Zaga Design Group Inc

We have communicated extensively with this client to try and address the concerns as outlined, as well as engaging our attorney. This former client filed a DORA complain against us, which was promptly dismissed following all of our supporting documentation. We spent 3x the amount of hours to execute the work in our contract, trying to assist the client during a time of skyrocketing construction costs due to Covid (which was completely out of our control). We also went above and beyond during the bidding and value engineering phase, engaging 12 different builders at the client's request (only 3 builders were included in our contract). We take our business, clients and contracts incredibly seriously.

Thanks so much for the kind review, Mindy! We loved working with you, and are always here if you need anything in the future.

Thank you SO much for the incredibly kind words! We feel fortunate to do work that means so much to us, in a community we love so dearly.

We are happy to restate the information with which we responded to this client's feedback after she threatened to leave us negative reviews online, and we stick by our explanation. This project started off with a very accelerated timeline, and we did everything within our scope as fast as we could. We handled schematic design, construction documents, City of Denver permit submittal and permit approval in a total of 80 days. This is an incredibly fast timeline (as our other clients can attest), especially considering the pandemic and typical holiday slow-downs. This client also requested to change the scope of the project after we had submitted the plans to the building department, which effects both the timeline and the project cost.

Our clients tend to flourish when they see the value of our standard processes and appreciate our expertise. Our Bidding & Negotiation service package was not included because of the accelerated timeline. We offered to provide complimentary suggestions on contractors and attended two site evaluations with contractors and solicited a bid from yet another. One of the three builders respectfully declined to move forward, the second was assuming a higher level of finish and the third, it was clear, was already her preferred choice. Moving forward with additional bidders would have extended the already accelerated timeline and we will reiterate, was not a service for which we were being compensated. As for price, we initially estimated the project to come in somewhere between $70k and $100k. We are not in control of contractor pricing and have found this a challenging period of building supply inflation and lack of availability. This is industry wide in Denver, and has presented a significant challenge for most of our clients. We have found it very difficult to anticipate the price jumps in the last year. The highest bid (assuming high end finishes) was $250k, and the lowest was $70k (not out of the realm of our initial estimation).

With regard to my "2 week vacation," I did in fact take vacation the week between Christmas and New Years with my 3 children. I was gone a total of 7 days, and absolutely informed these clients, as it also required a quarantine period before and after the trip (and during which I was working from home). I also turned around revised drawings for Jenny within 2 days of my return. It may be true I was difficult to contact for some of the timeline, as my father was in the hospital. But it is worth noting that the amount of emails and phone calls we received from this client during the project was extremely high and would be difficult to handle in addition to providing the services for which we also committed to concurrent clients.

We have spent many years creating and refining our business processes, and find that our clients are satisfied when they follow our business model and project method approach that includes a single point of contact. This client chose to follow her prescribed approach with very high expectations and an incredibly fast turn-around. As I said directly to Jenny, we learned through the process our firm was not the right fit as we feel we were not allowed to manage the job. This is absolutely regretful, and had we known at the outset her approach to the project we would have declined. Our goal is to always be a client's advocate, and found it incredibly hard to be left to do our job. We will absolutely keep this feedback in mind moving forward, and wish Jenny well with future projects.

Thank you for the kind words, Kathy! It was a pleasure (as always) working with you!