We wish to communicate the issues that my family has had with this local builder for the past three years. The problems center around warranty issues of the new home we purchased our home in Abilene, Texas from Bryan Hicks in July 2006. The conflict has not come to a resolution despite an exhausting and frustrating number of attempts to communicate and follow the necessary steps to reach a resolution.

The first hint that there was a problem with the customer service with this builder was evident when he refused to pay the property taxes owed on the home according to the real estate contract. After failing to discuss the matter through the Better Business Bureau we were forced to take this matter to small claims court. When we won the judgment he finally paid the taxes and penalties owed us.

From this time forward any warranty issues we had on our new home, which were numerous; we were told by letter to contact all individual contractors directly. Some contractors were helpful; others refused to do the repairs or wouldn't return calls. We tried to get the work done through the contractors for months. All the while keeping Bryan Hicks up to date on the status of the repairs via fax, email, and certified mail we communicated regularly to Bryan Hicks about the repairs that were not getting done. We never had any communications back from Bryan Hicks about how we should proceed. At no point did Bryan Hicks dispute that any of the indicated issues needing repairs were warranty issues, he just failed to get the work on them completed.

Trying to be nice and not bring the State into the problem, we did not contact the Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC) (turns out to be a big mistake). Instead WE contacted Better Business Bureau, this time he failed to respond to their inquiry on the matter. Our last resort was to seek legal counsel who told us to go ahead and have the repairs done by other contractors at our cost and ask for reimbursement from the builder Bryan Hicks. We had all repairs done at our cost. Including replacing tile in our kitchen and eating area that was cracking and buckling after less than a year of being installed, repairing a faulty mailbox, painting a garage door, replacing carpet that was originally installed with a manufacturer's flaw, and repairs to the sheetrock and furniture damaged by a severely leaking roof. Contact was made to the builder in January of 2008 to request the amount we were out for the repairs. There was, yet again, no response from Bryan Hicks.