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"Ordered and paid for custom awning that was to take 5 weeks. Its now been 16 weeks and still waiting. Owner is at best noncommunicable and at worst, rude. I'm now wondering if this is a scam and not a real business."

"It has been over three years and the work is not completed. I, stupidly, paid in full because I needed the work done. My husband had ALS and was dying. These projects were to make our home easier for him to get around. My husband died before the projects were completed. Will has ignored my attempts to contact him to complete the work. The gutters on the addition don't work correctly and my basement is being flooded with the roof run off. My phone lines are getting wet and cause a buzzing sound on my phone. The foundation is eroding from the water poring off the addition roof. He won't return my phone calls and now his voice box is full. I am battling cancer and severe arthritis and I can't afford to hire someone else. My advice is stay clear of All American Builders in Sidney, NY."

"We used The Powell Company for several jobs on our house near Oneonta before realizing our mistake, so we have the experience to warn others. First, this company makes some very stupid “mistakes”. For example, they put a downspout directly over an electrical outlet, and they replaced items on our house that were NOT the rotted ones. We had to call them back to move the downspout so it wouldn’t block the outlet, and to replace the correct items; they got angry and blamed US for cutting into their profit because doing the work the right way would cost them money. Second, they cut corners or use cheap materials despite the impact on their customers; for example, they used plastic gutter brackets that broke in a season instead of metal ones that hold up year after year. Third, good builders try to think ahead and account for contingencies in a project in advance and fairly, but in our experience Powell didn’t use its imagination because it just put all risk of an unknown or cost overrun on us. This can result in large avoidable and unnecessary costs for the homeowner. Third, being lawyers, we recognized that proposals Powell gave us, which become binding contracts once signed, were, in our opinion, unfairly one-sided — they protected only Powell in any contingency that arose during their work and if any litigation came from the contract. We tried to change this to protect ourselves too, but could not. We have found other builders who are fairer from the get-go, or who will promptly agree to changes to lopsided proposals, and such an attitude speaks volumes. Last, but certainly not least, we foolishly didn’t get other bids for a few jobs that Powell did. When we wised up, we found that Powell cost 2-4 times what other builders did for the jobs we were doing. Bottom line — we caution anyone considering using The Powell Company."