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"We had a surprisingly difficult and frustrating end to our experience with Foundation Repair of California (FRoCA), despite a very pleasant beginning. Unfortunately, because of what we learned in the process, we advise others to be very wary of working with this company. We had hired FRoCA to do a foundation inspection when we purchased our new home in 2021, and their inspector and sales team were very easy to work with. When we decided to retrofit our home to be earthquake-resistant in 2022, we called FRoCA. They came, did a crawlspace assessment, sent our build plans and diagrams off to their engineering department for retrofitting, and pulled the permit. We paid a deposit on a 10K project and permit fees. The day before the retrofit was supposed to begin, FRoCA sent out their site manager for a final check before construction could begin. We moved our schedule around to accommodate, and they showed up three hours late. When the site manager arrived, they overlapped with a meeting we had moved to accommodate them. Upon finding this out, they were very curt and unprofessional, and we didn't realize until later in the day that they had left without letting us know a status update. Later that day, we got a call from FRoCA saying that the site manager had banned anyone from FRoCA from going into our crawlspace, and said that all the insulation needed to be removed before they could continue the project. At this point they'd said they could remove the insulation for an additional fee. When we expressed surprise at this, our sales rep told us that the site manager had actually broken out in hives from being in our space. This was a surprise to us, as we had 1) replaced the insulation based on FRoCA's recommendation when we moved into the house, 2) had not been told that the insulation needed to be removed and replaced after multiple site visits by FRoCA, and 3) had multiple plumbing/electric contractors in our crawlspace, and didn't want to expose anyone to a hazardous environment. We put the project on hold and called three separate companies that specialize in either crawl space inspection or foundation inspection to check on the status of our crawl space. All came, performed an analysis and inspection, and came back with a clean bill of health. After all this, we were ready to share the inspection reports with FRoCA, but before we could do so, our sales rep said that they couldn't do the retrofit work as promised anyway, as their chosen materials were incompatible with a section of the foundation. We were surprised by this, as FRoCA had done multiple designs and checks, had their engineering team review it, and then sent it to the city to get approval and pull a permit. We asked how engineering had missed it, and FRoCA essentially shrugged it off. At this point, months had passed from when we were first approved for the EBB grant, and time was running out for us to finish our project. We started looking for another contractor to help us out, and asked for our deposit to be refunded from FRoCA, which they initially didn't want to do and tried to convince us to keep them on retainer, citing the rising costs of materials. We refused and insisted on our deposit back. FRoCA said that they would refund our deposit, but that we would need to pay the permit cost. We paid them for the permit, but in order to transfer the permit the local government needed the plans that were drawn as well. FRoCA refused, stating that the fee was technically only for the permit. We were really unhappy with this arrangement, as they pulled a permit based on plans that wouldn't work, and submitted a permit release that, without plans, couldn't be released. This is extremely frustrating, as we paid $900+ for a permit that couldn't be used. We had to pay for another permit when we hired a new contractor to work on our retrofit. In the meantime, we found another independent contractor who made the process SO EASY. He proactively worked with EBB to help us get an extension. Within three weeks of us contacting him, he had a new permit pulled, plans designed, and one more week later, was bolting down our crawlspace. Seeing how easy GrandView Builders made this process really shone a light on FRoCA's inadequate business practices. Summary: FRoCA pulled out of our project 24 hours before it was due to start, citing reasons that were discredited by 3 independent companies. They then claimed that the project wasn't feasible because of an incompatibility between our home and their materials that they had missed during several site visits, after submitting plans and pulling permits. After we insisted on a refund of our deposit, they provided a permit release but not the plans necessary to the local government, without which we could not transfer the permit to the new contractor, costing us $900 for no discernible reason."