Claylen Excavating

Review: My husband and I were thinking of purchasing a house and were told the sewer was bad so we asked Claylen for a bid to replace the sewer. We purchased the home based on his bid for sewer replacement and closed on Friday 11-8-13. I received a written bid from Claylen Excavating with an expiration date of 11-11-13. I called him on Monday 11-11-13 and left a message at 10:47 am saying that we would like to hire his company and to please call me back so we could schedule it and how to proceed from there. After waiting several days for a return call, and not wanting to bother him because I know they are busy, I called him again on Friday 11-15-13 and he was rude and said he didn't get a signed contract back on Monday and he's not doing the job. I reminded him that I left a message to hire him and after he spoke with my husband it became clear that he didn't want to do the job because there is a power pole near where they need to dig and he was afraid of the cost involved and didn't factor that into his bid. He asked me to call another company that has a camera to have them come back out to make sure exactly where the sewer goes and to let him know. That company did come back out again on Friday afternoon, and they called [redacted] at Claylen and so did I. We ended the afternoon Friday after several calls with each other that I would call [redacted] on Monday 11-18-13 to figure out what it entails to secure the pole because it is close to where the sewer runs, and I would call [redacted] back to let him know. It was understood that he was still going to do the job. I called [redacted] on Tuesday 11-19-13 and he said he's not doing the job and he hung up on me. I called him again thinking we were disconnected and he said that he hung up on me and isn't doing our job.I feel that he isn't honoring his contract and I want it honored. He had me call the camera company back to the job site at a cost of $200 per hour and also [redacted], and now he is backing out for the second time.Desired Settlement: I want him to honor his contract because I called him to schedule it and only because he quoted it wrong he is backing out. We purchased the home on Friday 11-8-13 based on his bid for sewer work.

Business

Response:

November 26, 2013

Revdex.com

152 S Jefferson

Street, Suite 200

Spokane, WA 99201-4352

Attn: [redacted]

RE: Claylen Excavating Case:

Dear Mr. [redacted],

Thank you for your letter

outlining the issue with Ms. [redacted] regarding a quoted sewer job. It seems that

Ms. [redacted] has left out some of the pertinent facts to the conversations that

had occurred. Ms. [redacted] called me in a panic on October 31, 2013 regarding a

property that she and her husband were going to purchase. She needed a bid in

writing to complete financing for the purchase. I supplied a Proposal to her

dated the same day. There was an acceptance date of November 11, 2013. I have

yet to receive the signed proposal or $1,000 required deposit to secure the job

from Ms. [redacted].

There have been other issues

arise since that time, however, those are not applicable due to the fact that

the proposal had expired without full execution. Ms. [redacted] has left out

conversations with other contractors as well as the utility company from her report

which is pertinent to the case. Given that the Proposal expired without proper

execution I don't feel that it is necessary to go into details.

I am busy taking care of

customers who properly execute contracts and treat me with respect. I don't

have time to take nasty phone calls from potential customers.

This is a simple case

of misunderstanding of responsibilities, in that; Ms. [redacted] should have

executed the proposal and provided the down payment on the job prior to the

expiration date. We are working on other projects that need to be completed

before the weather turns bad in Billings and simply don't have time to fit the

job in.

Respectfully

submitted,

Claylen Excavating, LLC

Consumer

Response:

Attn: [redacted]

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID [redacted], and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint. For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.

Mr. [redacted] has altered the facts. It is true that he did not receive a signed contract from me by the expiration date, but I called and left him a message on that date to schedule it and asked how to proceed.

I did not originally call him in a panic as he states. I called him and asked for a bid to replace the sewer. It had nothing to do with financing as he states, only so we could negotiate the price of the home with the owners before we purchased it. There was no panic involved, only a potential customer needing a bid.

Mr. [redacted] called to give me the bid and I asked him to please email it to me in writing. He said he didn't have email and seemed upset that I would want the bid in writing, but he agreed to send it in the mail which he did.

He states in his letter to you that I left out pertinent facts. I did not. When I finally reached him by telephone on 11-15 he immediately told me that he wasn't doing our job. He was rude and wouldn't give me an explanation. My husband then called him and after discussing the details, Mr. [redacted] admitted that he didn't want to do the job because he hadn't taken the utility pole into consideration when doing the bid, and he also wasn't exactly sure where the sewer line ran and he wanted it marked better. Between my husband and Mr. [redacted] they agreed to call both the utility company and the camera company to get the details figured out for the job. We had the camera company come back out on Friday afternoon and both I and Mr. [redacted] spoke with that company. Mr [redacted] and I spoke several times on Friday afternoon and it was understood that he was still going to do our job. We ended our conversations at 4:55 p.m. with him calling me with the name and contact number of the person at the utility company that I needed to call to ask about stabilizing the pole.

After I spoke with the utility company, I immediately called Mr. [redacted] and told him the good news that it wasn't an issue at all because the utility company stablizies poles quite frequently and they only needed a one day notice. It is also free of charge for customers. I assumed this would be wonderful news to him because he was worried about that pole, but as I had heard the previous week, he again said. "I am not doing your job," and then he was gone. I assumed we were disconnected and called him back and he said very rudely to me that we were not disconnected and that he had hung up on me, and then he hung up on me again.

I was never rude or nasty as he suggests. I was a potential customer that wanted to hire his company to do a job and I had no reason to be rude or nasty; it wouldn't even make any sense why I would be. This is simply a case of a company that bid a job and then realized they underbid the job and rather than telling us that they underbid it and were really sorry and would need to adjust the bid, they walked away and are trying to make it seem that we are the unreasonable party.

I contacted the Revdex.com only because I want other potential clients to realize what kind of company Claylen is and how disrepectful Mr. [redacted] was to me. What kind of man hangs up the phone on a potential client rather than coming clean and saying he underbid the job? We would have understood it, not liked it, but understood and worked with him on the price. Instead we have two parties that are disgruntled with the other and have bad feelings. The world already has enough stress and conflict. I probably shouldn't have contacted the Revdex.com, but I hope my complaint helps at least one other person.

Thank you very much for your time.

Regards,