Clayton Homes

The rep offered us a snack and he said that if we wanted, he could tell us good places to go for dinner. He showed us homes, layouts and insurances that were available. He didn’t sell anything. He just showed us everything we wanted to see. It sold itself. We put down payments on three of them that afternoon. One for each of us. The home buying process with Clayton Homes was so simple and easy. Matt was the best-informed and the most reasonable. He was on top of everything. Sharon was great and the owner, Dave, was incredible. Even Jay, the manager who came out to survey the property, spent more time with me so we could figure out the layout of the house. Eddie was right on top of any questions I had.

I had plenty of customization. I wanted the soaker tub, instead of the regular. I didn’t want a back door, so I got an area where I could put in a freezer or a sink in the utility room. I didn’t want any carpeting at all, so they traded me the shutters that were in there, for putting in the wood floor. Then, when we were signing the deal, they said that they would give me the mini-blinds for free. I loved it. Everything about the experience was 100% over the top.

I was out there by myself because we were trying to sell my house here in Hemet. At 1:30 in the morning on a Sunday, the winds were blowing at 60 miles an hour and there was rain. I couldn’t hear a thing in my bedroom which showed how well-made they are. But I heard this drip and I got up and looked all over for it. Finally, I was ready to turn off the bathroom light and there was water in the tub. I looked up and I saw it coming in the mini-blinds. I called the rep, Matt, and he answered the phone. He told me he would take care of it.

He sent out two emails to the owners, one to Jay, the project manager, and one to Eddie, who does all the repairs. Eddie called me at 9 o’clock the next morning. He said he got the email and asked if it was okay to come out. He took down the fascia and pulled out the caulking. He told me what happened. They had multiple homes that were all alike, and they caulked some of them for Northern Arizona and some for Southern. They did that on a Thursday. On Friday, they hauled my home up here and it didn’t even have a chance to stick or dry. He took out all the caulking and the windows. He dried everything off, put it back, put on the fresh caulking and the fascia back up, and repainted. He came in the house and did the same thing with those windows. He dried up the floors and left two towels out because he was not sure what was gonna happen with the two. He said they should be okay, but it was where most of the water came in.

There are 11 windows in the house and he did 7 of them. He said that they never had problems with those windows above the sink and the washer and dryer. I asked how often they have these kinda problems and he said that they did 88 homes last year and only had problems with 5. I have not had a problem with it since. I have recommended Clayton to friends. I have friends who are going out with me in August, right at the hottest part of the year, because they don’t believe how nice the temperature is where I live. I've invited all of my friends to come out and stay so they can actually see it and see where it is.

One day, I went into the dealership in Texarkana to see what they had. The salesman there said, “Oh, we can get you into this house for under $60,000, blah, blah, blah.” I said okay, then I left. I thought about it and said to myself, “I'm gonna call back and talk to the manager.” I called back and talked to Leon and he was absolutely the best thing that fell out of the sky that day. He was amazing. He said, “Come back up here. I'll walk you around. We'll find you something. We'll find you something you like.” We went back up there a few weeks later. We were walking around and I saw the trailer that I had seen at the Sulphur Springs dealership. I loved that trailer -- the layout, look, and everything. I said that I love that one, but I also said that their salesman already told me they can't do that one. He asked, “Why not,” and I said that I didn’t know.

We started talking and he asked how I was gonna do it. I said that I was gonna pay cash and he said, “Well, it's that much big difference.” Nobody else had let me get me that far. He said that they could do it and that he could get me a discount. We ended up doing the paperwork. We got it done and cut in the check. Not even three weeks later, they were bringing my house out and it was amazing from the beginning until the end that I got the one I wanted. I got the one that I was in love with and I got to deal with somebody like him and got to meet him. I feel blessed because he was absolutely the best, the sweetest person I've ever met.

I've given great reviews to Clayton in Texarkana because of the fact Leon went above and beyond. As a salesman or as a dealership manager, he didn’t even have to get involved and he didn’t even have to do anything. He could have just let it go. He was so pleasant and so nice to deal with. He was an awesome person. The guys in the office were really sweet and very helpful, and always wanting to know how things are going. I would really love to nominate Leon or whatever I'll have to do to get him some recognition for the work that he has done. I called with a complaint and he was on it. The stove was messed up and he was on it. He has been fantastic and I really would like to see him get the recognition he deserves.

I picked the home up straight off the lot. There were some things that were different, like the refrigerator, that were different from what I had picked out. I didn’t choose any colors, flooring, and carpet. I fell in love with the house just as it was set up. It had a very rustic farmhouse style to it. It was called the Anniversary, but they changed the name of it now to the Farmhouse. It had the farmhouse sink and a lot of cute little neat stuff. However, we had a little bad problem with the snow. We had a guy come out and tell us, “Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that,” and supposedly fixed it, but not even two weeks later, we had somebody else come back out to do the same thing again. After about three times, we finally got one and so far, it has not messed up since we got it replaced. They brought us a different unit all together and it has been fine ever since. There have been no problems, no issues.

