MULTICRAFT HOMES

On April 16, 2007 we engaged in a contract with Multicraft Homes to build a one-bedroom detached garage-apartment on our property in Charlotte, for my 63 year old mother. The original cost was more than $128,000 and the project was verbally promised between eight and twelve weeks. In the end, the budget exceeded the original cost by more than $11,000 and we didn t receive an official Certificate of Occupancy until March 21, 2008. This project was filled with inaccuracies, broken promises, errors upon errors, oversights, a 40% failed inspection rate and a litany of unapproved change orders. With no place to live, we were forced to move my mother into the unit on August 31, 2007 without a Certificate of Occupancy in an effort to bring the project to completion. In addition, we accrued thousands of dollars in repairs we had to pay ourselves because of errors caused by Multicraft, including the entire replacement of the power supply which failed in August 2008 and was supposed to be under warranty, but not honored by Multicraft. We have a comprehensive list of all errors, but fearing that our review will not be posted for its length, we ve refrained from laundry-listing every specific problem that occurred when we engaged in business with Multicraft. The one glowing issue that we are compelled to warn other consumers about however includes a member of the Multicraft staff using a credit card to physically break into the apartment even though my mother was living in it at the time. The bottom line is that Mr. Croswell is an excellent salesman who did a great job of convincing us to use him instead of the other contractors we were considering. He told us that he d personally ensure that we were satisfied at every stage of the process and that he d be on site more often than not. Over the course of the project, there were several days (consecutively) when no work was performed even though we had pending issues and the weather was fine. And we never saw Mr. Croswell unless there were problems that required his executive decision. Unfortunately, we ve since learned that these decisions often included the cheapest solution possible - inevitably leading to more delays, increased budgets and mounting frustration for us. Note: We paid all of the original costs in full, on time and without hesitation. We did not pay the excess costs, however, as these costs were never approved (or even brought to our attention) and were the direct result of mistakes made by Multicraft during the life of this project. Additionally, these charges were hidden from us until October 2007, were neither reported to us nor authorized by us. We have no doubt that Mr. Croswell will attempt to respond to this critique with as much credibility as he can muster. But trust us when we say that we wouldn t recommend hiring Multicraft to build a doghouse, much less something as important as an addition. There are just some people in the world who are dishonest. Don t be fooled.