Complaint Review: Pulte Homes of Ohio - Solon Ohio

My family moved into our new Pulte Built home on Nov. 19, 1993. From that day on, we had nothing but problems getting Pulte Homes to honor the warranty. The first day in, we noticed that the walls were badly bowed, out of square, and out of plumb. The myiad of problems just seemed to explode the longer we lived in the home. Water in the basement, cold drafts from windows, doors and from under the sink area in the kitchen. Interior doors did not fit properly and would hit the door frame when the doors were operated. During the first year of the warranty, we compiled several lists for Pulte to attend to. From the onset, work was slow, ineffective and actually made most problems worse than when originally reported. The favorite tool for repairs was caulk and paint.

Pulte Homes tried over and over again to explain that they were doing repairs to building standards. The complaints of shoddy workmanship about the walls and flooring was in their opinion, not valid. Workers would leave dust and sawdust all over. Used my own personal tools and ladders. Damaged our vacuum cleaner on a rare day that they cleaned up after themselves.

Finally I contacted a family friend that was an attorney and set up a meeting with the President of Pulte Homes of Ohio, Greg Williams.

Prior to that meeting Pulte brought in an engineer to look over my home to produce a report on its soundness. During that same time, I enlisted the opinion of a local contractor. At the meeting, I handed Mr. Williams the report by my contractor. It stated that repairs to my home would range anywhere from $20,000 to OVER $120,000. This was a NEW HOME! Pulte was angered at the meeting and stormed out without ever showing me their report (which I later learned said NOTHING WAS WRONG WITH THE HOUSE and even questioned why I was complaining).

As I left the meeting, Greg Williams was waiting outside for me. He stated that there was no reason to make this a legal matter and Pulte Homes would make repairs to MY SATISFACTION. Like a fool, I took him for his word.

As time went by, the same problems occurred. Shoddy repairs, workers not showing up for work, messy house, and plenty of caulk and excuses. After much screaming and yelling, Pulte finally seemed to make a concerted effort to repair the house. They brought in a crew to exclusivlely work on my home. These fellows found that as they were working, that the framing was done so poorly, that they could NOT repair the house. The Pulte agent assigned to my mess stated to me "this house just was'nt built right" and even said "I may not be able to fix it, but maybe I can make it liveable". At one point, Pulte had to move my family of five out of the house for a month so they could tear out a portion of the back wall of the house, completly rebuild the kitchen, rip out the concrete basement floor, and replace the driveway. It is now June of 1997. After several months went by without anyone showing up to work, and phone calls not getting returned, I got suspicious. I hired an engineer to inspect my home.

The engineered found many failed floor joists, shoddy work and generally unacceptable workmanship.When I tried to bring the report to Pulte's attention, they refused to even look at the report. Several weeks went by and finally, a crew came in and looked over the joists (still under warranty) and decided only 2 needed to be repaired. Instead of properly installing the joists, the "ripped" off about an inch of the new joist so it would easily fit into place. That procedure greatly reduced the strength and integrity of the new joist.The other joist they sistered in, split in half about a week after it was installed. This happened July of 1998. I tried to talk to the project manager for Pulte. He stated that no more work would be done except for a few items he had on a list that was made. He left and I never seen him or anyone else from Pulte again. No work was done, no phone calls, nothing.

I contacted my attorney and we filed suit on October 5, 1998. See my web site at http://home.att.net/~pulte/ to see the whole story.It' called The Pulte Homes Experience. I have transcripts under oath from Pulte, the architects report and the contractors report on-line. The judge in the case required that we get a more accurate estimate for repairs. That report is also available to see. It is for over $115,000 and does not include repairing the water leak, and other items. I also link to other sites with similar problems.

The game Pulte played with me, delay. delay, delay. They took advantage of the fact that I believed they would repair my house. I took them for their word. The repair proccess took years. Now many of the problems that exist (in addition to the original existing problems) have been discovered trying to fix the original items on my list. Since they delayed doing the work, the problems were found by PULTE after the one year warranty ran out. So they claim that they have repaired all items under warranty and the remaining problems are no longer under warrranty. Forget the fact that if they would have addressed the problem in a timely manner, everything would have been covered. How smart they are! Ignore the problem long enough to claim the warranty is expired.