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Toll's customer service challenged By Michael Rezendes and Matt Carroll, Globe Staff, 4/30/01
WEB-ONLY
OTHER PARTS
WBZ-TV reporter Ron Sanders and photographer Tom Rehkamp joined in the Globe investigation. Watch their reports on RealVideo.
PART ONE
The Globe Spotlight Team would like to hear from readers willing to share their experiences -- or thoughts -- about new home construction. The Spotlight telephone number is (617) 929-3208. Confidential messages about new home construction and other issues can also be left at (617) 929-7483. You can email Spotlight at spotlight@globe.com.
But Toll customers interviewed by the Globe say that's precisely what the company often does when presented with evidence of construction defects or even simple cosmetic flaws.
Consider the case of Manuel and Cecelia Bengzon, Toll homeowners in Chester, N.J. They complained repeatedly about discolored kitchen cabinets until they finally gave up and decided to pay for renovations themselves.
"Of course we complained to Toll Brothers," Manuel Bengzon said. "They gave us the runaround and I finally got tired of it and said, 'The hell with it.' "
Or take Francis and Lynn Shea, who bought a Toll Brothers home in Franklin four years ago and are still waiting for the company to replace a leaky decorative panel above their front door -- even though a new panel purchased by Toll two years ago is in the Sheas' garage.
"They used to respond to our letters of complaint with a phone call but that was just to put us off," said Lynn Shea. "Now they don't respond at all. They just don't seem to know we're here anymore.... You'd think it would be a lot easier for them to simply fix it than have to listen to us complain about it."
Some Toll houses have such serious defects that the company has bought them back. But much more typical, the Globe found, are the many Toll home buyers -- like the Sheas -- who say the company routinely ignores complaints about a wide array of other defects that don't necessarily affect the structural viability of a home.
At the same time, other Toll buyers persistent enough to get a company response said workers often fail to correct the problems they're assigned to address.
Gary Jodha, a Toll buyer in West Windsor, N.J., won a lawsuit that forced Toll to buy back his home. But before he sued, Jodha said, Toll workers tried and failed to repair sagging floors on several occasions, though they managed to fill his ventilating system with concrete dust every time.
In a written response to a question from the Globe, Toll Brothers said, "We believe that we are the best in our industry in following up with our customers. We meet or exceed the expectations of the overwhelming majority of our homeowners."
But sometimes, when customers with construction defects push especially hard, Toll pushes back -- by blaming buyers for the problems in their homes or threatening to tie them up in court.
Three years ago, Mark and Anna Shafir were so angry with what they felt was Toll's lackadaisical response to their complaints about defects in their Canton home that they passed out leaflets in other Toll subdivisions. Toll sent them a letter threatening legal action, then slapped them with a lawsuit.
And as the Globe reported yesterday, Toll attorney Michael Araten suggested to Edward and Mary Bobka that Toll might be willing to repurchase their defective Franklin home. But Araten warned the Bobkas that he would tie them up in court "with a half decade or so of litigation" if they discussed their case with the Globe. The newspaper had interviewed the couple the month before.
At about the same time, Toll offered to repurchase another trouble-plagued Franklin home from Stanley and Eunice Kozikowski. But in a letter making the offer to their attorney, Toll attorney Thomas M. Hoopes cited another legal case where the Kozikowskis had made damage claims. The defense attorney in the other case, Hoopes wrote, "has told us that he has a psychological evaluation of one of your clients, which indicates that the claimed damage was in your client's head."
The Kozikowskis have angrily asserted that no such evaluation was ever done. And, when pressed on the issue by the Globe, Hoopes acknowledged that he has been unable to determine how the lawyer in the other case acquired the evaluation.
Toll Brothers, asked about such tactics, said in a written response that "in extremely rare circumstances," legal proceedings "by their very nature" can amount to "an unpleasant experience for all of those involved."
In other cases that never reach the legal stage, some home buyers say, Toll Brothers tries to saddle them with responsibility for the defects they discover.
A case in point: When Ginter and Cynthia Sotrel of Canton discovered their kitchen counter was sinking, Cynthia Sotrel said a Toll representative asked her if she'd been standing on it.
"I can assure you I don't spend my time standing on the kitchen counter. I thought that was very discourteous," she said.
Dave Ditzler, who paid nearly $900,000 for a Toll home in Coto de Caza, Calif., earlier this year, had a more bizarre experience.
While his home was being built, Ditzler said, he smelled urine on walls and floors during visits to the site. Toll blamed wild animals visiting the home at night. But on a subsequent visit with a Toll vice president, Ditzler found fresh urine dripping off second-floor insulation near a group of shame-faced painters.
Such finger-pointing can even come from high level Toll officials. Steve and Nancy Norman of Brentwood Glen, Tenn., said they were accused by a Toll regional manager of pouring water on their bedroom floor when they complained about a leaky roof. The manager has denied making the remark.
Chuck Steward, who lives in Sharon, complained about an ugly seam in a Berber carpet -- an expensive Toll option -- only to be told by a supervisor who'd never visited his house that Steward had caused the problem with a vacuum cleaner. When Steward persisted with his complaint, a Toll worker corrected the problem by having the carpet ironed, a standard procedure the initial installer had neglected to perform.
Which led Steward to a conclusion often drawn by other Toll customers: "This guy was conditioned to try to give you some kind of answer off the bat to get you off his back."
Some Toll homeowners believe the company has bottom-line reasons for procrastinating on warranty claims, believing that most customers will eventually tire of complaining, and either pay for repairs themselves or live with the results of shoddy workmanship.
"Builders on the whole don't want to take care of what they're required to because it's money," said Dana Block, a Toll Brothers homeowner in Sharon Woods who had to fight to get Toll to address her problems.
And Block, like other Toll customers, said that when Toll finally responds, it is often by sending second-rate workers who fail to correct problems.
Attorneys who represent home buyers hold similar views.
"For every lawsuit filed there are 10 people out there who have a major problem and just decide to live with it," said David Schweizer, a New Jersey attorney who has sued Toll on behalf of one client. Typically, he said, when owners complain, Toll and other large builders return only to make cosmetic changes. "They just try and wear you down until you go away."
Yet no one in Toll's top management stresses accountability more than the Toll brothers themselves.
In an interview with the Globe, for example, Robert I. Toll, the company's chairman, said Toll has built a reputation for responding to complaints "better than anyone else's."
And in a remark that might give hope to home buyers with outstanding problems, Toll said: "Every once in a while we find a customer is overreaching. But I would say that seven out of every eight complaints have merit."
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/30/2001.
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© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Co. |
hen it comes to customer service, Toll Brothers is adamant: No other home builder responds to complaints as conscientiously. "We don't just deliver the house and walk away from it," says Toll Vice Chairman Bruce E. Toll, in the company's Web site video.
Among the problems faced by Mark and Anna Shafir: loose kitchen tiles and buckling cardboard on a custom kitchen island. (Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)
