Crimson Cove Homes Inc.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 10, 2014/05/13) */
As CEO of Crimson Cove Homes, it's very disheartening to me, and all of us here that, Mr. [redacted] is upset. Crimson Cove prides itself on being a different builder. We are different in that we make every attempt to place the customers'...

desires first, and to not only meet, but exceed our customers' expectations. To date, we have been remarkably successful in doing so.

We are a semi-custom builder. As such, we allow customers considerable leeway in making changes to their house. We strongly believe that a house purchase is one of the biggest decisions in a person's life and we want to allow them the opportunity to fulfill their wishes. However, being a semi-custom builder has its drawbacks. There are an enormous number of decisions and details that go into a house and this is exponentially compounded when changes are allowed. Despite our best efforts, this can at times lead to confusion or misunderstanding on perhaps how something may look or be designed. When this occurs, we make a concerted effort to resolve it to ensure the customer is happy with the end result.

In the specific case of Mr. [redacted], we entered into purchase agreement with him to build him a house in [redacted] in [redacted] on May 2, 2013. Ultimately, Mr. [redacted] made over 111 changes to his house on 13 change orders, the majority of these after the purchase agreement was initially signed. This is a massive number of changes to the house. Every change order required updated drawings and many required considerable review and input. Over the course of the design and the construction of his home we have made a very diligent effort to address his wishes, document his changes appropriately and make changes where necessary.

We have a schedule to our Purchase Agreement that deals with General Disclosure items. In it the Purchaser agrees that once the plans have been reviewed and signed by both parties that no other changes, structural or otherwise will be allowed unless agreed to by Crimson Cove. There is a very good reason behind this, at some point the plans must be finalized so that we can construct the customer's house. If the plans keep changing while construction is ongoing it can cause considerable headaches to all parties involved and become so confusing that the parties don't even know what they've agreed to. With that being said, while the house was under construction, Mr. [redacted] requested that numerous changes be made that we accommodated.

Mr. [redacted] is correct, he asked for mechanical layouts for his house, which we did not provide. Additionally, his basement ceiling in his family room did not turn out the way he envisioned and some fixtures required moving. However, Mr. [redacted] has failed to convey the following:
* That he made an enormous amount of changes to his house that required considerable documentation and detail and that we accommodated where necessary.
* That he made requested changes to his house after construction that again we accommodated at a loss to Crimson.
* That he did not convey to us when he asked for the mechanical layouts that he was particularly interested where the ductwork would be run in his basement ceiling. If we knew this, we would have taken steps to explicitly detail the mechanical layout and the house could have been redesigned at that time to address his wishes.
* That Crimson does not guarantee that a customer's basement ceiling will be 9' high. Rather, we specifically state that the foundation will be 9' high and further that the basement ceiling will be lowered in areas for mechanical runs. Mr. [redacted] even signed a specific schedule to his purchase agreement dealing solely with basement development and section 5 of it in particular states:
The Purchaser understands that 'mechanical drop downs', 'framing box-ins' and /or 'dropped beams' may be applicable to their style of home and therefore reduces the ceiling height in those particular locations.

We purposefully created a separate schedule to deal with basement development so that these points would not be glossed over or buried in the paperwork. Despite our best intentions, Mr. [redacted] had forgotten that he had signed this schedule.

Further, when the mechanical runs were installed and Mr. [redacted] visited the house and conveyed that he was unhappy with the location we stopped construction to address his concerns. We met with Mr. [redacted] on site several times regarding the issue. We also had numerous phone conversations with him, our sales team, Construction Manager and our trades. We took Mr. [redacted]'s concern very seriously. However, changing the mechanical run at this stage of construction is not as simple as Mr. [redacted] alleges. One of Mr. [redacted]'s suggestions was to cut a 4' gap in one of the major support beams in the house so that his mechanical could then run into his basement hallway. Cutting a major support beam in his house was simply not an option without massive expense and reengineering the whole house. The only other option was to run the furnace ductwork under the beam in question and then out through his hallway. However, this also had major drawbacks: firstly, it would have lowered the ceiling height in his hallway to below 7'; secondly it would have dramatically reduced the efficiency of the furnace due to the all the twists and bends in the ductwork. Our heating contractors were not at all comfortable with this or any other options to re-route the ductwork.

We provided Mr. [redacted] several options, one of which was to frame the remainder of his ceiling down in his family room to match the lowered ductwork area. This would have taken the ceiling down to a still very respectable height of approximately 8'. We even offered to cover 1/2 of the cost as a gesture of good faith due to the fact that this is something that none of us could have foreseen given Mr. [redacted]'s failure to alert us of his specific requirements for his basement ceiling.

Crimson is building Mr. [redacted] a beautiful house that we have allowed him to customize in a very significant fashion. Additionally, we have made every attempt throughout the process to address any concerns or changes that the customer has had. Among many of the enormous number of changes we accommodated included:
o Making a special draw on his mortgage out of the normal course to ensure he held his rate. This caused us time and expense and a lot of work, but we did it to assist the customer.
o In addition, we allowed the customer to move the location of his wet bar in his basement after construction had begun and also added extra plumbing for a second washer and dryer in his basement. However, venting the plumbing stack for this became considerably more complex and expensive than originally designed and we did not charge Mr. [redacted] for this.

In conclusion, building a house with these amount of changes increases the complexity enormously. At every stage of the process we have listened to our customer's input and made a change where we could. It's unfortunate that Mr. [redacted] is so focused on this one item that he has failed to acknowledge all of the above.

Sincerely,

[redacted]
CEO
CRIMSON COVE HOMES INC.