These guys are con artists, plain and simple.
I initially signed a contract with them to build a four seasons room for the first floor of our newly purchased home. The estimate was $40,000, and I paid half upfront. They mentioned that they also do general contracting as well, and offered to do the entire first floor, which we were planning to basically re-build from scratch into an open concept layout. Since it's easier from a permitting perspective to have one GC name, I agreed to do it.
They came in, took some measurements, did some drawings and came up with a design. A few weeks in, we realized that it was going to cost too much to redo the entire first floor and build a sunroom, so we opted for a phased approach where we do the first floor first and put the sunroom on ice. It should be noted that the design was not finalized and therefore no materials were ordered at the time I decided to change scope. They were amenable to the request and we proceeded with the rest of the first floor project.
While my designer worked on coming up with a scope and layout, I asked Creative Concepts if they were willing and able to build a canopy in the front of my house. They were more than happy to do so, and said it was a separate project, separately billed. My first red flag was when the contract was on the paper of a different company. Creative Concepts told me that it was the company they use to do the actual work and it was simply more convenient if I signed on their paper. I went along with it. Their "other company"
did a horrific job on the canopy. It looked like the work of a DIY hobbyist. It was unacceptable, and I told Creative Concepts as much. Their response was, "It wasn't us, it was 'other company'" and threw their hands up. But while disavowing themselves of the whole thing, I realized that the permit we were about to submit for the project Creative Concepts said they were going to undertake but had the other company name written as the GC. I was outraged, and felt completely misled, first because Creative Concepts assured me that it was their project, and second because I wasn't about to put the most important room of my house in the hands of people who couldn't get a basic canopy right.
As it turns out, Creative Concepts is nothing more than a reseller. They aren't contractors and don't do any of the labor themselves; it's all outsourced to any number of contractors and concealed from you unless you look very closely at the permit. If something goes wrong, Creative Concepts can simply throw their hands up and say, "It wasn't us! Sorry!".
Needless to say, the entire Four Seasons/Creative Concepts/Incredible Builders/Amazing Sunroom cloak and dagger crap put me off of them completely and I decided to cancel the project outright. That's when things went from bad to a legal matter...
They claimed that if I cancel the project, there would be all sorts of cancellation fees associated with it that would make it very expensive to cancel. They didn't specify what those fees were, but after some back and forth, I settled on a basic bi-fold door system and opening up the back of the house to create an indoor/outdoor patio system. In exchange, they assured me that they would use a different contractor than the other company and there would be no cancellation fees.
So the matter is settled, right? If only.
After coming to that agreement and thinking it was a fair compromise, they then inform me that it's a new project rather than a changed project scope, and therefore all of the cancellation fees and penalties applied. And, oh, in a really funny little mathematical coincidence, the fees and penalties worked out to exactly what I put down - $20,000. Meaning, they need a new deposit for the new project.
Bottom line - they misled me about virtually every aspect of the project, and when I caught on and attempted to get out of it, they buried me with fees. There's no way they can legally justify a 50% penalty for changing the scope of a project. If it's $40,000 for labor and materials, how can half of it be accounted for when we never even progressed past the planning phase?
The matter is now in the hands of attorneys. It should go without saying that I won't be having any work done by them. And I strongly recommend that you avoid doing business with a company (and their various aliases) with practices like this. Companies that do sunrooms are plentiful. Make sure you do your homework and ensure that they have their own staff of installers who represent that company and will stand by their craftsmanship. There should be one company where the buck stops, and you should avoid with all due haste umbrella organizations like Creative Concepts. Companies like these are so densely layered that they can disavow responsibility for virtually anything that goes wrong with your project.
In summary, my advice is:
1. Make sure that the company you've contracted with is the company doing the labor
2. If not, make sure you get references not just from the company you're contracted with, by the sub-contracting organization as well
3. Make sure name on the permit is of the organization you expected to be there
4. Make sure your rights are represented and protected before you sign the contract, so you're able to get out of the project if you realize that you're not going to get the quality you expected. Nobody should be extorted into accepting shoddy work.