It's JUST a GARAGE!

Ahhh...the garage.  Such a simple structure, with so much more to it.

We promised to share and we will stand by our promise to be honest and fair. 

Homes By Avi's website makes frequent statements about their customer service.  They clearly pride themselves on their extraordinary customer service, believing that it is a key component to being a successful company and builder. 

We offer our homeowners dedication and exemplary customer service throughout the design and building processes.  http://www.homesbyavi.com/Careers/default.aspx?city=Edmonton

Here is an example of the customer service that we received. 

Being that we purchased a corner lot, architectural controls stated that we had to purchase our garage through our builder.  We weren't thrilled about this, but we wanted the corner lot and considered it the price of having the lot we wanted.  We weren't told about any options that we could add to the garage, just that we had to have the garage included in our deal.  We signed our paperwork, life went on.

We eventually clued in that the garages could be made larger.  We inquired a few times into this, but received no immediate answer.  After several inquiries, we eventually were told that the change could be made and that we would have to pay the difference, plus a $500 fee for changes.  We sucked it up, and extended our garage.  Total value of the garage - ballpark $16,000. 

 We had moved in and watched other garages being built, all built for houses that weren't yet occupied, and a few that were occupied after we had taken possession.  After inquiring as to why ours wasn't being built, several Homes By Avi representatives informed us that policy states that if you take possession of your house from May-November, that all seasonal had to be completed, but if you miss that window, it gets done when it gets done, no time restraints required.  Despite the fact that we had taken possession at the end of May, there was no restraints on our seasonal work, and it would get done when it got done.

We called our lawyer and inquired if all of our money had been released to Homes By Avi.  There had been a certain amount retained until all of the seasonal work was completed.  Our lawyers informed us that all of the money had been released due to the fact that Homes By Avi had informed them that all of the seasonal work was complete.  We informed the lawyers that this was not the case, and were reassured that they would look into it.  We never heard from them again.  And yes, we had used the lawyers that Homes By Avi had recommended to us.

When our garage was finally started mid July 2010, we were excited!  Our garage was finally being built and would be done in no time!  I mean, its a garage...it couldn't take too long...

Only thing was, we had two apprentices building our garage.  (If you want to call them that.)  They both clearly had no idea what they were doing.  They took the whole first day to sort wood.  They were painfully slow, lacking in basic tools.  We were concerned.  Very concerned. 

Don't get us wrong.  We believe in the apprenticeship program, and have no issues with apprentices -- we have personally benefited from the apprenticeship program.

We gave them a chance. 

The garage went up painfully slow, and with a lot of errors.  We decided to contact our customer service representative and ask who we should be talking to in regards to the garage, the trades themselves, the site supervisor, or the customer service representative.  We informed them of our concerns, and was reassured that it would be looked at. 

The next day, there was a knock on the door.  It was the site supervisor.  He proceeded to, as some would call it, 'rip us a new a**hole'.  He didn't appreciate us and everyone else not letting him do his job.  We needed to trust him and allow him to do his job.  We needed to back off.  He wasn't going to let us and everyone else in the neighbourhood take him down.  He was the site supervisor, not us. 

He was at our door for an hour.  At the end, we were told that if we had an issue that we were to take it up with him and not with head office.  He left clearly very irate, despite our repeated attempts to simply explain what we had done, why we had done it, what our concerns were and what had exactly been said. 

You see, at the time, Homes By Avi protocol stated that we weren't ever to be in direct contact with the site supervisor, and that all of our questions, concerns, etc were to go to the customer service representative.  The only exception being for scheduled meetings. 

We directly emailed him that day stating that we would like to walk through the garage with him the following morning.  We wanted to give him some space and time to allow him to cool off so all parties involved could calmly discuss our concerns about the garage, in detail.

The meeting we wanted never happened.  Instead, we were met with a fight.  The site supervisor did not hold back.  He was swearing, yelling, ready and looking for a fist fight.  The site supervisor was angry.  In his eyes, we had no right to talk to anybody about the garage, look at the garage, or be near the garage until it was completed (yes, it was on our property).  He didn't even understand why we were so concerned about the garage, yelling "It's just a garage!"  

