Comfort Basement

July 28, 2014
Customer’s Statement of the Problem:
Owner promised results and service that are not consistent with job outcome. I was promised a dry crawlspace floor and the elimination of dank mildew odor in my house. Crawlspace concrete floor has moisture and house has a dank mildew odor....

Repeatedly requested phone contact with owner of company that made promises but denied access by office manager. My calls and messages to owners cell phone are not answered or returned. Told that I must communicate via e-mail with pictures by office manager. Office manager made aware that during the week I work until 3:00pm. I was told that I must take a day off work to have service crew come to house because they will only come between 8:00am -12:00pm. Also told that if I cared enough about my basement problem that I would take the day off work. Very rude and abrasive office manager. Threatened with being billed if pictures are not sent and communication via e-mail protocol not followed. Office manager told me that I need to have a family member, or someone with camera, come take pictures and send via e-mail after she was advised that I do not have the equipment needed to send pictures or to scan and fax documents. This was not part of the promise made when company owner contracted job. Another problem that occurred with this job was with the three exterior drains. I was told that they would not be seen because they are buried underground. However, I was left with three holes in the yard, one for each of the buried drains. Company owner argued that he does not want to fix the holes because of the added cost to company. He says holes are normal with dry wells. I was told during negotiations that I would not see the exterior buried drains in the yard. The holes are unsightly and also pose a potential legal risk for me as the homeowner. This owner made a lot of promises but has yet to stand behind anything since the job was completed.
Response Letter
Dear [redacted]
I want to thank you for inviting the Revdex.com to assist us in this matter by providing the mediation services of an unbiased third party. Unfortunately we were not able to come to reasonable terms during your conference call with our Office Manager. I will be more than happy to continue working through this amicably through this third party resolution service provided here.
I will answer all of your points and complaints one at time to ensure they are thoroughly addressed. Here is each points on-at-time according to your letter:
1. Owner promised results and service that are not consistent with job outcome. I was promised a dry crawlspace floor and the elimination of dank mildew odor in my house. Crawlspace concrete floor has moisture and house has a dank mildew odor.
As was discussed on the phone conference call on 7/22/14 with the office manager and as well as the previous phone conversation I had with both [redacted] on 2/27/14 I am known in the waterproofing business by my colleagues and my customers to be very thorough when I am presenting my recommendations for Water Management Systems. I never stray away from the normal everyday presentation and begin to make new claims and promises that contradict the warranties we offer or lead a customer to think that our water management system is the answer to all of the problems a homeowner will ever have to deal with in their home or crawlspace or basement in order to get the job. It is not in my character to try to tickle the ear of the homeowner in order to get the job as is the case unfortunately with a lot of sales reps in the home improvement industry in general. On the contrary, I am know for always telling the homeowner what they do not want to hear, that there are problems in the home that are just not going to go away. That it is not going to be easy or inexpensive to fix and that the repairs are not going to make the home more aesthetically better in the end; on the contrary, waterproofing is a lot like surgery. It hurts, it is not pretty, but in the end it offers health and peace of mind.
The promise that I did make to you [redacted] was that our system would, under normal circumstances, prevent your basement from subsoil water infiltration and/or flooding. No legitimate Basement Waterproofing Company that plans to stay in business would ever claim that their services are capable of eliminating mildew, odor or moisture in a basement or crawlspace because it simply cannot be done. In some cases you can control and manage the effects of moisture levels to a certain degree with methods such as the installation of: vapor barriers, sealers, and dehumidification systems, but none of those methods will ever eliminate the existence of moisture, mildew and order in a basement, especially in a crawlspace.
I would kindly ask that you refer to your Residential Service Warranty. I have enclosed a copy of your warranty in this communication, please take a minute to upload it and note the very top where is says the following:
“Comfort Basement Inc.’s Service Warranty on walls and floors provides free labor and free materials for the area contracted against water seeping in from the lower wall cove (where the wall meets the floor) and floor area as described and where a pressure relief system has been installed. This Service Warranty does not pertain to dampness caused by conditions that Contractor cannot control, such as humidity, condensation, leaky pipes, power outages, etc.”
Also please take a moment to upload the back of our original contract and note the entire 2nd paragraph. According to the 2nd paragraph Comfort Basement makes no warranties with regard to the work except as expressly set forth in the contract.
I truly hope this explanation answers your question and complaint pertaining to your dampness problem. If your dampness issue persists I would recommend installing a mechanical cross ventilation system and/or a dehumidification system, I would be more than happy to send you some information for those options.
2. Repeatedly requested phone contact with owner of company that made promises but denied access by office manager. My calls and messages to owners cell phone are not answered or returned.
Like any other company that comes highly recommended and is as busy as we are it is almost impossible for owners to answer all calls which is why we provide a more than capable staff to handle phone calls, schedule appointments for free Inspections, service calls and provide customer service; however, you say that I have not made myself available to you, I will have to disagree with that statement. Since the beginning I have taken most of your phone calls, I made at least three visits to your home, not counting the initial inspection, our last conversation was on 2/27/14, if you recall, it was on that conversation that you and your spouse were requesting that I perform additional work on the exterior of your home at no additional cost. When l tried to explain that our warranty does not cover the exterior of your home because it is an interior warranty that we offer [redacted] began to argue and make threats. With all due respect, if you have a legitimate service issue you wish for us to take a look at our office staff is more than willing and capable of scheduling an appointment for you. According to your complaint here however, your moisture problem is not a service issue that is covered under the warranty; therefore, scheduling a service call to assess a moisture problem will result in an additional charge; honestly, if I had taken your call I would not have told you anything different pertaining to your warranty.
