Worthington Waterproofing Systems LLC Response
11/04/2022
We would like to take this opportunity to respond to your review and let you know why we stand behind the work that we have done at your home. If you recall, our Vice President of Production tried to have a conversation with you to discuss all your concerns, which resulted in you hanging up on him before he could finish. We have since provided details to you numerous times via email and we are yet to receive a response from you until you posted this negative review. Please see below for a detailed response to your complaints.
First, we would like to address the sump pump discharge for the garage. Your complaint was that the discharge needed to be buried and be located all the way out to the street. Please note that the contract you signed never had any mention of a buried discharge for the garage sump pump discharge. You informed us that you had a conversation with the inspector about the garage sump pump discharge to be buried and would discharge into the street about 100ft from the sump pump. We did our due diligence and spoke with the inspector, and he stated that it had not been discussed. However, regardless of that, we still did our best to accommodate you to resolve this matter. It was agreed upon that Worthington Basement Health Systems (WBHS) would complete this portion of the job for free to the best of our ability. But after doing a lengthy diagnosis of the situation, our foreman and VP of Production determined that it would not be possible to run a buried discharge out to the street like you requested. There are multiple reasons for our decision which have previously been communicated to you. As a reminder, the reasons are:
1. Per code we cannot discharge our sump pump into the street.
2. Due to the physics of the layout of your property we found that it was not possible. The reason is because the street is located at a higher elevation than the sump pump which is located at the garage. A sump pump cannot discharge water 100ft at an upward elevation. Completing the work this way would have resulted in the pump running constantly, which would lead to a significantly shortened pump life, and a drainage system that would not function properly and ultimately would have failed.
After you were informed about these issues, we spoke about how we can move forward with the drainage system so that the water is discharged away from the garage. We came up with an idea to do a discharge that would be above ground and would be located next to your fence. You did not like the idea of a white pipe being visible above ground, so we offered to install a grey pipe instead which would match the color of your fence. Once you agreed to move forward with that, we completed the work by installing a grey discharge pipe and fastened it to your fence so that it would be secure. This work was completed at no additional cost to you despite it not being included in our original contract. As to your claim that the pipe comes out 4’ above ground – a review of pictures from the work shows the pipe coming out less than 12” above ground. We do not dispute that it is not the prettiest thing in the world, but it is better than a swampy back yard, or water in your garage, or a pump that runs constantly and burns out. (All of which are the only other alternatives available)
Next, we’d like to address the job being delayed due to the permit not being obtained. This was a miss on our part, and we would like to take this opportunity, again, to apologize for the inconvenience this caused. As we have previously discussed with you, WBHS is unique in the way that we hire a third-party permit processor to verify permit requirements for every job and obtain permits when necessary. Unfortunately, yours slipped through the cracks as we were transitioning to this new process. We have not tried to make excuses for this, but rather own up to it, apologize, and move forward.
We will address the electrical concern next. According to the signed contract that we have on file, you agreed to complete the demolition prior to WBHS coming out to start our work. The finished walls in the basement needed to be demolished so that we could access the foundation walls to install parging. . You were unable to complete the demo needed prior to our visit, so you requested that we do the demolition. We gladly agreed to complete the demolition for an additional cost and ordered a dumpster, which is necessary to complete the work. We removed the finished wall materials as per our agreement and the electrical outlets were left wired and hanging from the drop ceiling. You were given the option for us to disconnect and remove the electrical wiring so that the outlets would not be hanging from the ceiling, and you chose to not have that done. As a result, we left the live outlets hanging from the ceiling. We are not licensed electricians and we do not deal with live electrical wiring for that reason. It was discussed prior to the start of the job that when you re-finish your basement, you will need to hire a contractor or electrician to resecure your outlets to the 2x4 framing. It is important to note that if the demolition had been completed by you according to our signed contract agreement, then we would not have been in a position to get involved with the electrical at all. We completed this portion of work to the best of our ability, and clearly communicated that you would need to handle the electrical after our work was completed.
When you asked for someone from WBHS to come to your home to discuss your concerns, we jumped on the opportunity to come out and see if there was anything that could be done to leave you satisfied. We spent time discussing this as a company, reviewing the pictures, contracts, change orders and your concerns. We confidently concluded that the work that we had done was correct and effective for what you agreed upon at the start of this job. We stand behind our work and at this time, there is no further work that could improve upon your current situation.
We tried to contact you numerous times to discuss this with you and we were unsuccessful in reaching you.
The final invoice was sent to you on 8/29/2022 in the amount of $24,500 following the passed inspection. We then sent another payment request on 9/14/2022, despite the fact that our contract states that all final balances must be paid within 7 business days of receiving the final invoice. A third invoice was sent on 10/19, and a fourth attempt on 10/27 after we still had not received payment or a response from you. We gave you a deadline to send in your payment and mentioned that if we did not hear from you or receive payment, we would have to involve our legal team. At that time, you had agreed to bring in legal and take things to the next level, despite our efforts to try to avoid going down that path. Once we made you aware that we had passed this over to legal, we saw this review and felt the need to promptly respond.
Your original estimate was performed by an inspector who is Certified by the Basement Health Association. Your job was managed by our Vice President of Production who is TRIPLE Certified by the Basement Health Association (one of only 4 people in the country to achieve that designation. He is also a former U.S. Marine), and your job was installed by a Foreman who has been working in this capacity for the Worthington family for over 20 years. While we are all human and everyone makes mistakes sometimes, we do strive for excellence and we take the quality of our work very seriously. That being said, we stand behind what we have done and the actions that we have taken to communicate with you and to collect the balance owed. And finally – this probably could have all been avoided if you hadn’t hung up on our VP of Production when he was trying to explain everything to you. But now, here we are. We would still like to avoid any further escalation of this into legal action, but we cannot avoid that if you will not communicate with us. The work has been performed, it works as intended, it has passed inspection, and the balance is past due. If you would like for us to disengage in the legal process, please pay the balance due promptly, at which point you will have full warranty coverage.