The dishwasher is still messed up, though. It will not do the heated dry cycle at all and it is getting to where it is not washing really good. I'm gonna give Leon a call and see if he can send someone out. He is very good about getting on the problem and getting it solved, and that is what I liked. He is a man of action and when he finds out there is something wrong, he takes care of it. He is amazing. I feel blessed from the moment I walked in the door and talked to him until now. I feel lucky because I had a great salesman. If I hadn't dealt with him, I wouldn’t have the house right now.

I love the house overall, although there were just a couple of things. We've had some appliance issues with the stove and we had one with the refrigerator freezing up on the inside and not doing what it was supposed to do. But other than the appliances, I'm totally happy with this house and I couldn’t be happier. We got an extended warranty and mine is around eight years. It covers everything, so we are pretty set on that and I'm glad I did it because, with the stove issues, you never know. Just because you buy something new doesn’t mean it might not be defective.

But at the manufacturing level, they must’ve hired all the incompetence from miles around. I have a tub and they put a wood skirt around it. They also put in a new outlet. But the ventilation system is not working right and the master bedroom is very cold. They came yesterday and put in another ventilation duct in the floor. So it was a little better last night, but not really good. There are still some major problems here that somebody’s gonna have to deal with. But every time the fan comes on to heat the place, the return air is so high that it sucks air right in through from the outside. I had to get the AC people to explain that to me. I’ve been working with Clayton Homes here in Spotsylvania and they've been very cooperative and sympathetic to the problems. They also sent somebody right out. But these things keep showing up.

When I came in in the bedroom, the electrical outlet was hanging out of the wall. Somebody just somehow stuck the receptacle in there and didn’t nail it down to a stand. Apparently, when they unplugged their Sawzall from a nearby receptacle, they pulled the receptacle right out of the wall. There has been a lot of stuff like that. Plus, I need to address the issue with the insulation in my ventilation piping. I also had a little trouble with the air conditioning not being what I thought it would be. The bill payer is uncomfortable. Aside from that, my front and my back storm doors won’t close and they never fit right from the get-go. They hit the door casing and as far as doors, I had to slam on past that to get the storm door to close.

So far, I had 27 items that were pretty well took care of. Clayton got people down here and they were good people. They had no attitudes or anything like that. Right now, I’m about to launch a new punch list in a new billing. That's when they finish putting the building together, then everybody goes to work and develop some punch list of discrepancy or problems and submit it back to the contractor. I got a five-year guarantee on everything and I’m just playing along with the way they’re working and we’ll get them all fixed eventually.

But my point of view is that I bought a new house with all new appliances and equipment, and all should be practically new. But Clayton does not have a good professional inspector, particularly with this house. It went out with a lot of discrepancies and I didn’t expect some of the problems that I'm coming up with now. It makes me wonder whether the people that are in the office understand what’s going on in the field. I talked with the salesman about coming out in the house and he said he has never been out to the house. All he does is sell them.

Clayton has more than one person out there running the show anyhow and these are some things that somebody in the upper echelon needs to look at in Clayton Homes as far as quality control. Everything looks good when you get it, but it ain’t so good. I’m not trying to make any noise though. I just wanna get what I paid for and get down the road. But I’ve never been angry about anything. Their reps were very cordial to talk to at the home site and mostly, I was very satisfied the people at Clayton. But I don’t like the people they hire to do the skilled work. They certainly aren’t very skilled. I got a bath tub sent here right next to an outside wall that has no siding between me and the outside. So, that is one situation. I’ve been trying to get things straightened out since last May when we went to closing and things are moving along slowly. But they did get the first list worked out back in November.

George over at Clayton Homes where we bought was very helpful and he did a fantastic job working with us. He can answer any questions we had and he stuck with us, 'cause we've been trying for close to two years before we have got it. It took so long because at the time we were starting to finance it, my daughter was still in college, and I had a parent loan. At the time, the parent loan doesn't come until she ends school so the question with the finance company was how much was I gonna be paying a month for the parent loan part, and I couldn't tell them because she wasn’t out of school at the time. But once she's finished, then I negotiated with the student loan people and everything was fine.

We've also had some issues with the paint peeling on the cabinets, and we brought it to their attention. We sent pictures to George and the lady, and the lady dealt with the factory people. The factory people came out and replaced all the cabinet doors that were peeling. They worked hard and did a great job. The cabinets, after they left and all, they need to do the same thing. They even brought new indoor doors because some of them were scratched and minor damaged. When I shut them against the door stopper thing, the wood that goes all the way down the door to keep you from going past and when you shut it, it hits the bottom of that wood. It was off for about a quarter inch, and it was closed at the top. But they brought new doors and replaced all of them.

