Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  11/06/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  The contracted job was to build a 26'x30' garage with a 5'x8' breezeway, and a 20'x20' screened porch. I signed a contract with Barton and Sons in January 2022 which detailed a timeline of 12-14 weeks (unfortunately "time is not of the essence" was in the contract - my mistake). The first shovel went into the ground on August 4th, 2022. Without notice, Ed Barton stopped personally coming to the job site as of October 28th, 2022. His crew (3 individuals with seemingly little experience) came occasionally until termination. The Notice to Cure was sent to Barton and Sons on April 18th, 2023. On May 26th, 2023, after the concerns highlighted in the Notice to Cure were not addressed, I terminated the contract. The work performed by Barton and Sons failed inspection by the Town of *******. Contract price was $113.700. I'm estimating that to complete the job I will have to spend roughly 25% more than the original contracted price. I paid the Contractor $72,500

  Business response

  11/19/2023

  From November to around May i was unable to work. I was very ill and have recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness. through this very difficult time we subbed out concrete work to try and keep customers happy. We replaced the entire garage foundation at our cost. On May 26th i received a letter from the homeowner giving us 30 days to complete repairs or we were terminated. Unfortunately we did not receive plans or approval from the building department to repour piers on sunroom until May 15th. We were not given our full 30 days  to cure as we did not receive plans to move forward until almost 3 weeks after notice was given.. We were even onsite on the 26th of May doing repairs. 

  Customer response

  11/26/2023

  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint.  In Ed's response, he provided a screenshot of our text conversation, text screenshot ends in ***. This text perfectly summarizes the work performed in an admission by Ed Barton - as he described the work as a "s***** job." While I sympathize with Ed and I feel horrible for his personal health situation and wish him well, I did not contract with him personally. The contract was with Barton and Sons Construction, and it was the responsibility of the business to ensure a timely completion of the job contracted to perform. Additionally, it is the responsibility of Barton and Sons Construction to ensure that the work performed followed architectural drawings, to meet the code for Town of *******, and to meet the NYS Residential Code, which is considered to be the minimum standards necessary to complete a project.   Regarding the Notice to Cure - it was delivered via **** and email on April 18th. Ed Barton acknowledged it on April 26th. Even if Ed Barton was unable to work himself, Barton and Sons Construction should have performed the work or subcontracted with known and reliable contractors to perform the work on their behalf. If the architect delayed Barton and Sons from performing work on the porch, they could have worked on any of the many issues with the breezeway and garage. Barton and Sons could have also provided a detailed plan of how they were going to address each issue. None of these options were followed by Barton and Sons and therefore the Termination Letter was delivered on May 26th - 30 days after the Notice to Cure. Also, per his response, Ed Barton was unable to work from November 2022 through May 2023. However, per his own ******** page, Barton and Sons Construction posted advertisements on 1/2, 1/14, 1/19, 1/20, 2/2, 2/10, 2/21, 3/6, 4/12, 5/16, 5/16, 5/22, 5/22, and posted a progress report with photos of another project on 5/24. These posts completely contradict his statement of not being able to work during this period.  Again - there are serious issues regarding the quality of work performed. The most glaring example would be that my garage foundation (2nd attempt) was not level, the entire garage slopes 1.5", and this was never addressed by Barton and Sons prior to placing block and framing.   Regards,  **** ******

