Hi Marian,
I find it ironic that you remove your first apology response (see attached photo), and instead dispute all the points of the review. So, which is it? And, while your reply illustrates the points in my review quite well (i.e., not taking responsibility), it is fraught with errors. For example:
1. The additional design iterations were because of the poor quality your team delivered. You apologized for that throughout the process. At one point, you blamed it on a person that left your firm. Perhaps you forgot that part. And why would you send someone out to take more pictures after the 2nd design meeting if you thought you had it right? The site hadn't changed.
2. A certified land and tree survey, a sealed set of architectural blueprints (to scale w/ the tree survey and showing the trees), and multiple sets of eyes (including your construction crew) all disagree with your appraisal of the tree and floorplan situation. You were provided those documents at the start of the project.
3. The design problem became apparent when the construction crew was about to critically damage a tree. We stopped construction to figure out what to do because steel edging and multiple pavers had to be reworked. Your construction foreman agreed it was a design issue and we called your office to get your input. You didn't return our calls. We repeatedly called your office as did your construction foreman during business hours over the course of the next 2 days since work in that area had stopped. If you consider that harassment, then was your foreman harassing you too?
4. We never asked your company to pay for anything that we changed unrelated to design errors while the construction crew was working. We're happy with the changes and tweaks we made to other parts of the project, and we never asked you to take responsibility for any of that. We merely asked you to take some responsibility for the expensive materials and labor rework that Waterloo's flawed design around the rear patio caused. If you had returned a single phone call or come out to the site like we and your construction crew requested, then you would know that. We've explained repeatedly that we had to change the design, at our expense, because it didn't work (wasn't to scale, wasn't accurate on floorplan lines or tree location), so I don't understand why you keep saying that we implemented your design - we didn't!
5. Your construction foreman apologized for your behavior multiple times during their time working on the project. Seems like they felt something wasn't right with the way you were handling the situation too. And the crew was compensated in full for their work. We hired them directly and they did good work on the installation. We're not reviewing them here.
6. No one made threats. After repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get ahold of you over the phone over the course of 2 days, and after your construction foreman communicated (apologetically) that you weren't going to take any responsibility for the rework your flawed design had caused, we sent the contract to our attorney to get legal advice on options. I'd encourage anyone to do that in a similar situation if they feel a service provider is in breach of contract. We learned that the contract is written in your favor. That's on us for entering into an agreement with you, as I stated in my review. Either way, you had plenty of time to return calls before we communicated that's what we were doing. Instead, we got no response other than an email from your office with potential Zoom meeting about 1 month later to do a "design recap". We didn't believe that deserved a response since it was clear you weren't going to take responsibility for the current situation and we had a construction crew sitting around waiting for direction.
I stand behind my review and our experience in working with your business. read more