Jul 10 2006
Ryan Homes could learn from Burger King
All nestled into my new condo. Tyler helped me put up blinds (well rather I helped him), we have some nice new furniture, microwave, the cable’s hooked up, and even garage door openers. (Thanks Dad!! 
) Oh, and I even got some nice credit card bills to go with all that. Probably around 4 grand. 
So that’s the good news. The bad news is that the plumbing for the water softener rough-in I requested back in the beginning of March never got put in. That change order got delayed on its trip from sales to management to god-knows-where to the plumber. The plumber says he didn’t even hear about it until Joe (the project manager for my condo) called him about it last week so I’m guessing that change order is in a landfill somewhere by now. So in order for me to put a water softener in the right spot (i.e. the storage closet and not my master bedroom closet) and have it do its job correctly (i.e. not softening just hot water, not softening just upstairs water, not softening outside water and killing the lawn) they need to come in and tear up my flooring, jackhammer the slab beneath my flooring, rip into the drywall in my closet and other places, and then clean that all up like they weren’t there at all.
So it’s a pretty costly mistake for them. Kinda annoying for me, their customer. According to Joe they have a lot of problems with change orders. I would guess this probably isn’t even close to the most costly change order mistake they’ve made. What’s really upsetting is that I can’t be mad at Joe or the sales reps really. It’s someone down in Cincinnati that dropped the ball and I have no way of wringing their neck. And even if I could, the major problem is their process which means I should beat a bunch of board room executives with rubber hoses so they learn that the way things should be handled is sales reps should directly contact the plumber/electrician/etc with change orders when they talk with the customer. The change order would then be processed by the main office as well but this way the people who actually do the work will have the change order in their hands right away. And that people is what grinds my gears. Tom?
special orders don’t upset us, they’re your problem
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