PLEASE BEWARE OF ROESER’S ESTIMATES!!!
We met with three remodeling companies to bid a remodeling project and ultimately decided to partner with Roeser. After they completed our thorough ‘walk-through’ estimate, which included taking multiple pictures and measurements, we received a wide range of expected costs for the project. At this time, we agreed to move forward with the project and paid a 4% upfront cash deposit based on the median expected project cost. After receiving our deposit, Roeser conducted additional construction planning work and identified a significant oversight which resulted in a revised estimate more than 20% higher than the top end of the initial range. As this increase in project scope blew out our budget, we ultimately made the difficult decision to not move forward with construction.
Upon meeting with Roeser to better understand the cause of the cost overrun, we learned that our existing relatively new HVAC unit was too large for the project and would need to be replaced. This was quite a shock to us as the HVAC unit was inspected during the initial walkthrough and at that time it was communicated to us in the estimate that the unit WOULD NOT need to be replaced. Upon further questioning about how this wasn’t initially caught, Roeser’s response was “I’m not an HVAC expert…”
Although the upfront cash deposit was stated as non-refundable in the estimate agreement, we asked in good faith that a portion of the deposit be returned to us as we believed it was HIGHLY UNLIKELY that Roeser had incurred the full 4% deposit on pre-construction work. Unfortunately, Roeser indicated that this was the cost of doing business and they had no legal responsibility to return any portion of the funds. In our assessment this is a poor business practice and isn’t what we’d expect to see from a reputable local-run business. While we have no indication Roeser acted deliberately in bad faith, we want others to be cautious of estimates received from the company as theoretically a company would benefit from intentionally understating an estimate in order to secure the bid (and cash deposit) only to later significantly increase the estimate. By holding the deposit hostage, a company could leverage this to either convince a client to accept the change order or at worst case have the client walk away but still pocket the deposit with minimal costs having been incurred.
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