Our experience with Spring Branch Trading Post has been anything but satisfactory. Thus the one star. We have 40 acres in Terlingua Ranch TX by Big Bend and met Zach and Vicky out at our property in early March 2020, Just as Covid-19 began in U.S. We were at our property and spent about two hours with them talking about the cabin we wanted to build. At that time, Zack said he could start the work in three weeks. When we mentioned that they would need to find a place for the crew to stay and that it was difficult and expensive to get lodging, they said that wasn't a problem because they had a camper they would bring out. Zach said he would come out initially and install the piers for the cabin and then his top carpenter Otis would come out and finish the entire building on his own in two weeks. At this time, he told us that he would never put another job in front of ours, even if someone offered him more money to jump their place in line. When meeting the first time in Terlingua, Zach told us that we would pay them $7,000 when he finished the piers and the rest would be paid when the job was done.
He promised to get us pricing and an agreement quickly. While we did not get the price or agreement right away, we did eventually get it. The price was agreed to and we were waiting for him to start. Each time we talked to him about when he was going to start, we received another excuse as to why they could not build. While the project was not moving forward, we looked at our plans and realized that we should build a bigger cabin than originally planned. We provided new plans to Zach and he would provide new pricing.
First it was he could not get supplies due to Covid-19. Then he didn't have employees to do the work. He said he would not charge us more even though the price of wood and supplies had risen. We kept contacting him throughout all of this time asking for build dates and any date he provided was passed without word from Zach. We watched his Facebook account to see the he WAS building cabins posting the pictures and giving progress reports. He had a board in his office showing all their jobs. We would stop in there and see that our project wasn't even on the board. He said that he was going to give us a firm build date in October. We asked to meet with him at his office expecting to be given the build date in October. We were told he would begin building 12/15/20. This was after numerous promised build dates came and went throughout the Spring and Summer. He told us that he was not going to make the 12/15 and he would go out with his family on December 22nd to start the piers over Christmas. We knew he was not going to take his family out there for Christmas. The "Rock Solid Build Date" was set by Zack as January 18th, 2021. This date was not met. We asked for a meeting.
We decided we would try one last time to meet with him and this time, we came with a contractor's agreement which would spell out exactly what day he would begin our build and hold him to his promises. We even removed multiple parts of the agreement which was based on a basic contractor's agreement. He told us that he had never had anyone ask him to sign such an agreement. He said he would review it with a lawyer friend and get back to us if there was any other parts of the agreement he wanted us to remove and we agreed to that. At this meeting we also discussed the fact that he now wanted half of the money up front before any work was done and then the other half at completion. We reminded him that was not the terms we had agreed to originally and he denied having any memory of this original payment plan. The only reason we were still dealing with Zach is because we had not paid him any money up front. When he changed the agreement, that is when we decided we could not trust him. He then said he was going to build in March and we never heard from him again.
All while this was going on, we started to speak to another client of Zach's who had contracted wth him to build a cabin for them in the Davis Mountains, not too far from our property. This family had already signed the agreement with Zach and wrote a check which was to be held till the project began as a deposit. When they would call Zach about their build date, they kept getting the same run around we were. They were told that the delay in the build had to do with how much lumber had increased in price. This client had been told by Zach that he was tying our jobs to each other since they were so close to each other. This client has since cancelled the deposit check and have moved on. read more
