING OF OUR INTERACTION ON THAT DAY. Everything he said is recorded and clear. Although I did not submit this as evidence for the hearings, I did tell the Arbitrator about the voice recording.
We received the decision from our lawyer that states that our counterclaim was denied. That DAF is awarded the ENTIRE claim and we must pay within 30 days. As of now, I am looking as to the next steps to vacate this very partial decision. After doing some searching, I have found several articles concerning the nature of Arbitration and the fact is that most of these cases are biased to the contractors. It is very difficult to vacate an Arbitration decision, however, making our case public and taking the next step in eradicating this injustice will be well worth the effort.
So, DO NOT sign any type of contract with this company read more