My husband and I recently purchased a new home that we had built
starting in January of this year. It was very quickly constructed
(unfortunately) and was finished in April. See, that's the problem with
these builders they just slap these houses up in a matter of 3-5 months
or so and stick a ridiculous price tag on them so suckers, such as
myself will buy them.
I am paying close to half a
million dollars for my home and at the end of my 30 year note plus
interest I will have paid $750,000.00!! For what? A house that is
falling apart, has shitty workmanship and just put together cheaply!
Sure the model home looked FAB what with all the beautiful decor and
hiring expensive interior designers and all who wouldn't want this home?
Then they "make" you your own. It seems Meritage likes to hire cheap
ass contractors doing shitty work I actually had painters in my home
that brought their 9 year old son with them to "help" when I tried to
ask what the fuck??? They couldn't speak a lick of English to answer my
question. I'm not even sure half of them knew how to paint especially
since none of the tops of any of my door frames even saw a paint brush!
The
first night we spent in our new home the air conditioner didn't work
upstairs ....at all. Come to find out it was wired completely wrong?
Really??? This is what $450,000.00 gets you? Morons wiring your air
conditioner all fucked up? The next night the toilet paper holder
completely ripped off the wall just by normal "hey let me pull the
toilet paper off of here to wipe my ass use" sweeeeet! The ceiling vent
in the master bedroom completely fell out of the ceiling the first
night as well! Good thing one of my rugrats wasn't standing beneath it
when it decided to take a shit. Amidst this bullshit there are cracks
in my baseboards, gaps bigger that Madonna's front teeth on my back
door, my toilet is leaking, the carpet is coming up, the baseboards
don't go all the way down to the floor (I can literally place my fingers
underneath them to the next room, chunks of plaster keep falling off
the wall exposing screws, the ceiling beams completely show/bulging
through the ceilings (this looks adorable), one of my baseboards bow
"inward", the wall in the 4th bathroom is crooked, the walls are not
flat at all you can see lumps throughout in our theater room and my
husband's mancave! Our projection screen won't even lay flat against the
wall! There's lumps in our floors upstairs, there is absolutely nothing
between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling it sounds like my
kids will fall through at any moment. My backdoor off my kitchen is so
cheap I can bend the bottom corner just by pushing on it with one finger
(hello burglars come on in let your 2 year old kick it in because it
WILL give). Luckily I have an alarm system. The wall beneath my
masterbath window is cracked and separated. So much shit to mention my
head is spinning.
Now, I know some of you are saying
what the hell Dani call warranty, well we did early on in June and they
did come and repair the things we found wrong (then) the aforementioned
items have come on since then. But you only get one shot for warranty to
come out in the year "coverage" so now I'm making a list, albeit a long
list that's annoying the shit out of me. Okay, so now you guys are
saying whey the hell didn't you email someone and bitch. Your answer? I
did, several times and you know what??? I got no response! Go figure,
doesn't surprise me. As of my latest bitch to a Mr. Brent Anderson (see
my exact email below) which was dated Sept. 9th I have yet to hear from
him either. I would love to just straight up contact Mr. Steven J.
Hilton, the supreme asshole and head dick of Meritage myself and tell
him what shit he sells and how his millionaire ass can sleep at night
knowing that he puts out shit, but low and behold there is no contact
info for him at all. I guess he has all of his little "Hilton Nazi's "
do his dirty work for him. Except, well, in this case, they can't even
seem to get that shit right. It seems Meritage hires cowards who don't
have the balls to answer back their pissed off customers or the smarts
to say anything in return! Oh and just in case you were all wondering if
I am the only one that thinks Meritage Homes is a big piece of smokin'
hot dog shit on my shoe you'd be wrong! Several people in my subdivision
have oodles of problems as well and have done their share of emails too
without any response. My neighbors roof started to leak just a few
months after they had their house built! Sweeeeet! I warned that I
would pretty much go on blast about Meritage if I didn't receive an
acknowledgment regarding my disgust, we see how that panned out! Anyhoo,
here's the latest email I sent to a lovely Meritage Home employee:
Hello, my name is ______ my husband and I are new home owners to a lovely (joke) Meritage home located in _______, FL.
We
began construction back in December 2013 and closed in April 2014. We
moved in this May. The reason I am sending an email to you, is because,
one, I'm a very disgruntled homeowner and two, nobody else would answer
my email regarding my frustrations, so all bets are on you now.
Let
me first tell you that after my 30 year mortgage is finished we will
have paid just under one million dollars for our home. A home, that
quite frankly could of been put together better by toddlers. The
workmanship is horrendous and unacceptable. Most of the things could not
even be repaired unless you literally knocked walls down and started
over. For example, a majority of my walls are not even "flat". They are
wavy and lumpy. We went to hang a few shelves in one of the bedrooms and
it was ridiculous ...gaps behind the shelf here and there and would not
lay flat against the wall! Our media room, which is our theater room is
another case. Our projection screen won't even lay flat against the
wall it bows out because of the lumpy uneven walls. Unacceptable! You
barely bump into a wall and the plaster falls off exposing screws. We've
had to putty and repaint our walls in 12 different spots so far.
One
wall in the kids bathroom is completely warped and bowed in along with
the baseboard in the upstairs family room. That baseboard looks like
you're in a fun house. When I let the builder know about those two
concerns I was told nobody is perfect and if they attempted to fix the
warped baseboard it could end up looking worse. Now, as far as the
warped wall in the aforementioned bathroom, well, as previously
mentioned, aside from completely knocking it down how could that even be
fixed?
