Crones & Associates Inc

It went badly, and I regret hiring this company. Their field crew was sloppy and their office crew was dismissive. The first thing that seemed off was that they wanted full payment up front before any work was done. Often, this is the warning of a take-the-money-and-run type of company, and I've not before hired a contractor who wanted this. Because of this, I asked to pay 50% up front and the remainder on the day of the survey, and was told I could. I signed the contract via email, scheduled a date, and was told over the phone that I didn’t need to be at home when the crew came out. The day of the survey (4/25), the two-man crew showed up, parked in my driveway, and never came to say “Hi, we’re here.” I’ve had other work done on my house and property where I didn’t need to be home, but those contractors always came and told me they’d arrived. It seems like common courtesy. I had to leave before they were done, and they were gone by the time I got home. There were corner posts around the property which I understood and pink tape pounded flush to the ground in several other spaces which I did not understand. I emailed Elizabeth at the office, my only point of contact so far, to authorize charging the rest of the cost to my card and said I had a few questions and would call about them. She said she couldn’t answer them, and I’d need to wait until Friday (it was Wednesday) for all the info from the survey to be processed and that I should contact John or Jeremy in the office to have technical questions answered. We had a family matter come up and I wasn’t able to do that. The following Wednesday (5/2), I got an email from Elizabeth telling me that there were 3 encroachments and that this needed to be filed with the county for an additional $425 charge and that I would get a final map emailed to me when that was done. She said I needed to call the office to authorize the charge to my card. Along with the email was an attached PDF of the property lines, corners, and encroachments. (Our property has three points along the back property line. One in the SW corner, one in the NW corner, and then an additional one about 1/3 of the way north of the SW corner. It is slightly closer to the house than the other two markers. We suspected this before getting the survey, and it was one of the reasons we wanted the lines marked correctly before building a fence.) I was confused by the list of encroachments and the map in the email. The email said the fence in the NW corner was 0.9 inches (it said inches, not feet) west of the property line. I asked her to clarify which fence was meant because there are two fences in that corner: A wood one that belongs to the NW neighbor and a chain link one belonging to the next door neighbor. She responded that it didn’t matter what the fence was made of or who it belonged to, they needed to file with the county, and then she told me to look up the RCW regarding that. I was taken aback. First, I felt I was being treated like I was trying to get out of paying for or filing the record of survey. I was not. Second, I was trying to figure out the specifics so I knew which fence and which neighbor we were talking about, so what the fence was made of did matter. I found her email rude. Then the bigger problem came up. Her list in the email and the PDF map said that the fence along the back of the property was 4 feet (3.9 to be exact) west of the property line. When I asked for clarification, she said that it was nearly 4 feet inside our property and we could lose that property. She wasn’t paying attention. Our property is east of the property line; the neighbors are west. A fence west of the property line is on their property, not ours. At this point, I was fed up and went out and actually walked the back line. The PDF they sent did not match what the crew had placed. The map also didn’t differentiate between the two different wood fences belonging to two different neighbors, one the NW neighbor and one the W neighbor. Those two fences were treated as one on the map. I measured with a tape measure from the middle corner marker which was only 18 inches from the fence, not 4 feet. I took a photo of the tape measure between the fence and the corner marker showing this. Here is the issue. Their map didn’t match their markers and they were going to file that incorrect paperwork with the county as an official record. On May 6, I emailed the photo and the explanation of how the map didn’t match the markers to Elizabeth. She forwarded it on to Jeremy telling him she’d explained all she could to me and that he needed to "address my issues.” He replied to me that yes, something did seem off, and they’d need to send a crew back out. He also told me again of the need to file with the county. So we scheduled a day (5/17) for the crew to come back out. I never heard back from them what time that would be. The day before, I emailed both Elizabeth and Jeremy asking after the time. I got no response. I called Jeremy and left a message. I got no response. My husband called Jeremy and left a message. He got no response. Finally, on the morning of, I called the main line and stayed on it until someone actually told me. Jeremy finally got on the phone and said they didn’t know for sure because it would depend on when the crew finished with their morning job. That was fine. All I wanted was some sense of when they were coming. Later that day, I got another call from Jeremy saying he was coming out because the crew couldn’t make it. He showed up with his young son. He noted that the original crew didn’t actually measure the fence. They just plotted NW corner to SW corner, didn’t take the middle corner into account or the fact it was two different fences, and drew a line. Jeremy left. I expected to get an updated email with the correct list of encroachments, a corrected map, and a renewed request for me to authorize the charge to my card now that everything was fixed. I did not. I received no communication of any sort. However, in going through my credit card charges a few days later, I saw that Crones had charged $425 to my card on 5/21. Not only did they not get my authorization to do so, they never let me know they were doing it. I was exhausted from trying to deal with them and getting nowhere, so I let it sit, assuming they would get back to me in a timely manner with the official map. It took over two months to hear anything. On July 26th, Gary from Crones emailed me saying he was attaching my ROS (record of survey). There was no attachment. I emailed Gary back an hour later saying it looked like the attachment had been left off and asking him to resend. No response. I emailed him again 7/31. No response. I emailed again 8/14 and copied Elizabeth and Jeremy. No response. I did not want to call them because, by that point, I wanted everything in writing. On November 13, 2019, over a year later, I got an email from Jeremy with the map attached. He said that they have a record of having attached the map to the original email from July 2018 and maybe my email provider stripped it. I have no reason to doubt him, but that doesn’t address the fact I emailed back three times asking about the map and no one got back to me. I am frustrated that I was made to feel like a pest through the whole process when their survey crew did not do their job correctly, their first map didn’t match the markers they put down, they wouldn’t respond to me asking when someone was coming to my house, my card was charged without my authorization, I got no response asking about the second map, so I didn’t receive it for 16 months. This is all on top of the fact that if I hadn’t pushed back, they would have filed incorrect paperwork with the county.

I could not have been happier with the experience. They offered a great price. Easy going friendly service. Put me on a cancelation list and found a way to provide the service only a few days after I contacted them. Two professional and friendly employees called ahead as requested, showed up on time, made sure that they provided everything I needed, including a couple midway markers. Also, they showed up with what seemed to be some fancy equipment. They had no issues finding any corners, They were able to telescope up the receiver unit by 15ft to put a stake in what was basically a hole. They pretty much had the whole job done in about 2 hours. Highly recommended. BTW, I am not related or friends with anyone at this company. I was just really satisfied. I bought an old home from an original owner, and this was one of the many jobs that just seemed to go perfectly smooth.

A two-person surveying team appeared promptly and located the lot corners, accepted full payment from me, then left. So far, so good. However, no map was produced (as of two months later) so I still don't have the information I really needed. Also, Crones asked for an additional $450 to prepare and submit a plan to King County, asserting that a small retaining wall supporting a path around the neighbors house represented an "encroachment". (Ridiculous!) Despite repeated requests the map has still not been delivered, and no one from Crones has provided a coherent story about the so-called encroachment.