Jim Walters Homes Misrepresentation of facts failure to respond to inquiries or complaints manipulation of facts and situations coersion and attempted coersion of customer Brandon Florida

We drew up a contract with Jim Walters in June 2001, to have a house built on our property, to replace the mobile home that was literally falling down around us and was flooding us out during the rainy season.(2001 and 2002 were especially wet years)

We were told that they would begin building within three to six months. Instead, our contract went through six revisions, only one of them through our own choice to upgrade how much we would complete on our own.6/01,7/01(contractor's error),9/01(our change in plan),11/01,12/01(company fired our manager and replaced him. Rewrote contract.),3/02.

We really don't know why they went through so many revisions. We do know that the first revision was because it was legally invalid and had to be rewritten. The next was due to our own choice. The next to last was because they had left out something that we had had in the original contract and claimed that we had not requested it and also adjusted our percentage down a 1/4 %.

The company fired our manager because he was complaining too much about the fact that they weren't doing the work that they had promised.They claimed that he wasn't doing his job and they had the nerve to offer my husband his job! They obviously thought we were really stupid.

The company had the surveys and inspection of our septic system done 9/01, then did nothing. We started complaining again, after Christmas. We were being flooded out of our house. We were dumping five gallon buckets of water,every 5-10 seconds,6-8 hours/day, and we had a minor child to be concerned about. I even held the phone up to the water so they could hear it. They told us that we could still back out of the contract if we chose to, since they Still hadn't pulled any permits, yet. Although we would have to pay for what they had already put out.

We really had nowhere else to go at that point, And they knew it.

The company started to work on the building in 3/02.

During the framing, it rained before the roof was put up. The whole top two layers of the plywood flooring rippled up in huge peaks. We were told that when that happened, that the floor usually would flatten back out when it dried, and not to worry about it. Weeeell---the floor dried alright, in even steeper peaks. Instead of replacing the floor, or covering it with a subfloor, they came in and ripped up all of the damaged flooring and filled it with a yellow gunk that dried hard and is now separating from the floor and causing our tiles to pop up. The guy who had to do the job was an exinspector for our county. He said that what they were doing was wrong. We complained. But all we got was a Lot of very fast talking, slick smiles and hints of intimidation.

We had gotten into June and the construction was nearly completed. The construction manager wanted to close things up and turn the house over to us. But I refused to allow him to because I knew if he did, the repairs that still needed to be done would not be done. He finally accused me of trying to renege on our deal to pay them, and I countered with the fact that once they released the house they wouldn't finish the repairs. He said that the warranty would cover that.

They released the house to us.

We didn't have time to put a subfloor down. We just slapped floor tile down, painted the walls and finished the outside plumbing.(We had to completely tear out and redo the plumbing because the company told us it would be 3" pipe when the code required 4". The company got away with 3" under the house, and to this day, we have a problem with drainage on our toilets.)So we could pass code and move in before the mobile home collapsed.

We were dumping water buckets all day and working on the house through the night, when it wasn't raining. The mobile home had gotten so bad that the floors had fallen away from the walls, and we had to put concrete blocks in the holes, to block out the elements. We couldn't walk near some of the walls because the floor was so soft.

Right after we moved in. My husband lost his job. At one point, we got up to five months behind in the mortgage. I made the mistake of answering the phone one day with the company's enforcer on the other end of the phone. He demanded to know when we would pay up. I told him that we were having difficulty paying because of my husband's job situation.Then he demanded to know what I was doing about it and why I wasn't working. I told him that he didn't have the right to know any of those things. He insisted that he did have the right, since we had signed a contract with them, that meant that they owned us. I slammed the phone down in his ear, and monitored All phone calls after that.

As of this date-
We have gotten-the under cabinets in the kitchen replaced, due to a leak caused by poor plumbing, causing a leak and water damage
A broken window replaced.
Reimbursement of double cost for the plumbing, due to their faulty information.

We have Not gotten-The floor still has hills and valleys, and is causing damage to the Replacement floor tiles.

My husband had to drain the master bath toilet and repair a leak to the tank, with superglue, caused by the construction.The company said that the warranty didn't cover it.

A chip out of the top of the master bathroom vanity.
Water damage to the masterbath sink and faucet due to a slow leak, undetected until after the warranty period.
An inequality in the heating and cooling of the house. When one side is freezing, the other side is just right. When the other side is just right, the other side is too hot.The company just said it was in our head, and that our house was too small to have that problem. Excuse me, but the goose bumps are definitely Not in my head.

Not long after we moved into our house, the company shut down that particular branch office. We had also heard that the manager of that office had been transferred from Kentucky after similar complaints had been filed against her there.

Paulaandra
Dover, Florida
U.S.A.

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