You lay down on the floor in the upstairs
family room and look at the ceiling and can see every single beam
through it! The same with my children's bedrooms! I've lived in cheap
apartments in my 20's that were better constructed and you couldn't see
beams going across. Ironically I ran into a woman at my local Gold's
Gym who built a Del Rio but in the ______ area, that said she has heard
from neighbors about the beam issue as well although her home doesn't
show them (lucky her). Although she did mention she hates how there is
little to no sound barrier between upstairs and downstairs. I agreed
with her. When you're downstairs it sounds as if the people walking
upstairs are about to come through the ceiling and when an upstairs
toilet is flushed it sounds like someone just opened the flood gates.
I
am so frustrated, disgusted, angry and down right appalled that such a
"notorious" builder such as Meritage Homes could churn out such "crap"
charge high dollar for it and then not even acknowledge an email about
their customers disgust? I would really love to get hold of Steven
Hilton your precious CEO and see if he's aware of the crappy workmanship
being put into his homes here in my area and see how well that sits
with him. However I cannot locate his email address info anywhere (go
figure).
Our neighbors next door had their roof leak
just three months after moving in! My toilet paper holder ripped off the
wall just 2 days of moving in just by normal use of removing toilet
paper from the roll. My vent fell out of the ceiling one day after
moving in. The painters never even bothered to paint the tops of my door
casings throughout my home and the first day of moving in the upstairs
air conditioning wouldn't work at all! There's crappy dry wall work, and
cracks in baseboards. Initially we had some of these items repaired but
only after getting onto the builder. However, like I mentioned the big
deal items will and can never be fixed short of bulldozing this piece of
crap house down.
People like acknowledgment Mr.
Anderson, that's all, and I wrote an email to warranty shortly after the
initial minor repairs were done and never received a response.
Like
I mentioned earlier, the initial issues like the vent falling out of
the ceiling, minor paint touch ups and toilet paper holder have been
fixed. Problem is more things have gone wrong, trust me I'm keeping a
list for the year end warranty visit! It just shows you get what you pay
for. Maybe if Meritage wasn't so cheap and actually hired good, quality
contractors issues such as these would not even happen in the first
place.
I am going to be forwarding you pics of just
some of the "remarkable" work your contractors do and then you tell me
if this should be found in a $450.000 home??? I'm not alone either,
several of my neighbors in this community are to say the least,
"pissed". Unfortunately, for Mr. Hilton, I'm not the type to keep quiet
and just deal with living in an overpriced piece of crap, do you know
why Mr. Anderson? Because I have a forum! I write for the Examiner and
I also have a blog and intend on giving my opinion of the company you
work for.
A jingle or email from Mr. Hilton would be
appreciated, or hey, maybe his "people" can send me a postcard to
acknowledge me in some capacity, ya think?
(left my address just in case Mr. Hilton can fit me into his busy schedule to send me some correspondence)
End Email.________________
I've included some pics of the lovely handywork you get for $450,00.00 as well:
1.
Isn't lovely how the underneath of my window was finished so well??
This has more crack than a fat man leaning over with baggy pants.
2.
Aaah yes, this is sweet isn't it? Apparently this is the new way of
installing baseboard, yuh if you're on the crack pipe! #funhousestyle.
3.
Niiiice, it seems I specially ordered used doors, preferably ones that
included chips! Gives it that lived in looked doesn't it?
4.
This one is adorable, I especially like how there's a huge peel mark on
the vinyl and let's not forget about that huge ass gap at the bottom of
the door which I must say comes in handy for all the ear wigs that love
to vacation in my home..My bug company can't even keep them at bay I
wonder why?
5.
Thoughtful contractors slamming my door shut with the lock out during
construction, remind me to send them a thank you card. P.S. Pointed this
out to the builder during the walk through before we closed and he
shrugged if off. Super!
6.
This is super cool just painted my husband's man cave and upon doing so
the plaster decided to take a shit and expose the screws in the wall,
looks like I'm not the only one getting screwed eh?
7.
Oh and here's the top portion of my back door that has an even bigger
gap at the top than the bottom! BTW this is the same door that a cock
roach could probably knock down.
8.
This is how we dooo it, this is how we do it...ah yes the old 90's hip
hop classic tune, you may know it....let's just use excess grout here
and then forget to caulk in white at the bottom of the baseboard to
match the other side of the wall. Super!
9.
Hey if we were back in the really, really old days like prison chambers
with stone walls we could pass notes under the cracks of the wall like
they used to back in the day. Cool eh? Or you could really creep out the
person in the next room by sliding all kinds of body parts underneath
the wall.....errrr no!
10.
This looks very pretty I especially love the beam effect across the
ceiling, I mean who doesn't want to see those sexy sturdy things as they
gaze up from the bottom floor?
11.
Ah yes the other side of the wall of the downstairs guest bathroom
looks like they may have tried to caulk over their shitty grout job but
then decided Aaaah shit man it's lunch time gotta go! This makes my
bathroom look dirty, like I never clean looooove it.
There's
more shit I just get more and more pissed the more I find wrong the
more I see I just want to take a serious dump in Mr. Steven J. Hilton's
morning Cheerios!! Wait, he's a millionaire, I'm almost positive he eats
a much better well balanced meal than Cheerios, I mean the nerve!!
Oh
and hey, Mr. Hilton if you or one of your douche bag drones ever get to
read or see this out in cyberspace, pick up the phone and give me a
ring a ding ding, would love to talk to you! In the meantime I'm going
to go vacuum and pray to God that I don't accidentally bump into the
baseboard with the damn thing, I mean the whole wall could come falling
down on me yikes!!! Until then Mr. Hilton, keep your feet on the ground
and keep reaching for everyone's wallets!! Peace out bitches!!