Ryan Home Roof Leaks and many other builder defects! *UPDATE ..they will settle, but! *EDitors Comments

J.D. Powers was created primarily to rate cars, and this is what gave their ratings meaning and value early on. IMO, they have no business rating home builders, and I have little respect for their ratings these days in anything as a consequence.

The survey works better with disposable items, but knowing for a fact their ranking can be worthless, I take them all the same now. Builders pay a heavy fee to get rated with them, just like they pay the BBB for a good reference.

These consumer protection groups earn their income from businesses they rate. IMO, they serve business interests first, while consumers can be the incidental byproduct, and that's proven optional to many.

Consumer reports is one of the few I know of that doesn't take money from businesses in exchange for giving them reviews. They once blasted builders, writing a negative story about their extremely high rate of shoddy construction. Builders had a fit, accusing them of bias and whatever...I guess because they couldn't pay them off to control the ratings.

You get the survey almost right after closing, if at all, before you've had a chance to discover most defects. It is entirely correct that people with serious unresolved defects in their homes are counted among the "satisfied customers."

If you discover defects right away that are of a minor nature, builders may come right away and repair, maybe correctly, maybe just a band aid repair, but as long as the owner thinks they've gotten fast and effective warranty service, they may still fill out a survey positively.

There are numerous ways builders can get survey companies to only include homeowners who are not, or not yet, complaining. it has to do with property records, lists of homes that are complete, etc. Varying levels of outright fraud mixed with just plain old statistics-tweaking.

By the time most home buyers realize that their roof and windows really leak because the builder omitted flashing or did it wrong, or that there is a serious plumbing leak under their foundation, etc...the survey is long over. Some defects don't even show up within the warranty period, but a house should not be falling apart before you've even paid off the mortgage.

Shoddy construction, code violations, and breach of warranty are very, very common, and almost never show up in surveys like JD Power, etc. Sometimes it is the second owner who gets stuck with the defectively built house, and they are certainly never included in surveys.

Statistics can be tweaked to appear to say anything. Builders may pick and choose which customers get surveyed. Housingzone.com had an article at one time about this very thing, and homeowners trying to get defects repaired under warranty almost never are chosen to do a survey. Builders may list that house as "incomplete," or may pick the survey respondants themselves. One way or another they make sure that most of the people with problem homes don't ever have a chance to do the surveys. Just as the BBB gets it's funds from business membership fees, you have to wonder who's funding the surveys. You know it's not consumers. Also, even if there were only a tiny percentage of unhappy customers, they still deserve to see their house built right and the warranty honored...it does not matter if they are one of thousands or the only one complaining. Other people's happiness does not void the warranty of the ones with problem homes.

IMO, Ryan Homes has not been "trashed" here. What is on here is about legitimate grievances that are no less valid than the JD Power statistics for homes built in your specifically mentioned area, surveyed over the last 4-14 months.

A very low percentage of buyers are likely to become exasperated during the first year of ownership, and give a builder a low ranking in service and quality in such a survey. It does happen still.

Ryan Homes has us listed as one of their thousands of satisfied customers in their stats even now, but we are clearly not a satisfied customer. JD Power would also have us listed as a satisfied customer in their survey if we had been included, as we were very happy with our home within the sampling time frame of their survey periods (about 1 year or less on average).

Ryan did fix all the builder mistakes found before moving into the home. It took several years to find the hidden defects that ultimately cost more in collective damages than the total value of our home.

If Ryan Homes had a 99% satisfaction rating, and you were in that 1% group that had a nightmare for a home, Ryan Homes high customer satisfaction from any consumer ratings group would have little meaning to you.

Even if you could afford collective losses of around $200,000, you might be prone to want to complain after expiring all other possible resolutions. What happened to us should never be discounted as acceptable losses in builder stats.

Stats would not matter, and hopefully you won't ever have to find that out first hand. Owning a Ryan Home with 99% customer satisfaction (if they ever could legitimately reach that) may mean it's a good gamble with those odds that you won't get burned, but only major NVR stock holder types can afford to makes such high stake wagers.

How can you possible reconcile large builders making 100s of millions of dollars each year in sales, and making ANY serious builder mistakes they refuse to rectify for concern of possibly expending an extra .1% of their quarterly profits.

Or better yet, why can't they spend an extra .1% of their revenue up front, really inspecting their own work to be sure they build their houses right in the first place, rather than teaching consumers to accept they will have (X) amount of sloppy workmanship to be fixed in a new house by default?

I am puzzled as to how the company gets and maintains its very high ratings with this trusted consumer group?

I am looking to buy a Townhome in N Carolina and being a careful shopper checked with JD Powers for a relaible builder. They seem to believe, based on a multitude of responses to their questions concerning quality that this company ranks as the best in the area.

