New:  Submitted 02/27/2008 Via Email From tshn****  (only the first 4 letters of the emaill address are showen)

After reading some of the letters on your website I actually feel lucky with our situation. We are in our 16^th month of dealing with Home Team Advantage. Every time, and I do mean every single time a sub or one of HTA’s people come to do work on our project they tell us how they’ve just left a job where the client has been waiting for more than 2 years. I can understand how some projects get behind schedule, things happen for a number or reasons, but with HTA it seems to be the norm. I have yet to hear of a job that ran smooth.

We signed a contract on November 6, 2006 to enclose our garage. By doing this we were expanding our master bedroom, adding a bathroom and walk-in closet. We were told by Doug Livingston it would be a 7 month project, 5 months for planning & permitting and 2 months for construction. He now says I misunderstood him, he told me 7 months for construction. HTA is not even going to make that time frame. On U.S> #1 in Pompano a McDonalds restaurant has been demolished, a new one constructed, approved and is serving billions and billions (according to the sign) since our project started. We had scheduling problems from day one. As soon as we made the initial payment everything slowed to a crawl. It took 2 ½ months to receive architectural plans with numerous mistakes. It took 9 months and 4 submittals to get plans approved through the City of Pompano. None of the delays were the City’s fault as far as I’m concerned. They reviewed and rejected the plans in 3 ½ weeks, all 4 departments. I took over 2 months for the plans to be resubmitted, again all 4 departments rejected them, nothing had been revised by HTA, plans were resubmitted only to stop our continuous calls inquiring about their status. The plans were finally approved in early August after many phone calls and complaints by us, HTA had to pay a $400 penalty to the City for excessive submittals.

We received an “ANTICIPATED SCHEDULE” on August 28, 2007, the job was to be completed November 8, 2007. That included a 2 week period at the end of September where we required HTA to cease on our job because my wife and I were going on vacation for our 30^th wedding anniversary. We did not want anyone in the house with our 3 teenage kids while we were gone. By this point we were so skeptical of HTA we refused to let them put a lock box on our house for entry, and after reading some of your letters that seems to be a good idea.

Last week HTA resumed work after a 2 month hiatus because the architectural plans needed revised. HTA did such a terrible job on the discovery and due diligence portion of our project they had to hire a second architect and structural engineer at their expense. They furnished the original architect with bad information and the city would not let them continue until the plans were corrected.

Currently our bedroom and garage are a shell, open to the elements with 6 new hurricane windows partially installed and a piece of plywood in the hole where our new bathroom window is supposed to go. Hurricane straps are finally in the process of being installed, John did not have the straps in place (even though they were onsite) when the tie-beam was poured so now the spent half a day drilling holes and using tapcons. I have been sleeping out back in our popup camper for over 2 ½ months, my wife is bunked on the living room couch at night. I have my clothes hanging in my utility shed. John said we would be out of our room for 2 to 3 weeks when he did the demolition.

John is a totally unorganized compulsive liar who can’t remember who he told what lie to, does not answer or return phone calls and could not build a dog house that would pass inspection. He is the owner of the company and can’t make a decision for himself. Doug refers to him as “Idiot John” to clients and other employees. I almost fell over at a meeting when I heard Doug say that.

Doug say’s he is no longer involved with HTA, he only does estimate work for them, when there are problems he distances himself from the company, but when its money time he’s the man.

I can tell you his wife still does solicitation for HTA, a co-worker was getting prices to remodel their kitchen 3 weeks ago, they registered with an internet service and received a call from Hillary saying she was with Home Team Advantage and wanted to set up a meeting for her husband to come over and prepare an estimate. Luckily my friend sits across the hall from me and new all about them. Doug is a smooth talking salesman, he enters your home, shows you a fancy website on your home computer, pulls out a colorful flow chart and explains how smooth your project will go. He builds himself up with an entire bag of self serving lies, (says he is a former Navy Seal). When you question something his MO is to become argumentative and threatening with babbling BS and big meaningless words. When you stand up to him he gets angry, either hangs up or finds a lame excuse to get off the phone, then he calls back in 5 minutes in his nice calm collected voice (probably after kicking the dog) and says “we really want to work with you and finish your project”. It’s nothing but a ploy to get to the next pay draw. Then everything stops and your right back in the same boat as before, nothing gets done.

HTA has a constant turnover of employees and sub-contractors, we’ve had no less than 4 construction bosses on our little project, most last 2 to 3 weeks, as soon as they don’t receive their paycheck they are gone. Every employee from HTA has complained to my wife about being owed money, all are behind on receiving payment. One guy told us he was arrested on a Monday morning for non-payment of child support because he had not received his paycheck for 3 weeks and his ex called the police. I spoke to the same guy the weekend before Christmas and he was unable to travel 15 miles to a jobsite because his truck did not have gas and he did not have money to buy gas, even though HTA owed him thousands of dollars in back pay. (THE WEEKEND BEFORE CHRISTMAS). That’s heartless.

