Ambrose Marine Construction

The wall was constructed during the water drawdown of Lake Winnisquam in the fall of 2010. The wall survived the winter of 2011, but collapsed in places during it's second winter season of 2012. The winter of 2012 was extremely mild and the lake never had a hard freeze as is typical. The wall collapsed in places and virtually all the beach sand washed into the lake as a result. Ambrose Marine said that the damage was not due to their construction even though the extremely costly wall didn't survive even two winters. They quoted us almost $3000 to repair the wall in addition to the $18,000 we had already paid. We reluctantly agreed and paid a 50% deposit to get the wall repaired before summer. Unfortunately, the repair work was poorly done. The wall looked nothing like the original, and it was still unstable in places. Smaller rocks were added to make the wall stronger, but they seemed to only wash into the lake. The work looked amateurish and ugly. Ambrose would not agree to fix the wall in kind to the original wall either structurally or aesthetically. We came to learn this would mean taking it down and reconstructing. Their repair was makeshift and we could not leave it like that given our total investment. Because of the shoddy workmanship, we got estimates from three other marine contractors to fix the wall. At this point we had spent nearly $20,000 and had an unstable and ugly wall that would never have survived another winter without collapsing entirely. All the new contractors agreed that the wall was never constructed properly in the first place. All said to repair it the right way it needed to be deconstructed completely. All agreed that the wall face was not built correctly to sustain ice damage. The face of the wall should be built on a slant so as to allow for the ice to move. Ambrose built our wall with a straight vertical face. All agreed too that the backfill was completely inadequate. Lastly and most importantly, all said that if they had built the wall and it was so badly damaged after only two years, they would have repaired the wall at no charge. They all said they stood behind their work. We contracted with a new contractor at a cost of $3800 to repair the wall. We contacted Ambrose Marine and Tobin Greer several times asking him to please refund our $1,344 deposit for repairs in light of everything. They refused. We gave them every opportunity to do the right thing but they would not refund the 1,344 which got us nothing and we should never have had to pay in the first place. Mr. Greer's response to our complaint recognizes the fact that his company's repair was "useable and secure." The idea that we did not give them the opportunity to come back and fix the wall to our liking in structure and aestetics is a moot point. They did their repair; were satisfied with the work they did; and had no intention of rebuilding the wall from scratch which is what we had to have done. How many chances were we going to give them to get it right? Clearly, their workmanship when they built the wall and when they repaired the wall spoke for itself. We could no longer spend good money after bad.