Goduco Design + Build Luis Goduco Scammed out of plans after paying the $5,000 fee Saint Charles IL

My husband and I decided to build a house last year and hired Goduco Design + Build as our architects. Their firm is located in Illinois and we live in Arkansas, so it was understood all correspondence would be via Zoom video, telephone or on the Co Construct app. During our initial Zoom meeting in Dec 2019, my husband and I spoke to Mr. Goduco and his associate about the design on the house.

Our builder, Lyle Crownover, was also in the meeting. We presented Mr. Goduco with a number of inspiration photographs and were very specific in what we wanted. He stated that it sounded like no problem and he was eager to begin. We then paid the $5,000 fee he charged. The Goducos returned their first draft on Jan 14. The house looked nothing like the house we asked for, and we actually thought they sent the wrong file to us.

We met with our builder on Jan 17 to ask what was going on, and he also agreed that he had no idea what was happening. In the meantime, another builder who was asked to look over our plans stated he could not believe how amateur the drawing was, and that there must be a mistake. Following the meeting with our builder, he spoke to Mr. Goduco himself. When the next rendition of the drawing was presented to us on Feb 5, it was much better. Far more similar to what we asked for, but there were still some elements that he designed that were not to our preference, nor to building efficiency. Which is normal, fine and fixable.

On March 24, we emailed about some window designs that were incorrect. We were still waiting on the Goducos to submit their final draft to us, and by then they had been ignoring some of the communication from our builder's office (all communication or lack of is documented in Co Construct app). On March 26, we had a conference call with Mr. Goduco and our builder to finalize all drafts. He told us they would be finalized and finished that weekend and didn’t mention anything else to us. We ended the call on a positive note.

On March 27 he emailed our builder and asked for another $8,000 to finish the plans. Our builder said that's absurd because it's a 3,300 sq ft house and no plan changes were made. So, he said he'd only finish them for an additional $5,000. My heart sank as I knew he was taking advantage of the COVID 19 situation and going to try to scam us out of more money. Our builder contacted us asking what we wanted to do, and after consulting with other professionals in that field, it was agreed that he was trying to hold our plans hostage to scam us.

On March 31, I emailed Mr. Goduco's Facebook page and asked that he do the right thing and return a portion of our money if he's not going to finish our plans, because it means we have to hire another architect to finish them. I said I was reasonable, and this could be resolved between us. I emailed again on April 4 for one more attempt at resolution. He hasn't reached out and clearly feels no need to rectify it. He needs to be held accountable for his actions.