• Initial Complaint

  04/06/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Order Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  The general contractor is mid-execution of a contract to build an attached garage addition including 2 bedrooms and a bathroom onto an existing home. Once the contractor collected 97% of the contract amount (total contract: $167,000) on Nov 30th the owner has displayed unprofessional and dishonest conduct including displaying intention to not execute to complete the contract in full ( "That will be likely be for someone else to decide after the contract is complete" [Text Msg: 4/2/23: 6:40pm]) To facilitate a resolution the homeowner would like the following items to be addressed: 1. The homeowner is requesting remaining work to be completed in a timely matter per the contractual agreement that is in place, the plans referenced in said contract, and to the General Construction Building Permit the contractor pulled with the town. To assist, homeowner has provided a contractor with a contractual compliance document attached outlining verbatim contractual terms, status, written and image documentation and any deviations agreed only to by both parties in writing. Homeowner requests written agreement to all items with intention to complete. AND 2. Agreed to credit in form of bank check, or cash to be provided to the homeowner as soon as possible. $14,023.00 to cover homeowner costs upfronted for Hot Water Heater & Windows. (See E-mail from Contractor on 3/13/23 & 3/15/23 for contractor agreement of credit). OR alternatively if the contractor wishes to not-fulfill the contract the homeowner would be open to a mutual arbitration with agreement to separate with returned funds for all remaining work not complete + Credits + any Re-Work required of damage caused by contractor. Contractor claims there is "less than 15% remaining work to be completed" ($25,050). (Text Message: 4//23 8:06pm) Lastly ******* Town has provided a notification on 4/4 on the General Construction Permit to: "Address Owner Concerns (punch-list) prior to further bldg. inspection."

  Business response

  04/06/2023

  We are 100% commited to finishing this job as per the contract. We are presently installing garage drywall. All other drywall is installed. Drywall will be finished by end of next week and trim and paint the following week. Within 2 weeks we will only have the brick on the front of the house to complete. We have allready credited the homeowner five thousand dollars. They have been given the money. We disagree with their credit requests. The homeowners have refused to credit us for change order work completed not in the scope of the contract. We have passed all inspections and have a relatively small amount of work left. Part of our contract was to provide two bathrooms with on demand heat. The homeowner hired a contractor to do this work without our consent or agreement. Therefore breaking contract. We do not agree with all of these changes to contract. The homeowners are trying to charge us for a third bedroom flooring, and two overhead doors. Demanding we give them this money. The contract clearly states two bedrooms. Also we do not install garage doors ND there is no allotment nor is there mention of a garage door in the contract. All through this we are still delivering a quality product. Communicating daily and providing  labor and materials. The homeowners have around 7 thousand dollars left in their budget more than sufficient for me to complete their remaining items. This all stems from my refusal to do work not in the contract. 

  Customer response

  04/06/2023

  Better Business Bureau:  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint.  For your reference, details of the offer I reviewed appear below.  Contractor did not provide a detailed response related to homeowners request. Homeowners request is as follows: 1.Written response to each line of the contract items and all existing required re-work with plan to complete in logical building order. The list of items is required to be completed by the contractor per the town inspector & permit pulled by the contractor prior to final building inspection. See attachment for complete list & for town inspection note. AND 2. Agreed to contractor credit in form of certified bank check to be provided to the homeowner no later than end of day on 4/14/2023. For the total agreed to amount of $14,023.00 (Per written agreement 3/12/23 & 3/15/23)  Regards,  ******** ******

• Initial Complaint

  12/27/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  Hired Ed Barton with Barton & Sons Construction to remodel our house. He reached out to me, sold himself through his BBB A+ rating, & deceived us from the start. Ed hurriedly wrote a contract before we chose an architectural plan. He never picked up paper plans from architect he recommended. Contract vague. Many items were not listed & many didn't have monetary allotment. Ed's response to that was "what I usually do is..." Unfortunately, we don't know what his usual is. He never wrote a change order but enacted many. His website deceitful claiming his is a BBB accredited business. Ed told us he was going to be living at his cabin for the summer with his son & hiring the son of a local landscaper friend of theirs as a laborer. Start date was July 5 & was to run 8-10 week, ending by the middle of September. Didn't realize Ed had 5-6 other construction sites going on during our project until we were about 3 weeks in. He had 97% of our money within 4 weeks. 25 weeks have passed. Still a 3–4-page punch list. Ed hired local laborers - too many to count - that did subpar work. Much needing to be redone. New bedroom ceiling is being fixed for the 3rd time. Spigot in garage was broken and flooded our garage, soaking items we purchased for the project. Debris has been left in & outside our house daily, wind sent it into & damaged our son's car. No remorse from Ed. He is unprofessional & disrespectful to us & his workers. Shower door more involved because Ed told us that he couldn't install the light/vent inside the shower - "against code." Talked us into a shower with a 3/4 high wall with glass to get more light in. The light/vent he had wasn't up to code. There are coded ones. I have picked up tile, picked up paint, gotten rid of debris, scaped paint spatter off my new floors, & much more. Ed hasn't stepped foot in our house since 10/25/22. Breached contract. I have pictures and text messaging proof of all. I will be filing with the Contractors State Licensing Board as well.

