Sea Pointe Construction and Development Inc

I do not recommend Sea Pointe Construction out of Irvine, California or their design consultant (not named due to Revdex.com guidelines). Sea Pointe and our designer have spent over 6 months attempting to prepare plans within the budget they estimated. Sea Pointe's designer underestimated our project costs and reports they are unable to start our project. They cannot stand up to their end of a written signed agreement. However, Sea Pointe still has our money, even after a written request for a refund. We first met with the designer on January 4, 2014 at our home as our goal was to place an addition on our home. This included expanding our main living area, knocking out a closet, putting in a new closet, and moving our washer and dryer. Based on a design agreement with a written low and high estimate, we paid 10% to get our project started. Now we are in July of 2014 (6 months later) and Sea Pointe is unable to complete our project within their budget. They have not even started our project. The designer told us their initial plans were possibly “over-engineered” and that the bids came in too high. They had decided they needed to spend $25,000 on a big beam and crane-now not needed as this was over-engineered. We were then told they needed to “instead” tear up our existing home foundation to place more footings, as they were unsure how much a shear a wall contained. The next plan was to add an arch and post instead for support-still over budget. Finally, they asked for and stated they acquired the home plans from our builder to determine the shear wall (we actually never saw the home plans). Still, the designer reported they were over the estimate by about $30,000 for a much smaller addition than contracted. We at this point lost confidence as the building “plan” changed several times and was over their estimated budget. The designer's emails contain wording such as "my sincere apologies" and she has twice stated on the phone this is her mistake in the estimate. We have made several suggestions, such as applying our deposit to part of the proposed job or revising the initial project. For months now, I received emails stating "let me get back with you next week" and she reports the project manager (who came out and was assigned to our project) is no longer working with Sea Pointe. Delays continued to exist-the owner was vacationing and not reachable; even our demand letter for a refund took 5 days to be accepted by the designer by certified mail. Unfortunately, Sea Pointe is refusing to give us a full refund. We have not had a response to our demand letter for a refund. In fact, we have not been refunded any money to this date and are at this time seeking legal counsel for a resolution. My recommendation is you do not do business with this company, as they have taken our money and not started our project. Look for similar comments from another customer on Yelp and Insider pages/Irvine. #unhappywithSeaPointe