My project consisted of adding a family room to the back of the house off of the kitchen, and enlarging the master bedroom and bathroom, taking the smallest bedroom adjoining the master bathroom for the added space. The exterior consisted of closing in an L shaped area, so essentially it is simply adding two exterior walls, tying in the roof, and demolishing the back wall of the kitchen to open it to the new family room. 

I stumbled upon the Reliable Remodeling network online and posted a description of my project. I was e-mailed by at least 5 contractors. Home Team Advantage was one of them. My “sales meeting” with Doug Livingston could be ripped right out of Sue’s horror story. The same former Navy Seal, the run-on mouth that never stopped talking to listen to what the customer really wanted. He claimed to be a computer expert who adapted Critical Path Management software to managing his construction projects and showed my partner and me a complex flow chart that hardly made any sense. For us, a gay interracial couple, he played the flaming “gay South-Beach designer” song and dance routine. In addition, he claimed to have a gay brother and that his sister married a black man! What he won’t say! 

He added a philanthropic bent to the sales pitch too! He told us that he does not make money on exterior additions, that he does it to give back to the community and that he makes enough money on the kitchen and bath renovations he does. He told us that is where the money is! To prove his philanthropic bona-fides he told us his father gave the state of Maryland a lot of land to keep as a wildlife preserve and that would keep the land from ever being developed.  

I too thought I checked him and Home Team Advantage thoroughly enough. But like so many others I missed the criminal charges pending against him and John Ostendorf from their HomeCo days and missed too the slew of unhappy homeowners they are leaving behind in their new Home Team Advantage moniker. I too found the Better Business Bureau useless and Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation asleep at the job. For your information, the regulations that are supposed to protect the consumer were written by the construction industry for the benefit of the contractors and not the customer.  

We agreed to work with Home Team Advantage and accepted their proposal; for that, Doug asked for a $5,000 check. We signed the contract in late February or early March and he immediately asked for another $7,100 check.  One of the reasons I went with Home Team Advantage was due to their “system” of 10 draws during the process.

I already had plans drawn up by an architect. But because I was not fully satisfied with the plans so I had the architect change them.  By the time I got the revised plans and they were reviewed by the city and then revised by the architect again, and a final permit issued, it was Friday, July 13, a precipitous day of which I should have been suspicious. But I am not superstitious!  

John Ostendorf was at my door lickety-split to collect the next $7,100 draw. He said that he would have a permit box installed the next day on the property, that he would prepare a schedule over the weekend, and that he would have a dumpster delivered the next day so demolition of an outside kitchen that was in the way of the addition could commence.

I asked him how long the entire project would take and he told me 12 weeks!

Being it was a Friday, I doubted that a dumpster would be delivered the next day. Sure enough it was not. In fact it took more than 2 weeks for it to be delivered. Then, he had the audacity to ask me to be present to pay for the dumpster. I declined! 

It is now December and I have fired these clowns and alleged criminals. Between July 13 and now, virtually nothing was done on my property. We repeatedly called them to get the project started. Here is a summary of what was done and not done:

There is still no permit box at my house.

His crew came and converted my side fence in to a gate for access to the back yard, which was done poorly, is barely standing up, and not parallel to the house, as was the fence panel before his crew worked on it.

His crew came and used landscape paint to outline where the form for the slab should go, before demolishing the small cement patio and outside kitchen. Of course when the demolition was complete, the outline was gone. No framing of the slab was ever done.

In early to mid August after being tired of having an empty dumpster at our house and having not seen his crew since working on the fence,  my partner and I demolished the outside kitchen ourselves. The demolished kitchen, decking, and cement patio sat in our backyard, stressing our cat for another 2 to 3 weeks.

On Labor day weekend his crew finally showed up to remove the debris and put it in the dumpster. Once filled on Labor Day weekend, the dumpster sat there until mid October before it was removed after repeated calls by us.

It was not until I got my lawyer on the case that I was given a schedule, emailed to us on November 15^th that stated work would start on November 12^th. The schedule he issued showed everything being done within 60 days. Even I knew that was a preposterous schedule.

Of course during the July to November time frame we were given many excuses and even attributed the blame:

1) Doug had battery acid splashed on his face.

2) Doug had a 3 week family vacation driving through Georgia.

3) John smashed his hand.

4) In late August phone conversation, “school is back in session, summer vacations were now ending” and his slab crew was now available. Doug promised weekly updates, every Wednesday. The first came the following Friday, but never again did we get an update call.

5) In early October John decided to visit the house, the dumpster still being there. He said Doug criticized his customer service skills and insisted that he keep me up to date with weekly calls. He said he’d call me on Fridays. Never did we receive a call.

6) In mid October, Doug was saying, “You want the project done right not fast, with the best people, not just anyone, right?

7) “We denied them access to the property.” (We only denied them the opportunity to demolish our bathroom before they would show us any progress on the slab, outside walls and roof framing!)

8) “We were away for an extended period.” (It is true I was away on vacation and business for 10 days, but my partner was gone for only 4 of those days and 2 of them were weekend days.)

While I am currently out a lot of money, I at least do not have an unlivable home like some people who have dealt with these clowns. Had we let them start the interior demolition we would be in the same boat as many of their customers