WISDOM STRUCTURAL

Vinny and his team were great!! We needed to get the work done quickly as we were selling our house and needed the work done before we closed. Heather at the office worked extra hard to get the permits pulled and were able to fit us in sooner than I thought they would be able to. The workers were extremely polite and professional. They have done work twice on my house and both times we had a great experience.

Seth came and checked my foundation and said no action was necessary. I'm still waiting for them to bill me for the visit.

They asked the right questions, and determined it was because of the bushes, because the roots by the house. We eventually moved them, and they filled in the cracks. He even gave us some recommendations on how to prevent other issues.

It turned out well. They did well. They did a good job. Everything turned out really well. They were hard to get a hold off a lot at that time. They weren't very good at communication. I would use them in the future.

Scott comes across a a real business guy who knows what he's doing. We were told we would have a report on a house we were buying within the week. We paid the $100 Scott required. The end of the week came and went no report. We have called numerous times but we keep getting the run around. Last Thursday I was told because it was such a large report it would be Friday before the report would be ready. Well Friday came and no report. Then of course it was a holiday weekend. So Tuesday morning I called again I was told Scott would call us back. No return calls. Then later in the day after many calls we were told Scott had a few questions to ask so he could finish report he would call us at 6pm. Guess what? No call, no answers at the office and they took my money and no report. Why can't Scott just return a call??? Man up and do what you say your going to do. Awful customer service, awful business management. Don't use this place

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We had to nudge to get the structural inspection and proposal; when received it was detailed; the estimate was very high in relation to others I received. I sent some follow-up questions which were never addressed.  My experience mirrors that of others re: follow-through.

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Wisdom is a very popular contractor in South Tampa and is frequently recommended by realtors, which is how we ended up doing business with Wisdom originally. However, dealing with Wisdom has never been easy and our recent involvement was very alarming. Think twice and get a second opinion before hiring Wisdom.
Wisdom provided a diagnosis of our current condition based on a critique provided by a home inspector. Wisdom proposed a scope of work and price that included significant demolition and repairs costs. The diagnosis and price were supplied by a young, and less than credible, employee of Wisdom. His recommendation was not believable and his comments disregarded prior work completed by Wisdom on our house.What a mess.
Nevertheless, based on time pressures, we indicated to Wisdom that they would be retained for the work. Wisdom then informed us that it would take months to get the work started. Because of the delays, we looked at alternatives. One company came in and immediately provided a more thorough, thoughtful and technical evaluation of our situation. The work done by the other company, Heavenly Foundations, made the diagnosis and proposal supplied by Wisdom look like a half baked, amateur effort. In fact, part of the evaluation provided by Heavenly, informed us about the low quality workmanship supplied previously by Wisdom on jobs completed a few years ago. After inspecting ourselves, we realized that we had been duped by Wisdom.
The guy from Heavenly was very competent and credible, unlike the the creep that came out from Wisdom. He quickly made a technical evaluation that had never even occurred to Wisdom even though they had been to our house on six occasions and had completed several jobs. Wisdom completely missed on both diagnosis and repair of not only the past issues, but the current matter. After spending time with Heavenly, it was no contest:
We cancelled our work with Wisdom. What followed with Wisdom, was highly disturbing, including the fact that claimed that they had obtained professional engineer's drawing for our work. How a professional engineer was able to complete detailed drawings, having never visited the site, and only based on observations of an incompetent, inexperienced person, is very suspect. In fact if this is the case, it could easily be pursued in court if we were so inclined. Totally unacceptable crap from Wisdom. The recommendations from Wisdom were without basis and we are still fuming about the treatment we received.
Heavenly set a new standard for us. After having spent over $12,000 with Wisdom, on several jobs, we realize now that they are not a competent organization and that we wasted a lot of time and money with Wisdom. We hired Heavenly and the job was wonderful.
Wisdom is well known, but be very careful about hiring them. They are novices when compared with Heavenly.
PS: We also invited Foundation Masters to look at our project. Clearly, they did nor want the work. The President, who came out, would not even go under the house to evaluate the conditions. After walking around, he told us that it would take $25,000 to make the necessary repairs. he made a lot of sweeping claims. He also kept talking about smelling and quot;Methaneand quot;. As this is an odorless gas, his credibility was even more damaged.