  Business response

  12/29/2022

  Here is a copy of the contract. None of these complaints have been made to me. I had offered ***** 1200 dollars for the shower door that wasn't even in the contract.  There is no shower door in the contract. As soon as I told ***** this she started threatening us. We only have 2 to 3 days of work to finish this job. I have included texts in Oct and Dec and everything is fine. Other than timeline complaints ****** had nothing bad to say until I refused to pay for shower door. We are still committed to wrapping this job up this week. I however refuse to pay for something not in the contract.

  Business response

  01/19/2023

  at no point has anyone at the ***** house asked me to pay for any damaged items. Please show me a text where ***** mentions any damage. here is my insurance info. **** **** ************ if your car was damaged due to blowing debris all you had to do is say that. You never requested my insurance info, nor did you say your car was damaged. As far as the garage spigot i have a text from ***** saying nothing was damaged in the garage. ***** ordered the windows for her house they did not get delivered untill sept 7th. Then we still had to install all new windows in the entire house, side the entire house and install trim on windows further delaying the job. ***** also approved several change orders. These change orders also added to the time line being extended. ***** and Chris provided several punch list pages. We completed all of these to her satisfaction. The job was inspected today and we had to do two drywall repairs around outlets and add two arc fault breakers. Now ***** is demanding i let her keep my final payment, and also pay for her shower door. I provided the contract. there is no installation or purchase of shower door in contract. ***** said I should pay her for work she did. what does that even mean? She did no work for me. We have provided our insurance information. We haven 100% finished this job and gone through inspections. We have no pictures of ****** house up on any of our sites. We have been 100 % committed to making these people happy. What more could we do? We have texts confirming all of this. 

