Complaint Review: Brian Braginton-Smith

Anyone who knows Brian Braginton-Smith can see through his remarks. He installed these same wind turbines on at least two other buildings, both in Yarmouth and both prior to this mess. Can he provide proof that he actually purchased, as in paid for, the turbine the client was expecting? To what "non profit" did Braginton-Smith donate the turbine? This man is a walking fraud!

The customer is making false and misleading statements, they never paid for the equipment only a deposit to facilitate the legal work and engineering to see if a permit to construct could be obtained.  Due to the fact that in the end my response to them was that their costs of moving forward with wind energy would not pay due to the requirements of monitoring and the limited energy output possible from the technology as well as potential damage from stress loading on their structure they made irrational demands.  We refused to sell the equipment because the manufacturer had inflated production potential which was exposed in similar local installations and the community required excessive monitoring to install the technology.  The funds paid were for a portion of the pre-development costs only, including working with the community to develop wind energy regulations and permitting guidelines to enable the installation of the proposed wind technology, which took 3 years to accomplish.  Prior to this point, there were no legal installation guidelines and therefore there was no legal way to install a wind turbine.   These fact were disclosed to the client and it was agreed that a retainer of $2000 would be paid to accomplish this necessary pre-development work.  The regulatory work took three years and cost over $12,000 in actual time and effort, of which the client only paid $2,000.  During that period, the Swift Cascade turbine technology manufacturer also came out with a change in their technical recommendation stating that the technology is not recommended for installation on wood frame structures.  The client owns a wood frame structure.  They never paid for any equipment, as they were told that it would not be prudent to buy something that could not be installed.  The results of the pre-development tasks made the project technically impractical.  The customer became irate and irrational, which was not unanticipated with the nature of the unfortunate news.   We were sorry to disappoint the client but the scenario would have been far worse to have sold equipment that would not have performed and could possibly have damaged the dwelling.  

The reason for refusing to sell the equipment was that it would not work.  The base wind turbine equipment cost was $10,000.00 and the installation would have cost a  minimum of $5,000.00 to $8,000.  It is doubtful that the equipment would have produced $500.00 worth of energy in a good year and therefore the cost benefit analysis showed that the technology would have been a bad investment.  The client saved well over $13,000.00 as a result of the due diligence performed to assess the value of the technology prior to buying the turbine.  Our philosophy is to not sell products that will not provide a reasonable return.  The client decided to misrepresent that facts (stating that they had paid for the turbine) and go on a smear campaign because they were given bad news showing that as a result of the analysis moving forward was not recommended.  The facts are, that the client never paid for any technology, only for an evaluation of the potential of the technology and the legal work needed to secure a building permit.  The regulations were written by us and and adopted by the Town for their new by-laws, and the permit to install a turbine was secured for the client and registered with the registry of deeds all at our cost.  This activity would have cost the client well over $12,000.00 if a lawyer were hired and the engineers needed to provide the technical plans, documentation, acoustical studies and visual simulations were hired, which are documented costs for permitting a similar project in a nearby town.   We would rather dis-appoint a client than sell products that do not fit the application.  Under the universal commercial code, statute of fraud, a substantial misrepresentation of fact is an act of fraud.  Making declarations that the technology was bought for $2,000 seems to be an act of fraud in and of it self.  These untrue statements being knowingly false therefore are made with the intent to cause harm by their nature.  The site is a party to the offense for not taking proper due diligence in verifying the truth of the assertions.   We no longer work with Swift Cascade or any small wind turbine companies and have found the small residential wind industry to be largely problematic due to client ignorance and unrealistic expectations and suppliers guilty of gross misrepresentations of their equipment output and the cost of permitting and installation.   To be fair the Zablockis should have paid us over $10,000 in pre-development and engineering costs.  However due to the fact that the Swift Cascade company had so completely misrepesented the facts relating to their technology, we felt that the affair was not the fault of the client but the unrealistic expectations caused by the manufacturers literature.   We lost money on the permitting and pre-development work and we were swindled by the Swift Cascade Turbine company in no uncertain terms, we bought the turbine intended for the Zablocki's but we would not sell it due to the deficiencies that were uncovered in other installations.   That unit is now a $10,000 novelty roof ornament which we donated to a local non-profit group.   In the end we prevented the Zablocki's from making an expensive mistake.  Instead of accepting this fact and accepting their $2,000 investment as short money compared to what they might have lost, they instead misrepresent the facts and besmirch our name.  Better to be cursed than to have caused damage to their property.  They received their building permit, which is what we had promised to deliver for the $2,000.  I would discourage anyone from buying a Swift-Cascade wind turbine and I would never want to have anything to do with Carol Zablocki.