However, when they brought them from the factory on the truck, there wasn't any paper or cardboard between the doors. It had the tendency to scratch on it so the doors they put on was in a worse shape than the ones that were originally on there. I went on ahead and rehung all the old doors back myself after they had left and brought it to their attention when they came back out with some more doors, but it was like the same thing. They still just stacked them on top of each other. They ended up fixing the main thing that was in the hallway where the two spare bedrooms were by taking the door off in the doorframe and fixing the doorframe 'cause it was the problem and not the door. They fixed all that and got it all painted back.

There are still some issues because of the problem with those particular type of white cabinet. After a period of a little time, the paint kinda chips on them and they're not paintable. If they were painted, we're gonna have brush streaks on them. Right now, they're smooth but they're trying to figure out an alternative on how they're gonna fix the cabinets and they're supposed to send a crew back out to handle that. Overall, their product is sturdy and not cheap, and I feel happy with the quality of our home. If someone asks me about Clayton Homes, I will tell them it was a wise choice to go with them. We spent more to make sure that it was energy efficient, and we had to upgrade on a lot of stuff in there, but it was well worth it. I would highly recommend them over anybody else.

We started looking and decided that we do some changes with the house, and they were willing to work with us. They went to the manufacturer with answers they didn’t know and the head guy from the manufacturer came up to Clayton Homes here in Lexington and sat down with me to let me know what I could or couldn’t do. They did everything I wanted and did a bunch of changes for me. We absolutely love the house. Not only that, they are really good too. If we have a problem, I've called them and within some time the next day or within two days, they have somebody out there. The problems had been minor and we haven't had anything major at all.

We customized the family room that was a living room and it had a dining room at the end of it. It also had a doorway to go into the hallway and to the kitchen. They let me take the little half wall out and get rid of the dining room. It's all family room now as you walk in. They also let me do a half wall, but I wanted to make it into a foyer since the house didn’t have one. It was just a walk-in to a living room area. Then, they let me take up part of the columns that were in the archway because I didn’t want the column.

Some of the big changes were where the family room was. At the end of the kitchen, I made that a dining area with a glass slider door instead of windows because I don’t need a living room and a family room. We needed a bigger family room because of all the kids in the family we have when we have them over. So, right now, the way with my archway here between the family room and the kitchen and when all the families are here in the family room, I can see and talk to all of them while I'm doing stuff in the kitchen. It's very family-oriented and everything is so easy to get to. I also rearranged the kitchen a bit. I wanted two ovens, so I've got a slide-in range and, on the end of the wall, I have an oven and a microwave over the top of it into a cabinet. They let me put a pantry in my kitchen as well.

We also put another pantry at the end for the dining room. One whole wall is nothing but a huge pantry for dishes. I put dishes and party supplies in it. They also let me rearrange the master bathroom. I changed it all around. I took the tub out and put a larger shower stall in there. I also made a private party area. And being a woman, I wanted a sink and a vanity, so on one side of the wall, we had two double sinks. I did a sink and a vanity for me and, on the other wall, we did a 30-inch sink for my husband and a linen closet. The house was so customized. Everybody who walks into it really likes it. We've had people stop by after we moved in and they asked if they could come in and look at it. Also, in this house, you can't hear it when it rains outside and the house is very well insulated. In the winter time, it is very warm and during this hot summer, it's great. I only have the air conditioning set on 75 and it's cool in here.

Clayton Homes worked with us in every aspect. We were coming down every couple of months talking to Clayton Homes and seeing what they could do. I had another place that was gonna do some stuff for me, but Clayton Homes was right here and everybody was really nice. There isn’t a person in that office that wasn’t nice to us and still is. I've been recommending them to several people. There's one couple that really wants this house, but they can't afford it. We got a heck of a price compared to when we were looking down in Sanford. They worked with us and really gave us a great price. The house had one price on it and I customized it which brought it up a bit more, but it was worth it. We still feel we came out of hand every bit of the stuff they did to it and we really got a great deal.

I ended up contacting the salesman to get the info, and I was told that the Setup manager informed the salesman that I had contacted the Electrician my self and informed the company that I was not ready for the power to be hooked up. (THAT WAS A TOTAL FALSEHOOD) I didn't even know who the Electrician company was at the time. The salesman was also told that this was done on a conference call (fALSEHOOD #2.). Progress has been made on the house and setup is getting done with the help of Val and a contractor hired by the company to fix the few items pointed out during a walk through.

The set up MGR Bert is still MIA we have not any contact with him since the closing Mid June and he informed us to contact him about set up issues as the salesman had done his part. I think that sales office should take him out of the picture all together before some other customers get lied to and don't get their home set up in a timely fashion. We had already made a house payment on the new home and had no electricity or Air conditioning. Thank goodness we were not moved in yet.