3. Told that I must communicate via e-mail with pictures by office manager. Office manager made aware that during the week I work until 3:00pm. I was told that I must take a day off work to have service crew come to house because they will only come between 8:00am -12:00pm.
We offer two options for communicating a service call request. Customers may either request a service call in writing or by email. Since you have communicated with our office via email in the past we thought it would be more convenience for you to continue our correspondence in that same manner instead of written form.
Before we send out a service technician to a home we require that homeowners verify accepting the terms and conditions of the service call via email or regular mail before scheduling that appointment. For your convenience we have included in this communication a copy of our terms and conditions for you to upload. We find that it is good business that homeowner’s are fully aware and reminded of our terms and conditions before scheduling a service call in order to avoid unexpected additional fees. Our terms and conditions specify that service calls for continuing water seepage problems will be made with no additional charge to Owner so long as the problem comes from areas covered by the Work; however, if the problem does not come from areas covered by the Work additional charges will be applied. Most customers appreciate that we are clear about this because it avoids unexpected charges to homeowners for service calls not covered under their warranties, this is why we require that you confirm and agree to the terms written in the email before we send out our technician, it is solely for the purpose of providing clarity of the previously agreed upon terms. Please view paragraph 27 on the back of our contract.
Our normal working hours for our service crews are 8am-4pm. It is never a good idea to schedule a service calls late in the day because we need to give ourselves time to be able to complete the service, which is why we schedule our service call appointments between 8-12noon and 12:30-4pm. You insisted that we schedule the service call for after 3pm which would leave the technician less than one hour to assess the problem and complete the work. It is just not enough time to thoroughly check and fix a problem.
Service calls take anywhere between 2-4 hours, some may even take an entire day. We did offer you a weekend service call which you rejected as well as the option to allow us to come out while you were at work since your crawlspace is accessible from the outside bilco door. The appointment we offered you for Wednesday July 23rd between 8am -12 noon was actually the only slot left on the soonest date available that we would have been able to get out to you. We offered you this date because we wanted to show that we were giving your request the importance that it deserved and given the fact that you called to schedule on Monday July 21st 2014 we thought that you would be pleased that it was only 2 days after your initial call to the office.
4. Very rude and abrasive office manager
All of our managers from the Office, to Production, to Inspections to foremans are highly trained individuals who provide the highest level of customer service known in our industry. Please kindly explain how the office manager was rude and abrasive?
5. Threatened with being billed if pictures are not sent and communication via e-mail protocol not followed. Office manager told me that I need to have a family member, or someone with camera, come take pictures and send via e-mail after she was advised that I do not have the equipment needed to send pictures or to scan and fax documents. This was not part of the promise made when company owner contracted job.
Please excuse the misunderstanding. The Office Manager is instructed to inform homeowners that if the services rendered on a service call are not covered in the warranty there will be an additional charge for the service call. Please do not take our obligation to inform you of our policies as a threat. We have to inform homeowners of the terms and conditions of the service call before we schedule the appointment because it is the right thing to do. We also advise homeowners that it is a good idea to provide as much details of the problem before we come out so that we may verify beforehand if the problem will be covered under the warranty or not. Providing this information is not a requirement but it is in the best interest of the homeowner if we are able to assess warranty coverages before coming out in order to avoid unexpected charges. The reason we requested pictures was because you previously emailed pictures to us back on 2/2014 for the exterior problems you were having. If you cannot or will not send pictures we can still schedule a service call for you without it as long as you simply reply to our email by agreeing to our terms and conditions of the service call by accepting one of our service call appointment dates.
Again I would like to be clear, you will not be billed simply because you did not provide pictures of the problem and we will still schedule an appointment without pictures; however, we must be clear, in order to schedule an appointment you must reply to our email accepting our terms and conditions and agree to an offered date. Also, any services rendered during that service call that is not specifically covered under our Contract and our Residential Service Warranty will be billed as an additional charge.
6. Another problem that occurred with this job was with the three exterior drains. I was told that they would not be seen because they are buried underground. However, I was left with three holes in the yard, one for each of the buried drains. Company owner argued that he does not want to fix the holes because of the added cost to company. He says holes are normal with dry wells. I was told during negotiations that I would not see the exterior buried drains in the yard. The holes are unsightly and also pose a potential legal risk for me as the homeowner. This owner made a lot of promises but has yet to stand behind anything since the job was completed.
As was described during the initial inspection, the water that our pumps are extracting from your crawlspace foundation must go somewhere. Our promise was never to eliminate the water nor make it disappear, that cannot be done; however, our water management systems do just that, MANAGE WATER AWAY from the area you wish to keep from flooding. So unfortunately homeowners must choose between one of two options: 1) Either allow their crawlspace to leak, flood and cause havoc on their foundation and deal with mold infestations and rotting structural joist damage or…2) endure some water run off where their discharge lines terminate in their yard and every now and then have to add top soil to deal with the unsightly water affected yard area.
[redacted], I guarantee you that you have made the right choice to rather keep the water away from your crawlspace and its foundation in exchange for a few wet patches of dirt in your yard. If you recall, when you called Comfort Basement back in August of 2013 your crawlspace suffered from frequent severe flooding problems and was in disarray and since the time of your installation you crawlspace has not flooded and our system has successfully kept the water AWAY since then. In other words, our system is currently doing the job that it was intended to do and it is unfortunate that with that alone we have not been able to make you satisfied customers.
Please note that we intend to continue to honor our warranty with you as it is written in our Contract and Residential Service Warranty and if there were a way we can come to reasonable terms I would be more than willing to do so.
Respectfully,
Jesse P[redacted]
Owner

