Neighborhood Ethics

[lacajun]

I am having some repairs done under warranty to my home. This effort began about a year ago with getting a structural engineering buddy to look things over, write his professional opinion, and stamp his letters. I then sent his stamped letters to the builder through registered mail.

I didn't have much success on some of the more costly items. They readily took care of the easiest fix. Bear in mind, this easy fix was really easy and I told my neighbors about this. Did any of them act on it? No! Once that was out of the way, I again focused on the costly items.

I talked with other P.E.'s in other disciplines with expertise in these particular issues. I thought about what they said then formulated my requests to the builder and copied all engineers I discussed the relevant problems with for witnesses and clarity, if needed. No response came.

I tried to enlist the assistance of my neighbors. They had the same issues. They were interested but not enough to do anything about it. They were content to let me do the work and they would piggyback off my work. Some got confused and thought I was doing a class action lawsuit, which was far, far from the truth. I never talked with a lawyer. These are people who often ignore me.

My requests were hung up in the builder's legal department, which I anticipated. The builder and I reached an agreement and work began.

The neighborhood was abuzz the first week with "get names," "get details," and "most importantly, get the lawyer's name." My agreement required silence about what they are doing to correct the problems. I have honored the contract and remained silent about the details of our agreement. I have told them I cannot contractually say anything. They seemed to understand. They also know a lot of what has been done because you cannot miss it. They took pix to document it.

One of them lodged a complaint last Friday about my yard, with the HOA, which has been a construction zone the last few weeks. If I don't correct it within 10 days or explain what is going on, I will be fined by the HOA. It isn't that bad either! So this smells like retribution for my silence.

I was willing to help them by giving the names of the engineers I talked with so they could get the same information and form their own conclusions and hopefully reach satisfactory agreements. Now I am unwilling to do that. I will never know who lodged the complaint but they all talk and I know one will provide the information to the complainer.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.........

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Screw 'em and then MOVE

 

[SWmechE]

I agree with the steps you've taken, tell them who they can go to if they ask and otherwise leave it up to them, you already did your part trying to help them earlier. We're going through the same thing with our condo board after redoing the windows on our '85 townhouse. They had an engineering firm put together a completely over the top spec which no companies wanted to touch. Eventually we got one company to agree to it and then when it was all finished the condo board said they didn't like the way it looked and accused it of being out of spec. asically all the units had shutters and normal brick-molding but the new spec required the siding cut back 6 inches and batton (smartboard?) placed on, with this the shutters were left off because they would look slly. We sent them all the e-mails documenting us asking if the spec was correct and their replies back saying "go ahead and do the work", haven't heard from them since.

This experience completely soured me on ever owning a similar home, before this experience I thought it was working great as the property otherwise is relatively well managed.