  Customer response

  01/22/2023

  Better Business Bureau: I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ******** and have determined that this does not resolve my complaint.  So many false statements in this response from Barton and Sons. Unfortunately, Ed Barton will never accept responsibility for any of this, but here are some facts: On December 23, 2022 I sent Ed a text showing his construction debris and the scratch in my son’s car. He responded “Obviously nothing I can do rt now” So he did know about the damage and chose to ignore. (picture with text was attached previously) Regarding the garage spigot – (there are pictures and back and forth text messaging attached previously) I never sent a text “saying nothing was damaged in the garage.” I’m still not sure if nothing was damaged as we have yet to install out electric fireplace that soaked up water. We can’t until Barton and Son’s work passes inspections. I’ll contact Ed’s insurance company if there’s an issue.  I didn’t order the windows, Ed did. I paid for the windows. The siding was delivered on 9/6/22 as Ed had not paid for it until 8/31/22. The windows were at the house on 9/20 and installed the same day. Ed installed the master egress window in our son’s room, so he had to switch them; reframe etc. He caused he own extra work, taking more time. The delayed delivery of the windows was NOT the issue when it came to the delay in this remodel as Ed wants you to believe. The reasons are as follows: 1.) There was an immense amount of interior work that needed to be completed that was not contingent on windows being installed. Including, but not limited to: (As of August 22, 2022) redo master ceiling drywall, mud, sand, paint, finish plumbing, finishing cabinets, installing trim for cabinets, order and install and grout kitchen backsplash, install and grout bathroom & laundry room, order and install luxury vinyl plank flooring throughout, tons of electrical, install exterior door to garage and trim, hang all interior doors & trim, install master bathroom toilet/tub/vanity, install stairs from garage to laundry room entry, relocated spigot in garage, install all appliances, install range vent hood, add fixtures to cabinets....This work all happened AFTER the windows were installed. I can send my documentation. Windows did not hold up this project. 2.) Another contributing factor was that so much work had yet to be completed, redone or fixed, which was why the punch list had numerous pages. 3.) We did not have enough workers often enough at our job site. During the months of December and January (37 working days) we had workers at our house exactly 8 times. That’s 22% of working days in the past 2 months. In November and December (42 working days) there were workers at our house 30 days which is 71% of the time. Usually, Ed sent only 1 worker at a time, slowing down the project. I have calendar documentation.4.) Ed also claimed that change orders impacted completion of this job. Not one change order was written up by Ed or signed by us. We did however agree to moving the main stack vent pipe because it would have ended up in the middle of the laundry room closet door. Another change that was agreed upon was switching out the panel box instead of just adding a subpanel. Neither of these added months to this project; probably not even a day. The reason that the punch list was several pages long was because there were so many issues that needed to be fixed as well as work that had yet to be done. Ed states that “We completed all of these to her satisfaction.” This is just not true. I am going to have to live with the following issues because Barton and Sons was given ample opportunity to rectify these issues numerous times. Items were crossed off the list by workers and are still unsatisfactory, but I am done! Cabinet drawer faces uneven – side to side as well as up and down, cabinets hung unevenly, 4 times the master ceiling was worked on and it’s still not correct – one seam has a crack, another looks like there’s 2 seams instead of 1, end of shower wall that Ed built its not level (which is now causing the shower glass company problems, there’s a wave/twist in the header of the doorway going from bedroom to bathroom. We even have a tile in the shower seat that was installed with the backside facing out and our shower system is off center. There’s no fixing that! Most of the trim that was installed around windows did not sit flush with the walls, so they “fixed it” by adding a piece of wood behind, caulking and painting.Ed states “The job was inspected today, and we had to do two drywall repairs around outlets and add two arc fault breakers...We have 100% finished this job and gone through inspections.” Since Ed wasn’t here for the inspection of the job he bid and wrote the contract for, he doesn’t realize that the work did not pass inspections. Work that needs to be completed to pass inspections is: Patch two caping holes where outlets used to be but were removed – not just repair around outlets covers on all exterior outlets (removed when siding was removed) add outlet under front bedroom (also removed when siding was removed)  Add 2 arc fault breakers Add GFCI breaker outlet in master closet (as it was lacking a ground) Add GFCI breaker outlet in boys’ bathroom as line was cut during construction which stopped 4 outlets from working, when fixed GFCI was not reinstalled in bathroom (notified Ed in writing of this issue on 9/28/22) GFCI next to master sink not working Blank over live wires on closet ceiling Face plate on outlet next to panel box Face plate on outlet for under cabinet lighting box Cover on gray wire box in basement Then after one of the new ground fault breakers was installed – 3 outlets on countertop stopped working – bad breaker? Since Ed will never accept responsibility for anything, my resolution to this debacle is: 1.) Barton and Sons must do what’s necessary to get my house to pass inspections.  2.) As per Ed’s text to me on 12/18/2022 (attached) regarding the shower glass that he said he was responsible for $1000 toward it plus owed us money for the return of flooring as well as the barn door we purchased - “You can just take care of this. We will just call final payment even. There’s no reason for me to be involved...” I never demanded Ed let me keep the final payment – he offered. At this point, we are calling it even. I want nothing more to do with Barton and Sons. We are handling our shower glass and once our house passes inspections, we never have to cross paths again. 3.) Barton and Sons is to never use pictures of my house for anything. Up until Friday evening (1/20/2023) he still had our kitchen on FB on Barton and Sons advertising for work. (attached) He has since removed it.  4.) I’d also like (and I would think BBB would too) Ed to change his website eliminating BBB accredited as according to BBB website, his business is not accredited.  5.) After our home passes inspections, if we have any issues with work that has been completed by Barton and Sons (within 3 years) we will not be having them repair said work. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to make things right. We will have the work done by a reputable contractor. At that point, we would have no choice but to contact a lawyer. That is not a threat, that is a promise.  All I’ve wanted is to fully move back into my renovated house and enjoy my retirement. These past 3 months have been a living hell that I hope no one else has to endure.    Regards, ***** ***** 

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