I’ve been pretty quiet for a couple weeks since we were getting ready for the new house, moving into the new house, and dealing with all the fun new house issues.

The good news is the house is incredible- it’s been amazing to design and build this thing almost from scratch. Nearly everything is exactly the way we want it; it will be a long time before we have to do any kind of upgrading. The community is even better, and one of the main reasons we picked this area. Our neighbors came over this weekend to introduce their kids (to our cats, since we don’t have kids) and they brought cookies. Cookies! How often does that happen anymore?

The bad news is the builder (Toll Brothers) doesn’t quite understand that customer service is still important after someone buys their product and moves in. We had a number of things identified on our last walkthroughs that weren’t completed. Eventually, our construction manager just stopped answering his phone or returning calls. We’re now on warranty, and I’ve submitted our issues, but we’ll see how well they respond.

When I mentioned my exasperation with construction to our neighbors they gave us a knowing grin. Our experiences aren’t unique, and once Toll Brothers gets you into the house their responsiveness drops significantly. It’s too bad; our build experience was great, but last week they drove me to drink. And not in the nice way where I give them my keys. I took almost 2 weeks off work to get the house ready to go, and literally lost days of my vacation waiting around for imaginary service calls. They wasted my time for no good reason than they didn’t have the honesty to tell me they wouldn’t do the work, or would get to it later. That bothers me. A lot.

I won’t bore most of you with the details, but a blog is a good place to record certain experiences for posterity, and it’s the only public outlet I have to express my dissatisfaction with my home provider.

Build experience good. Post-build experience bad. Hopefully it will change, and maybe someone out there will be better prepared when they make the new home plunge.

For the record, from what I hear, no builder is any better.

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