Complaint Review: Water Works Inc. - McHenry Illinois

For the record, BBB did not side with Water Works.  BBB offered arbitration which we did not pursue and decided to pursue the guidance of the Attorney General's office.

As of 12/30/2013, Attorney General is still investigating and also has not made a decision according to the last paperwork we received from their office.

Our system was a working system before Water Works arrived to our property.  Water Work's rebuttal did not include or answer why Water Works staff cut wires that were not part of the project.  Why would Water Works cut our wires? (pictures of cut wires are in original write up) 

We had to hire a competent company to repair these cut wires and get the existing system working again, which the competent company spent 2 days repairing what Water Works damaged. 

Most importantly, the project was never finished by Water Works.  They were to replace and connect the soaker hose in the flower beds and instead Water Work's cut the wires to the controls to the entire system (front lawn, back lawn, parkway lawn, planter boxes, and flower beds).

Again the wires Water Works cut were not a part of the project they were hired to do and they left our system in worse condition than when Water Works arrived. 

We, the consumer, agree with the other consumer's ripoff report who reported that this company is a nightmare to work with and we want to make others aware of Water Work's practices.

  In response to the accusations by this article, Water Works was contacted to replace two zones of soaker line. This was per the agreed proposal and scope of work, this was completed and hooked up to the existing sprinkler system. Upon attempting to "start-up" the irrigation system it was found to be in far worse disrepair than explained by the homeowner, also estimated age of the system is around 15 years old and was not installed by the current homeowner. Upon full review of the condition and use of generic parts it was found that it would be more cost effective to start over than to attempt to retrofit and repair the existing system, also by re- doing this system with now available parts it would be more efficient and user friendly. All of this was explained to the homeowner who was very receptive to the estimate made by my company. After a few phone calls the customer seemed to have changed his mind and shortly after there was no communication therefore we saw this as a closed issue. The BBB and attorney general disregarded this complaint as we had fulfilled our proposal and offered the additional remedies to the homeowners problem.

They gave us an estimate and wrote a proposal for us that looked really good so we decided that we were going to use them.  They gave us a call and let us know with the summer rolling around things were getting busy and they would like to reserve a time for us to get scheduled.  They told us in order to do this they would need our credit card but would not charge it.  We gave them the card and got scheduled for May 11th.  On May 10th a plumber came out to look at our property and said the way that Water Works wanted to install this would not work.  We got a hold of Water Works and let them know the situation.  Because of the change they told us it would be an additional $700 to get the system installed.  Before my husband and I even had a chance to discuss this they followed up that email with another one letting us know that they were cancelling and taking us off the books for the next day.  We tried calling them and emailing them and were unable to get in touch with them to try and come to a resolution.  When we finally did get in touch with them we decided not to use them because they really did a bait and switch with the pricing. 

After this passed we did take a look and realized that Water Works charged our credit card that they had on file $2200 for work that they had not even done.  We called them and asked them to reverse the fee and they said they would but it was never done.  So finally we went to our credit card company and opened a dispute.  In this dispute when the card company contacted Water Works he lied and told them that they showed up on the 11th to do the work and we refused.  They even modified a contract and sent it to the credit card company.  This contract was not what we were given and was not signed by us.

Due to all of this hassle trying to recuperate the money they had taken without doing any work we eventually had to take them to court.  It turns out when he was summoned by the court Water Works contacted us and offered to do the work for the additional $350 instead of $700.  We did not agree to this because we really did not want to deal with a company that had been so dishonest with us.  

We did recently have our court date, which Water Works did not show up to and the judge did rule in our favor for the full reimbursement and the cost of court fees.  However, we are still not sure how this is going to be collected even though we have a court order.

This has just been a complete nightmare dealing with them and I want to make others aware of their practices.