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They were very good. They explained the process to me well, they explained what was going to happen and what needed to be done and they were good about explaining when they were going to come in so that we could plan our day. There only drawback they had is that they are so busy. It took a while to get the estimates back and it took a while for them to actually get started on the job. They are just one of the few structural companies in the area so there's a lot of people using them.

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It went great!
He came out explained why this was occuring and removed the and quot;fearand quot; instilled by previous inspection I had from another company. He explained that the issues I've been having although major to me, were not the type of things that would cause horrific consequences. He explained what steps I could take as a home owner to slow the process of the slab displacements that were occuring and gave me a head's up what I would need to do long term.

Time from permitting to inspection approval. November 15, 2012 - December 27, 2012.
The company was very responsive to request for quote, provision of quote, and permitting. The owner and everyone in the office I spoke to were very nice and professional. The men who did the work were also very professional and were careful to clean up and remove all of the debris. I think the price was fair. The quality of the work was very good and it passed inspection the first time. The only complaint is the lack of responsiveness after the permitting was approved. We had to call multiple times to get the work started and to keep it going. Even though it was only a few days work, it took 6 weeks from permitting to completion.
I recommend Wisdom with only one word of caution, which is to be prepared to call and call to get the work completed.

paid-for repairs were reported to us as complete but were never finished, falsified even through city inspection. When discovered, Wisdom denied until 3rd independent verification then tried to secretly enter property to complete work. Owner untruthful, unavailable, refused to acknowledge, resolve, or return calls even when caught... until threat of court action...took months to correct work

They did a great job leveling. It required the addition of more piers than originally estimated, though this did not negatively impact the price. All the permitting was done and everything was inspected. The house was leveled beautifully and everything went as described in advance.
The one problem I ran into is that they damaged a portion of my air conditioning ductwork while crawling through the crawl space under the house. I wouldn't have otherwise known, but my A/C guy had to go under there for an unrelated projected and told me what had happened. (He had been under the house previously and inspected the ductwork; the damage was not pre-existing.) The owner did subsequently fix it to the satisfaction of my A/C guy, but he wasn't very communicative with me through that process.

On time, courteous. Educated me regarding houses of this age construction. Did not attempt to sell me services. Listened and gave advice on how structure is aging. Highly pleased!

We had a very urgent and time sensitive problem requiring digging out of roots that were ruining the plumbing under our home. Scott and his employees were prompt, responsive, and did a wonderful job for us without disrupting our lives. It turned out to be a very serious problem that was fixed before it could be a disaster. We would definitely recommend him and his company.

The back of my 1926 bungalow began to sag because a joist had broken. the floor was almost an inch below where it was originally. WISDOM STRUCTURAL came out gave me an estimate $350 - $400 for one adjustable pier. other companies i had come out wanted to do anywhere between 5 and 7 piers for more that $1500. WISDOM STRUCTURAL explained everything that they would do and why my house was sagging. 2 days later the worker showed up did his thing, jacked up my house and it was good as new. it only took about an hour i was amazed how fast it was. here it is almost a year later and the work has stood the test of time.