Yes, it is a just a garage, just a $16,000 garage!  He met our complaints about the structure by saying to us, "Unless you are a certified framer, you have no business telling me what is right or what is wrong about the structure of this garage."  Once again, did I mention one of us is a red seal carpenter?  And for those of you who aren't aware, there really isn't such a thing as a certified framer, and the site supervisor, his construction experience was plumbing.

When we expressed that perhaps it was just a garage to him, but it represented approx $16,000 to us.  We expected to have a garage that looked as though it was worth $16,000.  His response was, was that we weren't paying for a garage to look like $16,000...but we were paying for someone else to oversee the building of the garage, for others to build a garage and for it to be someone else's headache, not ours.

At the end of the meeting, he asked us to back off and let the crew finish the framing, they were apprentices and we needed to believe in the process.  When that was done, we could talk to him and he would fix any concerns that we had.  We reluctantly agreed.  After all, it would be Homes By Avi to fix it if anything was wrong (as long as it was in the first few years).

We did inform our sales staff of these 'encounters' with the site supervisor, who advised us to talk to our customer service representative.  We did inform our customer service representative of the 'encounters', who received it as though it was a very minor issue, stating that the site supervisor was 'stressed' by 'everything'.

The building of the garage slowed down, but we kept our end of the deal.  Framing wasn't done, so we wouldn't comment. 

We left a Friday afternoon to go away for the weekend.  We returned Sunday morning.  Our garage was completed, with the exception of the electrical, eavestrough and the main garage door. In less than 48 hours, the framing was finished, the garage was sided and the shingles were on.  None of our concerns were heard.  When we voiced them afterwards, we were met with denial, and what did we expect to be done?  The garage was built, it'd be fine. 

Sure, it'd be fine.  But where was the quality and service that justified the price?
 

Before final grade was completed.


 The garage was finished off in the months coming, September it was finally inspected.  (It passed, however, we have learned that passed does not by any means establish quality...it simply meant that it wouldn't fall down on us.  The inspector's words were 'I've seen them done worse by do-it-yourselfers.')  There was still a few things to be completed, most notably, there were holes on either side of the man door to the garage.  We had been reassured that they would be filled with concrete before the garage was done.  The electrical was completed and the eavestrough were eventually completed late fall.  The holes, on the other hand, received the classic Homes By Avi 'band-aid' -- final grade was completed, sod was laid.

After topsoil, before sod.

We never heard from Homes By Avi in regards to our garage, no one ever came to say, 'hey, its done'.  The garage still had all of the left over materials plus some garbage inside of it.  Eventually we called and inquired, winter was fast approaching and we wanted to use the garage.  We were told that 'of course' it was done, and could use it.  We asked about the holes on either side of the door.  We were reassured that it would be looked after and taken care of immediately.  We asked for the garbage to be cleaned out of the garage.  Actually, we asked repeatedly during the following months for the garbage to be cleaned out of it.  Never happened, at least not until we cleaned it out and disposed of it ourselves (at least two truck loads of 'construction stuff' was removed from the garage). 

Winter came, and we had issues with our man door.  At times it wouldn't close or it wouldn't open, and the snow freely entered into the garage through the holes on either side of the garage. 

Spring came, and the one side of our garage was filled with water.  The water ran right off our yard and in through the holes, forming a big pool of water by the main garage door.  We had issues with edges of the siding popping off, a light that hadn't been correctly installed, and the trim on the garage remained unpainted.

We informed Homes By Avi of the uncompleted garage list several times.  At the end of August, the door was fixed by Homes By Avi.  They had to remove the man door and build up the crib of the garage, raising the man door by approx 4".  The siding was also fixed.

September the lamp was correctly installed and early October the trim was finally painted.

In our eyes, our garage had finally been completed.

Almost 15 months, and quite a few headaches later.


As previously quoted in our blog, taken from http://homesbyavi.com/Default.aspx?city=edmonton,

A good name is a funny thing... the stronger it gets, the more we want to protect it.

We've earned a reputation for beautiful homes and extraordinary customer service. It is our belief that this reputation helps us take the first steps in establishing each new client relationship.