Pura Vida High Performance Builders

Review: [redacted], owner of Pura Vida Homes advertises himself as a Certified Passive House Consultant. We hired him nearly one year ago to serve in that capacity to consult on the building of our passive house. He was not hired as our General Contractor. His contract specified that he would require $2,500 at the initiation of his work and that a 2nd payment of $2,500 would be required upon completion of his work ($5,000 total). He did receive the initial $2,500 and started to consult with our architect. Upon learning that he would not serve as GC, [redacted] stopped consulting. He never completed the job as consultant, yet he demanded the 2nd payment of $2,500. We had to hire another consultant to finish (and actually restart) the job. This process held up our project considerably. Once he learned that we would not pay the second $2,500 as we felt that he absolutely did not fulfill the contract that he himself devised, he threatened a lien on our property. (The property is in ID and it is easy to file a lien). We would have had no issue paying for services that were completed, but Mr. [redacted] did not complete the items outlined in his contract. Interestingly enough, once the threat of the lien was known, and [redacted] DID extort the additional $2,500 from us, he changed his company name to Pura Vida High Performance Builders and he is no longer advertising himself as a consultant under the new name.Desired Settlement: The business or new business should know our continued discontent for the services NOT rendered.

Business

Response:

February 19, 2015

[redacted],

I received your Revdex.com complaint last week. Given that it has been nearly a year since our

last correspondence, I am surprised to learn that you feel strongly enough about

our services to document this. The team

and I at Pura Vida High Performance Builders takes customer service quite

seriously. After reviewing your

Complaint Detail, I can now understand your frustration. I am sorry that your project’s schedule was

held up and that you had to hire a new Certified Passive House Consultant.

Pura Vida’s Scope of Work was clearly limited to three

deliverables each of with were delivered.

The deliverables agreed upon were as follows: 1) A Solar Shading Study

2) Inputting your design into Passive House Planning Package, and 3) Reporting

of necessary building assembly values for the construction of your Passive

House.

The price for the above services was to be $5,000 (Five

Thousand Dollars). Had you selected Pura

Vida to be your Contractor, a discount of $2,500 (Two Thousand Five Hundred

Dollars) would be applied to the costs of construction. As you opted to proceed with a different

Contractor and the deliverables were complete, that $2,500 discount was not

applicable.

You state that I declined to consult after you made your

selection of a Contractor. This

selection was made on January 4, 2014.

Over the next month your second and third deliverables were

completed. On February 13, 2014, I personally

handed you and your husband a detailed report generated from your Passive House

Planning Package. The above timeline

clearly shows that the Scope of Work was still under way after you made your

decision.

As to the need to hire another Certified Passive House

Consultant, we corresponded at length about Pura Vida’s involvement in your project

over the course of January 2014. You

continued to decline any involvement with Pura Vida as a Contractor as was your

prerogative. On March 25, 2014, I was

asked to review a set of Construction Documents for compliance with the Passive

House Report which you had received on February 13th. It was only upon my alerting you to

departures from the Passive House Report and standard Passive House best-practice

that you chose to hire another Certified Passive House Consultant. You did indicate that you had expected that I

would be handling this construction detailing and hydrothermal analysis for

your Architect and Contractor, but this was neither in my Scope of Work, nor

was it something that Pura Vida can accept liability for. I trust that you were able to find a

Consultant who was able to provide your Architect and Contractor with the assistance

they needed.

Please do not read between the lines in the new business name. I assure you that we are still very active in

Passive House Consultation and energy modeling.

I have, though, given my experience with your project declined to

perform energy modeling on projects which Pura Vida will not be constructing.

Regards,[redacted]