Experience 1, January 2009: Wisdom Structural was initially hired to do structural/foundation repair on a wood frame1920's bungalow that I was in the process of purchasing. The house is raised off the ground and sits on brick support piers. The whole house is made of wood. The wood floor joists in the front right corner of the house had some termite damage (structurally compromised), and several support piers were in need of repair. Wisdom Structural was recommended to me by the house inspector. They came out and wrote up an estimate and we hired then to perform the work (the seller actually paid for this work). The work that they performed in 2009 on the floor joists and support piers was good. I had the inspector come back out and look at it. The work was also performed in a timely manner. However, this this leads me to my next experience with Wisdom. Experience 2, December 2010: We had some rodents get into a in the wall in the front right corner of the house. I crawled under the house to investigate. It turns out that the rodents were getting through a hole in a termite damaged piece of wood near an exterior wall. This was exactly in the area that Wisdom had repaired the floor joists. The hole allowed the rodents to get inside of the wall. I went outside and removed the wood siding in this same area, and found that all of the wall framing was terribly termite damaged. Evidently, the termites, had eaten the floor joists and continued up the wall. This is in a corner of my house that is load bearing. In fact, this corner is supporting about 1/4 the weight of my roof. Evidently, when performing the structural repairs on the floor, Wisdom didn't think to mention that the termites probably also continued up and into the wall. In hindsight, this seems like common sense to me. I called Wisdom to come back out to look at it - along with 3 other contractors - and they told me that they charged 100 dollars to do an investigation/estimate. All of the other contractors offered free estimates. When the Wisdom employee came out for the estimate, I asked him why they didn't think to investigate the extent of any further structural damage if the floor structure had been so badly damaged by termites. He told me they had only been asked about the floor, so that's all they fixed. To me this seems quite lazy. In fact, almost negligent. It would seem that a structural engineer working in a state that has lots of termite damage would have thought of this. Furthermore as the buyer of the house, if they had told me about this, I would have insisted that the seller fix it. It would have been free money for Wisdom Structural. The Wisdom employee left after taking measurements, and I never received the written estimate, or a follow up call regarding the issue. Other reviewers on here have made similar comments regarding punctuality/professionalism of this company. All of the other contractors that I contacted responded with free estimates within 2-3 business days. Conclusion: My review might sound like I am angry that Wisdom didn't find an issue with a house that I purchased, so I blame them for purchasing it. This is not the case. I am an electrical engineer. I have fairly extensive experience with home repair, especially with older homes. I do all my own electrical, plumbing, carpentry, general maintenance. The only things that I hire out are major structural work and HVAC. I also realize that buying a house is a gamble and that sometimes you are stuck with more work than you originally thought (especially with older homes). The work that Wisdom did do initially was good. I gave them good marks for Price and Quality. However, I think that as engineers, that they should have at least mentioned or investigated the full extent of the damage. Also, they never even sent me the estimate for the follow up work to fix the damaged wall. Therefore, I gave this company very low marks for Responsiveness, Punctuality, and Professionalism. I would not use them again.

Scott Morrison came to do an assessment for our exclusion. Our home inspector referred him to us and Scott treated me with disdain and was extremely impatient with me. Regardless, I scheduled a day and time for him to come do the work and he NEVER SHOWED UP! When I called two hours after the scheduled appointment, his receptionist told me they were at another job, but that she would call Scott and then inform me when they were on their way. No one ever called back, no one ever showed up, so we called later in the day to inform them the job was terminated based upon their unresponsive and unprofessional attitude. You would think we would have received a call the next day with an apology, but no such luck. DO NOT CALL THIS COMPANY! We have since heard terrible stories about their unprofessionalism and Scott's terrible demeanor and mistreatment of customers.

I requested proposals from numerous proposals and decided to go with Wisdom since they seemed to have the most experience in the Tampa area. Wisdom proposed placing roughly a dozen pins supporting the footer down to limetsone which is roughly 35ft below ground. Upon excavating, they came across a previous owner's repair attempt where a second foundation had been poured beneath the house. They cut through this concrete and continued on without asking for additional payment.....the number one reason I would use them again. I was present for nearly all of the excavation, jackhammering of the pins, and lifting of the house. It was very obvious that the crew had done this numerous times before. A year and half later and everything's still where it should be. They will be the first company I call if I ever have another foundation or structural issue in this area.

They have a great reputation and are therefore in high demand...a fact that contributed to the lengthy delays to get the work started. Once the work began, everyone involved performed professionally and in a timely manner. Wisdom lives up to its excellent reputation.