I’m glad I had a chance to speak with [redacted] this morning about his complaint and discover from his perspective how things unfolded He was very honest and accommodating in recalling the facts for which I am gratefulFirst of all, I want to apologize to [redacted] for his disappointing experience with us Secondly, we are refunding his design fee as he requested without reservationSuch a complaint for us is exceedingly rare and normally the result of failed negotiations and frustration That was not the case here It turns out that a simple breakdown in communication led to his request for a conversation about his design fee never getting to the owner of the company, who traditionally handles such issues Had the owner, John Murphy, known he would have called [redacted] immediately as is and has always been our practice these past years Be that as it may we failed to make it easy for [redacted] to have that important conversation [redacted] and I also talked about the change in cost between the initial “ball park” guesstimate and the actual line item detail created along with the initial plan by our teamIt appears that the designer who did the initial design agreement did underestimate the garage “ball park” cost at the start I explained to [redacted] that with some smaller projects there isn’t any economy of scale to help keep the cost down as was the case with this project Our best guess at the start should have reflected a higher end to that cost rangePerhaps the hardest question remodelers face from homeowners is “how much will it cost?” with only a general scope of work to go by It’s sort of like asking someone how much the dinner party will cost before sending them, without a list, to the grocery store Even so, in most cases, our actual costs come in within the “ball park” range, but every now and then we get surprised too
I’m glad I had a chance to speak with [redacted] this morning about his complaint and discover from his perspective how things unfolded He was very honest and accommodating in recalling the facts for which I am gratefulFirst of all, I want to apologize to [redacted] for his disappointing experience with us Secondly, we are refunding his design fee as he requested without reservationSuch a complaint for us is exceedingly rare and normally the result of failed negotiations and frustration That was not the case here It turns out that a simple breakdown in communication led to his request for a conversation about his design fee never getting to the owner of the company, who traditionally handles such issues Had the owner, John Murphy, known he would have called [redacted] immediately as is and has always been our practice these past years Be that as it may we failed to make it easy for [redacted] to have that important conversation [redacted] and I also talked about the change in cost between the initial “ball park” guesstimate and the actual line item detail created along with the initial plan by our teamIt appears that the designer who did the initial design agreement did underestimate the garage “ball park” cost at the start I explained to [redacted] that with some smaller projects there isn’t any economy of scale to help keep the cost down as was the case with this project Our best guess at the start should have reflected a higher end to that cost rangePerhaps the hardest question remodelers face from homeowners is “how much will it cost?” with only a general scope of work to go by It’s sort of like asking someone how much the dinner party will cost before sending them, without a list, to the grocery store Even so, in most cases, our actual costs come in within the “ball park” range, but every now and then we get surprised too