Review: Owner promised results and service that are not consistent with job outcome. I was promised a dry crawlspace floor and the elimination of dank mildew odor in my house. Crawlspace concrete floor has moisture and house has a dank mildew odor. Repeatedly requested phone contact with owner of company that made promises but denied access by office manager. My calls and messages to owners cell phone are not answered or returned. Told that I must communicate via e-mail with pictures by office manager. Office manager made aware that during the week I work until 3:00pm. I was told that I must take a day off work to have service crew come to house because they will only come between 8:00am -12:00pm. Also told that if I cared enough about my basement problem that I would take the day off work. Very rude and abrasive office manager. Threatened with being billed if pictures are not sent and communication via e-mail protocol not followed. Office manager told me that I need to have a family member, or someone with camera, come take pictures and send via e-mail after she was advised that I do not have the equipment needed to send pictures or to scan and fax documents. This was not part of the promise made when company owner contracted job. Another problem that occurred with this job was with the three exterior drains. I was told that they would not be seen because they are buried underground. However, I was left with three holes in the yard, one for each of the buried drains. Company owner argued that he does not want to fix the holes because of the added cost to company. He says holes are normal with dry wells. I was told during negotiations that I would not see the exterior buried drains in the yard. The holes are unsightly and also pose a potential legal risk for me as the homeowner. This owner made a lot of promises but has yet to stand behind anything since the job was completed.Desired Settlement: Deliver service and customer relations that was promised during negotiations, when contracted, and after job completion.

