Complaint Review: Clayton Homes Statesville - Statesville North Carolina

We purchased a Clayton Homes i-House in 2010.  http://claytonihouse.com/ A demo was at the Statesville, NC location only 20 miles from home.

http://www.claytonhomesofstatesville.com/

After several trips we decided to make an offer on the demo (this was the sellers suggestion) but only after we had gone through the home and pointed out all the deficiencies.  We spoke with Willie Gibbs, sales rep  who assured us that we would be getting a home in “new” condition in spite of all the traffic it had received; the contractor, Tony Capote would address all the items on our “punch list”.

http://www.capotebuilders.com/aboutus.html

This is when things started to go bad.  We soon saw that nothing was going to happen in a reasonable time frame from this contractor and his sub-contractors told us he wouldn’t get in a hurry as he was more interested in his own projects!

We were desperate to close and there were lots of items that had not been completed.  This is where Mr. Gibbs again assured me that we had a service tech, Steve Reece that would finish what did not get completed.  We got down to two last major items to be corrected.  Even though we had gone past the “one year service” period he told us it would be done as his boss would kill him for not completing the work as Clayton had to have a “customer review” and any deficiencies would be bad for him and his boss.

Those issues were the powder-coated rails and the bamboo floors in the “Flex” house.  The rails were a joke.

http://www.precisionladders.com/index.htm

We were told by Andrew Combs (who no longer works for the company) they were prepped wrong and the powder coating was coming off.  Steve had all the rails replaced except for two, that he forgot to order.  The manufacturer owner, Don McKinney said they had done all they were going to; it wasn’t their problem anymore. Please note that the replacement rails have also failed to hold paint.

We are now at almost three years past closing and the bamboo floor is what disappoint us most.  We had pointed out the discoloration of the floor next to the door.  The contractor said it was just a color aberration.  We pointed out it was expanding and he basically just ignored it.  This again left it to Mr. Reece to correct.  We have two boxes of flooring; all we need is to have it replaced.  We had at least four different flooring people supposed to come out but no one ever did.  We have a friend who could but we were told that wasn’t possible and a Mike Ayers was going to call…well he never did either.  We finally decided we didn’t care if Mr. Reece got into trouble but we had had enough and contacted Mr. Lane Harrell the Clayton Statesville manager and explained what we had gone through.  Surely they would live up to their hype of great customer service.  Unfortunately he is using the issue of only a year of service against me even after we pointed out that we have all the original photos from while on his lot, e-mails prior to closing and others prior to our one year service period where we have more photos of the problem and “punch list” where this is supposed to be addressed. 

I’d like to point out that I was called several times by Clayton Homes Corporate for the “customer review” that we had refused to complete with all the issues outstanding.  I finally received a call from Mr. Harrell who essentially begged that I go ahead and do the review despite my reservations, as it would reflect negatively on his business.  He personally assured me that everything would be completed to my satisfaction…so much for trusting this individual and this business.

This website seems my only defense; make sure others don’t find themselves in a position where they have to spend additional money on things that were to corrected by the seller.  If we have been unreasonable, we don’t know how so please consider your options before buying anything from Clayton Homes Statesville…they can’t walk it like they talk it!