WML ARCHITECTURE

I thought he was a nice guy when I called his office. His secretary wasn't very ... I didn't like her, let's put it like that. The reason I didn't use him is because I didn't like you know, the secretary spoke to me in a condescending manner. She sent me the information and then I called her to get clarification on the documentation that she had sent me, you know, an explanation. And she'd say well, don't you have the paperwork or something like that, instead of saying well I don't really know anything about that, maybe you need to speak to the architect. I did call him afterwards about it, and he said oh well, she doesn't know anything so really you should've talked to me. I just didn't care for that. Him personally, the only thing I didn't like about him was that when he looked at the job I guess I asked him "well can I get a report on this?" I asked him something and he said well, not until you pay. I was saying to myself, "well do you think that I'm not gonna pay?" That was kind of a little sourness, but it didn't really totally turn me off until I spoke to her. But anyway, he was doing some work in town and he did a whole renovation on a house and some other stuff, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know, he might be a good guy, he might be a good company, I don't know. You know, the only thing I can say is maybe it was a bad day, or blah, blah, blah. I guess the fair thing to do unless I have more contact with him would be to just give them a C overall. I don't know if that's really valid or not, but to be fair, I think that would be the fairest thing I could do. The other thing was, it was more sort of like a retainer in the sense that it was like $1,000 to start, and then he was gonna send people in to look and go through the building and blah, blah, blah. I've never really used an architect before. I kind of felt like well, what is this gonna cost me. I'm paying $1,000 and when I pay that initially I know that that's probably gonna be gone, so what is this gonna eventually cost me. So it wasn't like oh it's gonna cost you X Y Z; it's $1,000 and this is what we're gonna do. But it was sort of like the dead end to the building. Because what this was, was a building I've wanted to run through a grant program in Asbury Park, NJ and they wanted an evaluation of the structural integrity of the building. The first letter I had received from them was to get an architect and later on, actually the beginning of this year because I hadn't really done the project, I was still going through with this, trying to get this through. I got another letter saying get a structural engineer or architect and I got myself a structural engineer, another provider, and it only cost me $700. I was very happy with them; they had very good customer service, very down-to-earth. So in the long run, I guess it was the best thing. For pricing, for me it was sort of like an open ended thing, so I'm gonna have to give them a D because I just had a structural engineer go in there and it was $600 something, so round it off to $700. For responsiveness, as far as me calling them and him getting to me and meeting up, maybe a B. I'm trying to be fair. The architect was very professional; I don't feel that the person I spoke to in the office had good customer service skills.