Business

Response:

July 28, 2014

Customer’s Statement of the Problem:

Owner promised results and service that are not consistent with job outcome. I was promised a dry crawlspace floor and the elimination of dank mildew odor in my house. Crawlspace concrete floor has moisture and house has a dank mildew odor. Repeatedly requested phone contact with owner of company that made promises but denied access by office manager. My calls and messages to owners cell phone are not answered or returned. Told that I must communicate via e-mail with pictures by office manager. Office manager made aware that during the week I work until 3:00pm. I was told that I must take a day off work to have service crew come to house because they will only come between 8:00am -12:00pm. Also told that if I cared enough about my basement problem that I would take the day off work. Very rude and abrasive office manager. Threatened with being billed if pictures are not sent and communication via e-mail protocol not followed. Office manager told me that I need to have a family member, or someone with camera, come take pictures and send via e-mail after she was advised that I do not have the equipment needed to send pictures or to scan and fax documents. This was not part of the promise made when company owner contracted job. Another problem that occurred with this job was with the three exterior drains. I was told that they would not be seen because they are buried underground. However, I was left with three holes in the yard, one for each of the buried drains. Company owner argued that he does not want to fix the holes because of the added cost to company. He says holes are normal with dry wells. I was told during negotiations that I would not see the exterior buried drains in the yard. The holes are unsightly and also pose a potential legal risk for me as the homeowner. This owner made a lot of promises but has yet to stand behind anything since the job was completed.

Response Letter

Dear [redacted]

I want to thank you for inviting the Revdex.com to assist us in this matter by providing the mediation services of an unbiased third party. Unfortunately we were not able to come to reasonable terms during your conference call with our Office Manager. I will be more than happy to continue working through this amicably through this third party resolution service provided here.

I will answer all of your points and complaints one at time to ensure they are thoroughly addressed. Here is each points on-at-time according to your letter:

1. Owner promised results and service that are not consistent with job outcome. I was promised a dry crawlspace floor and the elimination of dank mildew odor in my house. Crawlspace concrete floor has moisture and house has a dank mildew odor.

As was discussed on the phone conference call on 7/22/14 with the office manager and as well as the previous phone conversation I had with both [redacted] on 2/27/14 I am known in the waterproofing business by my colleagues and my customers to be very thorough when I am presenting my recommendations for Water Management Systems. I never stray away from the normal everyday presentation and begin to make new claims and promises that contradict the warranties we offer or lead a customer to think that our water management system is the answer to all of the problems a homeowner will ever have to deal with in their home or crawlspace or basement in order to get the job. It is not in my character to try to tickle the ear of the homeowner in order to get the job as is the case unfortunately with a lot of sales reps in the home improvement industry in general. On the contrary, I am know for always telling the homeowner what they do not want to hear, that there are problems in the home that are just not going to go away. That it is not going to be easy or inexpensive to fix and that the repairs are not going to make the home more aesthetically better in the end; on the contrary, waterproofing is a lot like surgery. It hurts, it is not pretty, but in the end it offers health and peace of mind.

