Thurber Engineering and Land Surveying

"I never received a phone call or email from anyone in Winchester. Our company does not do work in Winchester anyway so I cannot say what this is about. Our service area is clearly mapped."

"This review was not unexpected! Clearly if you look at the second paragraph of this persons review, it appears he has problems and difficulty with numerous angieslist providers, not just me. Could the problem be his and not ours. His first sentence is correct. The rest are absolutely false. He did ask me what time I would be at the site. I told him I expected to be there near 10AM. I did have a job I was working on prior to his. Occasionally we surveyors run into some difficulty while performing a survey and additional time is expended. He did not tell me he would be waiting at the property for me. If he had told me I could have called him to tell him I was delayed. I finished the job I was doing in McLean and went to his property. I was at the property by 11AM. His statement that I did not go to his property until he called was a lie. I was working at his property when he called. I spoke with him as I was walking around the property. He was belligerent and very difficult to understand. I was trying to explain to him the difficulty I was having making boundary determinations. The problem with this land is that it was part of a 5 lot subdivision created many years ago. For whatever reason the original surveyor did not place any markers at the lot corners of any of the 5 lots. Surveyors do need a starting point. I was trying to explain this to the land owner and asked him if he had been provided a survey when he bought the property as this would assist me in making a determination of the boundary lines. That is when he began a tirade about me being the surveyor and why did I need any of that stuff. I am somewhat stunned by his launching into me because of a simple request. No other land owner has ever had a problem providing me with a copy of a survey if they have one. The survey that homeowners do provide helps by giving me something to compare. I have found that I do agree with the vast majority of the surveys that are provided but there are times that I am in disagreement with the surveys. If there is a significant discrepancy I can provide the homeowner an explanation as to why there is a difference in the surveys. This homeowner proceeded to give me ultimatums about finishing the work in a timely (his clock) manner. I tried to explain that the Commonwealth of Virginia dictates how I do the work and that if I fall below minimum standards I could jeopardize my license. I not only have a duty to the person that hires me, I also have a duty to all land owners that border on the land I am surveying. The neighbors interest in me doing my job correctly is an interest I don't take lightly. The last thing I want to do is create a border war because I rushed through a job without consideration for doing the job correctly. My apologies will ring hollow when I have done something that starts a border conflict between neighbors. Most land owners want the job done right the first time not after bad blood has spilled. In this instance there were no clear property line markers or lines of possession so this was going to take a bit longer than usual and no amount of ultimatums by the homeowner was going to change that. The last paragraph are just ad hominem attacks on me and angieslist. My background as a land surveyor includes providing expert witness testimony in 3 separate trials, 2 in King George Circuit Court and one in Stafford General District. I was also deposed in another land bounday issue. All 4 matters listed above were decided in my clients favor. The 2 King George trials lasted a full 8 hours. Clearly a Circuit Court Judge believes I know what I am doing."

"I greatly appreciate the review. It does cause a bit of difficulty when fees for service are published by my clients. The problem is that no 2 surveys are similar. There are differences in land area, locations, information needed for the survey, purpose of survey, etc. I hope this may explain differences in fees that are published in the reviews."

"I first need to apologize to this angieslist member and angieslist itself. Angieslist has been a true blessing to my business and their members have been remarkable clients of mine over the past 3 years or so. This particular job request must have been lost. It is possible that emails went to my spam folder. I do look through the spam folder because I have been contacted by an angieslist member only to have their request end up in the spam folder. Another possibility is that if the request was made through my website using the online form, The form may have been accidentally deleted. I do occasionally get requests using the online form that end up being junk from Nigerian cyber cafes asking me to buy certain unmentionable items or trying to direct me to their favorite website. Sometimes this misuse of my online form comes in waves of 3 or 4 per day. I do read them just to be careful not to delete a legitimate use of the forms. As to the phone call and voice mail, that must have been my oversight and negligence. I get many phone calls during a day and when I am not with my phone I do get numerous voice mails during a day. I do my best to return calls in a timely manner. I may not have made a notation of this particular call. This particular property was only 3 miles from my office whereas most of my work is 50 to 75 miles from my office. So not getting this job is a painful reminder for me to be more diligent. So again I do apologize to the angieslist member and to all of the angieslist membership."