Posted by Bethany
on 8/7/2005, 12:10 am
216.240.75.39
I apologize in advance for the length of this complaint, I just don’t want anyone else to be burned the way that my husband and I have. We ordered a Southern Energy Home in September of 2003 from a dealership about 40 miles away. The dealer told us we should have a home in 6-8 weeks so we placed the down payment and waited…….and waited and waited. After many, many phone calls our home was finally delivered on January 20, 2004. When our house was delivered I was not aware that payment would need to be made in full for the second half to be delivered. Luckily all our ducks were in a row as far as our financing and our banker cut the check that day so that the other section could be delivered. Unfortunately our home sat for another 4 weeks before the first section was slid over the basement that had been prepared for it to sit on. It took a while for the set up crew to come back and start the installation and the day that the first part of the house was placed and luckily securely placed on the foundation, it came a terrible snow storm. The plastic that covers the open side of the home was ripped and torn allowing snow, sleet and moisture to get in. We called the dealer and they told us to “just get some plastic and duct tape and secure it.” This was not our job but to save our house it was done. Finally March 28, 2004 both sections of our house were finally on the basement, but the marriage wall seams and an 18 inch gap from the basement wall to the bottom of the house were left exposed. This should have been our first sign of a problem, but being young and having no experience at this, it wasn’t. After numerous calls we finally got the marriage wall seems covered. And we had to pay a carpenter later on to build a kickboard with 2x4’s and plywood to go all the way around the perimeter of the house to fill the space that was supposed to be able to be filled with a 4x4. The problems continued, we had leaks in the master bath around the window, a leak in the pantry closet in the kitchen, never got the cheap set of stairs promised in the contract, cracks in the fireplace mortar, damaged drywall and wall board from the moisture and movement of delivery, no light fixtures (just wires hanging down, still to date that way) in the great room, trim falling off of the walls and ceilings, all the doors and windows had trouble shutting (many still do) and the biggest problem of all, our home is sagging ¾-1 inch with the seam down the middle of the house different as you walk from side to side of the marriage line. You could literally trip over this difference in height. Our carpeting has faulting backing according to the expert they company sent to fix it, still has lumps in it as high as 2 ½ inches. The corner trim on the outside of the house still lacks the 18 inches to be completely to the basement foundation. The dealer ordered this trim and it was supposed to be here um, let’s see 1 year ago, still haven’t seen it. Our shutters are not the color we ordered so we still have brown shutters when we ordered white, which has been a year as well. Our home was special ordered so we thought, they made such a big deal of us getting to arrange our floor plan, but when the home was delivered the things that we wanted special came just as the model plan we looked at. Our home is very cheaply made, at first glance you would not notice some things, however we finally moved in May 5, 2004 and you just can’t help but notice all the shotty work done. We would call and call the dealer to set up our walk through or to get a work crew out and they would just tell us that they were too busy and that all their crews were out on other homes and they would have to call us back. We finally got a guy to come and work on the smaller things like putting up light fixtures and such, however the doors and windows problem was just too much for them to do they would need to send the manufacturer out. After calling to set this up time and time again, they finally did get someone to come to our home; he worked two straight days on problems and never did really fix any of them. He would replace a window and it would be farther from shutting than the original. Months later the second man came from the manufacturer he actually went down to our basement and took pictures of the sagging I beams that their (Southern Energy Homes) Engineer had told our basement contractor to order. He took a string and ran it from one end of the beam to the other and there was the proof the house was sagging ¾-1 inch in the middle, thus the problems with the marriage line, our doors and windows and now even our roof and the structure of our home. He took pictures on a digital camera and even had me download them on a disk from my home computer…..what I would do if I had of kept them on my hard drive, but it didn’t occur to me at this point, that a year later I would need these pictures in such a desperate way. When we call the dealer or manufacturer now as soon as we tell them our name they send the call directly to voice mail or ask to take a message, we feel that we have been done wrong and with this obvious way of ignoring us we feel that they know that they have wronged us. We have now hired and lawyer in hopes to get all of these problems taken care of. It is heartbreaking to think of the next 30 years making a mortgage on a house that is already having so many structural problems. I am begging anyone that is thinking of buying a manufactured home to email me, and I would love to talk to you and expand on our issues with this demon. Although I know that I have not mentioned every problem that we have had with our home, I hope that this is enough to discourage anyone from making the same mistake that we did.
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