The promise that I did make to you [redacted] was that our system would, under normal circumstances, prevent your basement from subsoil water infiltration and/or flooding. No legitimate Basement Waterproofing Company that plans to stay in business would ever claim that their services are capable of eliminating mildew, odor or moisture in a basement or crawlspace because it simply cannot be done. In some cases you can control and manage the effects of moisture levels to a certain degree with methods such as the installation of: vapor barriers, sealers, and dehumidification systems, but none of those methods will ever eliminate the existence of moisture, mildew and order in a basement, especially in a crawlspace.

I would kindly ask that you refer to your Residential Service Warranty. I have enclosed a copy of your warranty in this communication, please take a minute to upload it and note the very top where is says the following:

“Comfort Basement Inc.’s Service Warranty on walls and floors provides free labor and free materials for the area contracted against water seeping in from the lower wall cove (where the wall meets the floor) and floor area as described and where a pressure relief system has been installed. This Service Warranty does not pertain to dampness caused by conditions that Contractor cannot control, such as humidity, condensation, leaky pipes, power outages, etc.”

Also please take a moment to upload the back of our original contract and note the entire 2nd paragraph. According to the 2nd paragraph Comfort Basement makes no warranties with regard to the work except as expressly set forth in the contract.

I truly hope this explanation answers your question and complaint pertaining to your dampness problem. If your dampness issue persists I would recommend installing a mechanical cross ventilation system and/or a dehumidification system, I would be more than happy to send you some information for those options.

2. Repeatedly requested phone contact with owner of company that made promises but denied access by office manager. My calls and messages to owners cell phone are not answered or returned.

Like any other company that comes highly recommended and is as busy as we are it is almost impossible for owners to answer all calls which is why we provide a more than capable staff to handle phone calls, schedule appointments for free Inspections, service calls and provide customer service; however, you say that I have not made myself available to you, I will have to disagree with that statement. Since the beginning I have taken most of your phone calls, I made at least three visits to your home, not counting the initial inspection, our last conversation was on 2/27/14, if you recall, it was on that conversation that you and your spouse were requesting that I perform additional work on the exterior of your home at no additional cost. When l tried to explain that our warranty does not cover the exterior of your home because it is an interior warranty that we offer [redacted] began to argue and make threats. With all due respect, if you have a legitimate service issue you wish for us to take a look at our office staff is more than willing and capable of scheduling an appointment for you. According to your complaint here however, your moisture problem is not a service issue that is covered under the warranty; therefore, scheduling a service call to assess a moisture problem will result in an additional charge; honestly, if I had taken your call I would not have told you anything different pertaining to your warranty.

3. Told that I must communicate via e-mail with pictures by office manager. Office manager made aware that during the week I work until 3:00pm. I was told that I must take a day off work to have service crew come to house because they will only come between 8:00am -12:00pm.

We offer two options for communicating a service call request. Customers may either request a service call in writing or by email. Since you have communicated with our office via email in the past we thought it would be more convenience for you to continue our correspondence in that same manner instead of written form.

Before we send out a service technician to a home we require that homeowners verify accepting the terms and conditions of the service call via email or regular mail before scheduling that appointment. For your convenience we have included in this communication a copy of our terms and conditions for you to upload. We find that it is good business that homeowner’s are fully aware and reminded of our terms and conditions before scheduling a service call in order to avoid unexpected additional fees. Our terms and conditions specify that service calls for continuing water seepage problems will be made with no additional charge to Owner so long as the problem comes from areas covered by the Work; however, if the problem does not come from areas covered by the Work additional charges will be applied. Most customers appreciate that we are clear about this because it avoids unexpected charges to homeowners for service calls not covered under their warranties, this is why we require that you confirm and agree to the terms written in the email before we send out our technician, it is solely for the purpose of providing clarity of the previously agreed upon terms. Please view paragraph 27 on the back of our contract.

Our normal working hours for our service crews are 8am-4pm. It is never a good idea to schedule a service calls late in the day because we need to give ourselves time to be able to complete the service, which is why we schedule our service call appointments between 8-12noon and 12:30-4pm. You insisted that we schedule the service call for after 3pm which would leave the technician less than one hour to assess the problem and complete the work. It is just not enough time to thoroughly check and fix a problem.