To be sure there will always be problems witha new house, I know since I have built 3 for myself using local builders as the GC. It is the manner in which the problems are resolved which is the most important. Another way to fairly gage the builders quality control is to compare the # of complaints as a percentage of the number of houses built. You seem not to have done anything like this.

So how do you reconcile the trashing of this builder with their high J D Powers rating?

I also agree that old complaints, even if resolved, should remain available to the public. It lets consumers see how many complaints a company had and how they handled them.

State agencies and BBB's don't always share complaints with the public at all, so sites like this and www.hadd.com are valuable consumer services.

The public has a right and a need to know this information. How else can people "do their homework" before choosing a builder? Shutting up customers is inexcusable...a company should do things right and handle complaints like the professionals they claim to be, not threaten and intimidate and withhold settlement in exchange for silence. If they did things ethically and correctly in the first place, there would be no HADD and no ripoff report complaints on the internet.

A note on asking other buyers...this remains a good research tactic for potential buyers but increasingly, people are clamming up. They fear retaliation because more buidlers are suing their customers for complaining now. It's a frivolous type of suit to scare people and shut them up, but it works on most consumers, unfortunately.

When asking people, they may also fear harming their property value, and they may be planning to sell their defective home without disclosure of the defects. Do ask...but do more than that. There are court records, message boards, state records if public in your state, etc. If you DO see that a BBB has listed a builder as having problems, run screaming...there must be a huge problem if even the BBB admits it. But a report of "no complaints" from a BBB does not mean there are no complaints, necessarily.

I've posted my own rip-off report already about Ryan. I noticed the victim here was pressured into a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for settlement. I understand the victim's perspective and sincerely empathize, but not with the ethics of the company who made the request as part of doing the right thing. Who really knows how many Ryan Homes victims there have been if this is their policy? I've ran across some over time, but they didn't fight and make trouble, they bailed, and sold their home, or in one case let NVR foreclose.

The highly advertised "Name You Can trust" seeks to hide their admitted mistakes from the public? I expect they have learned from past mistakes, and do better in building and service in their expansion offices, but some of us may be living in their forgotten past. I was also offered a non-disclosure agreement, so far only in the form of threats. I was advised to remove my website immediately, showing defects and damages. I was given a threatening letter with a number to call for "inspection" of the abandoned home for "support," and I called and was threatened several more times, which in my opinion became personal. I don't think I could describe (on the website) what I felt like, finding a letter shoved under the door of my uninhabitable home, threatening to sue me for disclosing the homes defects, and for having critical opinions posted, when considering what we have been through over our home's problems. We are in debt to our ears now, and I was going into my former home in a respirator, trying to fix the home mostly on my own to make it remotely affordable.

We were in debt because of a first renovation that was immediate destroyed by another defect that was also hidden. I had to stop restoration to prepare to defend myself due to threats of legal action for my publicly posted complaints. I'm not talking to Ryan rep again without a recorder. The guy was mainly going on about what NVR corporate could do to me.

I doubt NVR is pure evil, and intends to do business like he described. I HOPE he misrepresented the corporate office. Companies are only as good as their people, not just their policies or ads, though I think it's an unethical company policy to ask victims to hide the company's mistakes as part of a settlement. I don't think they mean to deliberately injure or destroy peoples life for profit as a rule, but properly handling dissatisfied customers also shows the real quality of a company, as this is an inevitable part of doing business. I only hope the Ryan VP I've dealt with over the years learns to cook chicken nuggets for a living soon.

I hope the fear he wanted to instill in me about NVR, was actually his own fear of NVR corporate for his poor service and self defeating threats and comments, that has blown a resolvable problem into novel of damage and failures. It is nice there is a place where non-disclosure didn't work.

I really hope the victims here got their lives restored, and I respect the few people that have the nerve to fight back, and keep corporations from turning our country into a regime, in respect to non-disclosure, where laws are used to strip freedom of speech for a price, as it seems was attempted here.

We also had major problems with Ryan Homes (see our report dated 11/27/02). In the begining we worked with Ryan but the problems got worse. We have had ongoing major problems since closing in September of 2001. For every step forward there was two steps backward. As mentioned in our report we had major reconstruction, mold remediation, major water damage on multiple occassions as a result of poor workmanship and code violations.

It was a circus and we wanted them out of our house. They disregarded all the schedules they agreed to meet. One of thier subcontractors would urinate openly in the field behind our house. Items were disappearing from our home but we could not prove who took it.

Unfortunately you must give them a chance to correct their code violations and other mistakes before trying to sue. You may accept a excellent settlement where they pay out but in my opinion it is not worth it.

