Do I Have A Valid Case? (Home building) (Houston: new home, buyers)

[Prey521]

Hello,

We're currently building a home in New Caney and everything to date has been great. On the builders website, where the details of our home is posted, it shows a layout of each floor of the house, with the dimensions. Now on the website, it shows that the covered rear patio of the home will have a dimension of 19x8, which we based our patio furniture purchases around. Yesterday, I stopped by to see the progress of the house, and the rear patio was done, but it was only 15x6....a huge difference. So I went speak to my new home consultant rep, and he told me that the website is wrong and has complained about that, and he then showed me the "correct" spec sheet that the crew was working off of, which showed the 15x6 dimensions of the patio.

Now I'm not sure if I should make a big deal out of this, since we plan on having an in ground pool installed a few months after we move, which will extend the patio. I have a contact that lives in the community, and he built a home and recently moved in, and while he has a slightly smaller model than ours, his patio's listed as having the same dimensions as mine, so I'm waiting to hear back from him to see what his patio dimensions are.

Regardless of the dimensions of my contacts patio, do I have a solid case to make them fix it to the dimensions that's posted (currently) on their website? Should I not care since we're most likely having a pool installed anyway?

Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

[Houston321]

They may fix it for customer service or offer some sort of concession to "do the right thing" , but I will bet you their floorplans have a stipulation on the bottom in fine print saying something to the effect that dimensions are approximate and subject to change ...etc.

[Prey521]

Originally Posted by Houston321

They may fix it for customer service or offer some sort of concession to "do the right thing" , but I will bet you their floorplans have a stipulation on the bottom in fine print saying something to the effect that dimensions are approximate and subject to change ...etc.

I understand that, but they're off by 62 square feet....that doesn't sound very approximate to me.

[Houston321]

Even though I may agree with you, I am sure the builder is covered in their contract and paperwork for this. So....in the name of good customer service maybe they will do something.

[diggity101]

did they builder have you sign off on any particular set of drawings?

[westhou]

Are you paying for it? Of course you should have them fix it. Companies that actually care about their reputation will do everything they can to fix their errors. When they try to hide or get out of correcting their mistakes they tend to continue to do it unless buyers actually call them out on it.

[diggity101]

website plans aren't always updated immediately. If they showed him the correct floor plan and had him sign off on it, there is no argument. If not, then he might have a better case.

[predatorprey]

I would push the subject. They would likely offer some discount just to get you to stop complaining ...

[Prey521]

Originally Posted by diggity101

did they builder have you sign off on any particular set of drawings?

On my first meeting with the construction manager, I signed off on the upgrades/options that we had choosen, not on any drawings. My realtor is looking into it and should hopefully have an answer in the next few days.

And as for the website dimensions, it's been the same dimensions since when we first started this process back in January, and it's still like that till this day.

[kbayer]

Originally Posted by Houston321

They may fix it for customer service or offer some sort of concession to "do the right thing" , but I will bet you their floorplans have a stipulation on the bottom in fine print saying something to the effect that dimensions are approximate and subject to change ...etc.

Regarding that stipulation, where do you draw the line -- and WHO makes that call?