Service calls take anywhere between 2-4 hours, some may even take an entire day. We did offer you a weekend service call which you rejected as well as the option to allow us to come out while you were at work since your crawlspace is accessible from the outside bilco door. The appointment we offered you for Wednesday July 23rd between 8am -12 noon was actually the only slot left on the soonest date available that we would have been able to get out to you. We offered you this date because we wanted to show that we were giving your request the importance that it deserved and given the fact that you called to schedule on Monday July 21st 2014 we thought that you would be pleased that it was only 2 days after your initial call to the office.

4. Very rude and abrasive office manager

All of our managers from the Office, to Production, to Inspections to foremans are highly trained individuals who provide the highest level of customer service known in our industry. Please kindly explain how the office manager was rude and abrasive?

5. Threatened with being billed if pictures are not sent and communication via e-mail protocol not followed. Office manager told me that I need to have a family member, or someone with camera, come take pictures and send via e-mail after she was advised that I do not have the equipment needed to send pictures or to scan and fax documents. This was not part of the promise made when company owner contracted job.

Please excuse the misunderstanding. The Office Manager is instructed to inform homeowners that if the services rendered on a service call are not covered in the warranty there will be an additional charge for the service call. Please do not take our obligation to inform you of our policies as a threat. We have to inform homeowners of the terms and conditions of the service call before we schedule the appointment because it is the right thing to do. We also advise homeowners that it is a good idea to provide as much details of the problem before we come out so that we may verify beforehand if the problem will be covered under the warranty or not. Providing this information is not a requirement but it is in the best interest of the homeowner if we are able to assess warranty coverages before coming out in order to avoid unexpected charges. The reason we requested pictures was because you previously emailed pictures to us back on 2/2014 for the exterior problems you were having. If you cannot or will not send pictures we can still schedule a service call for you without it as long as you simply reply to our email by agreeing to our terms and conditions of the service call by accepting one of our service call appointment dates.

Again I would like to be clear, you will not be billed simply because you did not provide pictures of the problem and we will still schedule an appointment without pictures; however, we must be clear, in order to schedule an appointment you must reply to our email accepting our terms and conditions and agree to an offered date. Also, any services rendered during that service call that is not specifically covered under our Contract and our Residential Service Warranty will be billed as an additional charge.

6. Another problem that occurred with this job was with the three exterior drains. I was told that they would not be seen because they are buried underground. However, I was left with three holes in the yard, one for each of the buried drains. Company owner argued that he does not want to fix the holes because of the added cost to company. He says holes are normal with dry wells. I was told during negotiations that I would not see the exterior buried drains in the yard. The holes are unsightly and also pose a potential legal risk for me as the homeowner. This owner made a lot of promises but has yet to stand behind anything since the job was completed.

As was described during the initial inspection, the water that our pumps are extracting from your crawlspace foundation must go somewhere. Our promise was never to eliminate the water nor make it disappear, that cannot be done; however, our water management systems do just that, MANAGE WATER AWAY from the area you wish to keep from flooding. So unfortunately homeowners must choose between one of two options: 1) Either allow their crawlspace to leak, flood and cause havoc on their foundation and deal with mold infestations and rotting structural joist damage or…2) endure some water run off where their discharge lines terminate in their yard and every now and then have to add top soil to deal with the unsightly water affected yard area.

[redacted], I guarantee you that you have made the right choice to rather keep the water away from your crawlspace and its foundation in exchange for a few wet patches of dirt in your yard. If you recall, when you called Comfort Basement back in August of 2013 your crawlspace suffered from frequent severe flooding problems and was in disarray and since the time of your installation you crawlspace has not flooded and our system has successfully kept the water AWAY since then. In other words, our system is currently doing the job that it was intended to do and it is unfortunate that with that alone we have not been able to make you satisfied customers.

Please note that we intend to continue to honor our warranty with you as it is written in our Contract and Residential Service Warranty and if there were a way we can come to reasonable terms I would be more than willing to do so.

Respectfully,

Jesse P[redacted]

Owner