Complaint Review: Vanderbuilt Mortgage

I am a disabled person (bad heart condition, auto-immune disorder, severe arthritis, diabetic, asthma, etc). 

I went to Clayton Homes at Fetsus Missouri to look at one of their refurbished homes. 

This is a small account of the problems with mobile home double wide; 1999 Champion purchased as remodeled/refurbished.  May-June 2012 was when purchased.

Siding not provided for ends of home once it was connected together-married.

New toilet stool just sat on floor over hole, not bolted down or anything. Just sat on floor, nothing done to it.

The new windows installed inside of home are "emergency use only" windows and do not open. They look like the windows that are on the outside of home. I was told the person in charge of remodeling/refurbing said the outside windows were fine and did not need to be replaced, but all the inside windows were replaced with new ones. However, shouldn't they be windows that are able to open and not non-opening windows and have notices on each window that say they are for emergency use only? We had to buy all new windows for the home, since the ones installed were not safe  nor correct. 

We knew there would be some issues that we would be taking care of, because it is a used home; we knew it would need a new roofand a few other things, and we were fine with doing that. But other issues that we do not feel is our responsability to pay to have fixed:  

#1.....Mudding what cracks happened in the walls during delivery Large major cracks appeared in walls (up to 1 - 2 iches wide) and one entire wall shifted out of place.  

#2.....The outside unit for the air conditioning did not work upon hookup. The professionals who we hired to do the electrical connections and hook ups, upon hook up of the outside unit, found it to be completely unusable. It would not hold Freon, would hold no pressure and just simply would not work at all. We have to have cool inside that home, so the mechanical contractors went to their office and brought back a new unit and installed it. Although it was in the contract that all appliances and air conditioning were to work upon delivery and hook up of all those items (contract signed to purchase  the home) We did not know we had to go through Clayton Homes nor Vanderbilt to get that issue taken care of. It was not in the contract that we were to contact Clayton Homes, nor was I told we would need to do so. 

#3.....We had to have electricians fix problems, such as--when light bulb was put into ceiling light in front room,  no light switch could be found to turn light on or off. Also no electrical outlets could be found on one entire wall of living room and also a wall in kitchen (against federal building codes). The light switch and all the missing outlets had been covered up by people who were hired by Vanderbuilt to do refurbishing of the home.  

#4.....When the electricians moved the brand new electric range in the kitchen (Vanderbuilt had new range put in) to plug it in - no plug in was there at all. And not only was there no plug in to be found, the electricians could not even find electrical wires in the wall to have a plug in. 

$5.....We had to have plumbers come to fix multiple plumbing problems. While working on the plumbing, the wall in the utility room was the first wall they opened up and the insides of the wall were black with mold. When they went under the home to work on plumbing, they found large areas of mold from leaking of the water pipes. 

As I said, we expected to have some things to fix, and were ok with that, but we had no idea of how many things would be wrong with a home that we had been told and understood to have been remodeled/refurbished.  Actually I was told that a lot of work had been done on the home, and a lot of money had been put into fixing it.   When a home has been worked on, we did not expect nor understand that this much would be wrong with it.

Now if we had purchased a home that had not been refurbished, no work on it at all, then I could understand finding so many things wrong.  But there were some things we thought would be fairly and responsibly done: correct windows that can be opened, not windows that are unable to open and are emergency use only windows.  (Safety factor! If we cannot open the windows). An airconditioner that was a working unit, and all the other above listed items. Which is only a very small list of all the things that were wrong and had to be fixed for the home to even be liveable. 

I did have the sales person write into the purchase paper that the air conditioning unit and furnace were to be in good working order or Clayton Homes and/or Vanderbuilt would pay for repair or replacement of them. They have so far refused to do even what what written into the purchase paper. 

I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and after several attempted contacts from BBB and Vanderbuilt Mortgage/Clayton Homes, they finally closed out the file and lowered Vanderbuilt and Clayton Homes rating to an F for failure to discuss or reply to the BBB to try to settle or work with us to correct the many issues.