It is our responsibility as consumers to report bad business practices. That's what you did when you first reported your problem. Because they finally took care of you is no reason to forget the past. Consumers must be warned and educated for what they are in for.

By the way Happy Thanksgiving. This will be our second Thanksgiving without drinkable well water - another Ryan nightmare.

My appologies to everyone for not updating but rather doing as was requested by settlement. For anyone out there who has gone through problems with builders you would have to agree that you would abide by a settlement to have things finally finished. I will do as the editor has requested though, in hopes that our builder will understand.



Over a year has passed and we have been working with Ryan homes during that whole time period. Our regional office changed its management team last summer and many noticable changes occured. They went to all homes in our developement and made the necissary changes and corrections or offered a settlement.



Since this last summer we have had them back to make the fixes we both mutually felt were necessary and have took the settlement on the other issues. Yes this has been a long road and not the one we expected to take when we began building. We have learned alot. Mainly that there are not many people out there that want to help without a price such as lawyers, inspectors, etc. (At many points through this we felt like they were the ripoff artists!!)



By working with the builder we were able to resolve this with out a large expense on our part. To anyone building now with Ryan, they have made many changes in there building requirements and many noticable changes. They are still building in our area and do not have the problems with the homes as they did when we built over 2 yrs ago. (Good to see that they are listening and making changes and some good has come of this.)



Finally, I would like to say, if you are looking into building, educate yourself before hand. Your home is probably the biggest purchase in your life, you should take some time to understand about building and codes for your area. Pay attention during the building phase, THIS WOULD BE FOR ANY BUILDER, because this is your home and problems are easily resolved during the phase of building that are harder to fix once the home is complete.



If you see something that you question, fix it then. Get the answers that you need during the building phase. Waiting til closing or after just drags it out longer and many times makes it harder to resolve. Ryan began last year offering people building the use of inspectors to work along with you to assist you at all phases. This has resolved many potential problems and a better understanding for everyone.



I hope that this update helps someone along the way. For us, we are done and happy and what a relief that is! To Mr. Ed Magedson, sorry if my request to remove this report offened you, that was not my intent.



Denise H



Editor's Comment to this UPDATE



Denise,



I never said you offended me. It's more like you were being inconsiderate of other readers who could be potential victims. Where do you think YOU would be today without the Rip-off Report? You think Ryan Homes would have made the repairs you mention above if it were not for these reports on them?



To me, in my opinion, after all the detailed aggravation you describe in your original Rip-off Report above, you would not cave in so easily today, but I'm sure you had pressure from Ryan Homes to do so. I agree that you should be telling our readers what they finally did for you and the changes they claim they have made within the company. Only time will tell.



Now, hopefully potential consumers who like the neighborhoods and the Designs of Ryan Homes will be a little more educated on what to look for when dealing with Ryan..



Again, I strongly suggest that consumers looking to buy a new home anywhere, to knock on the doors of homes built by your builder, that are more than 6 months to a year old, so you can survey them on the treatment they are given by the builder, if they do what is promised in a reasonable amount of time.



And Denise, Your e-mailed request that we remove your name from the Reports will not happen, you are required to show your First name, city and state, and you have not shared with us the city and state you are in as required.



ED Magedson

EDitor@RipoffReport.com

www.badbusinessbureau.com



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----- Original Message -----

From: Denise H

To: info@ripoffreport.com

Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 3:55 AM

Subject: Report removal





I am writing again to request the removal of my report ID=4175. As I explained in my previous email, our settlement with Ryan Homes requires us to remove all internet sites reflecting negatively against the builder in regards to our home. I last emailed you on 4-16-02 with information you had requested and the report email address and id #. It is imperative that the report be removed to that we may finish the settlement with Ryan Homes. The web address is as follows: http://badbussinessbureau.com/view.asp?id=4175

Please contact me if there is anything further I need to do to have this report removed. Thank-you.



EDitor's Comments to the above request:

Again, you can UPDATE your Rip-off Report as to what they did or did not do for you at any time.



If we deleted this Rip-off Report, we would be no better than the BBB / Better Business Bureau.



This is not the only Rip-off Report on Ryan Homes!



How will other unsuspecting consumers know what to look out for when dealing with Ryan Homes?



If Ryan Homes is worthy of continuing to do business in the future with any sort of integrity, they will do right by you and not worry what you will say later. Obviously, if they properly rectified your situation with them, you would be UPDATING your Rip-off Report accordingly, hopefully telling the truth.



In my opinion, you should not settle for anything less than a full reimbursement of your home, plus 1 million in damages and reimbursement of any money you put into the home! After reviewing your Rip-off Report, this sounds like the house from HELL and I would think you were put through much worse, words could not describe.



Good luck!



ED Magedson

EDitor@RipoffReport.com