OUR NARRATIVE

Our nightmare with NorthStar did not begin that way. We started out believing that Doug and Barb Robbins would be our friends and wonderful next door neighbors. We believed Doug when he told us that we would be in our home in 90 days. We should have known something was wrong when Barb emphasized that there was no way that they could guarantee a date and that no one at NorthStar had said a date was promised. Even to this day Doug is still telling customers 90 days. The wording in the contract stated that the home would be completed in a reasonable time frame. Well, we do not consider 300 plus days as reasonable time for a modular. Doug told us in June of 2000 that he could build homes much faster than a stick build. We believed him and that is the only reason we went with the modular built home from NorthStar. We knew we would be settling for less quality in a modular home but that the construction time frame is what sold us on this project. Initially we were going to get a construction loan and Doug referred us to Grand West Financial. We contacted Grand West and were told about the conditions of the loan. About a week later they contacted us and told us we qualified for a loan but now the conditions were changed and that we would need to do two loans; one construction and then a regular mortgage. She insisted that she had told us all this before. Well we were lucky! We did not like her attitude and the fact she was calling us liars. We told Grand West Financial to forget the loan. This is one of the few good things that happened to us in the past year. We told Doug about this and that he should not recommend this firm. He didn't say anything about our comments. We called Barbara in early August and told her to start the leach field perc and soil tests and that we would pay for it even if we decided not to order the home. Barbara did start the tests in mid August and Doug told us that the tests were good for the leach field. He, however, did not share the engineering report with us that showed there could be a possible rock problem for the leach field. We left town on September 8 thinking things would proceed along as planned. We left a phone number, and address where we could be reached. We even left an email address for them. When we arrived in Ohio we phoned Sherry at NorthStar and left a fax number. Never once did Barbara or Doug contact us for permission to change and or modify what we had ordered. As a matter of record they never called us. Trying to get information from Northstar is just about impossible. They treat you like mushrooms. After a little over two months out of town we decided to return because of little progress being made on our home. The footers for the foundation were not even poured yet. Our thinking was that if we were in their office each day it would help get this project moving. Well the joke was on us. All this maneuver did was infuriate Barbara. She can't stand to have anyone question what she is doing on a project. Also, it does not allow her to charge for work when you are around to say it was not done or is not complete. We asked Doug what the holdup was and he said that they had some permit problems and two weeks of really cold weather. We accepted his explanations at face value and asked how long he expected before we could move into the home. He said he thought it would be by the end of the December. Again we believed what he was saying to us. We would go out to the home site every day because we had nothing else to do and we didn't like staring at four walls in the motel. Yes, we stayed in a motel because we were led to believe that within four to six weeks we would be able to move into our home. Well, this four to six weeks just kept moving. Doug, you once told us about how you ordered a hamburger and didn't get it the way you ordered it. You said nobody cares about customer service anymore. Well, try ordering a home and not getting it the way you want it. Wait in NorthStar's office while you are told lies. You demand customer service but you sure do not provide it to your customers. We went to Teller County and pulled our building permit file in June 2001 and found out why there were permit problems. On September 20, 2000 Barbara Robbins applied for a building permit and submitted engineered drawings for the foundation basement and the modular home without stairs between them. Naturally the Planning department of Teller County rejected the permit application. She then submitted new plans with stairs from the engineer on October 13 to the Planning Department of Teller County. Evidently the Planning Department wanted some additional information regarding the stairs because the engineer had to provide a letter with a revised stair layout on October 24. This must have satisfied the Planning Department of Teller County because a building permit was issued on October 30. Well the permit problems were the fault of NorthStar and not the caused by a delay with the County. After the footers were poured on Nov. 15 they began forming the walls for pouring concrete. We thought that the sliding glass door opening was smaller than it should be. I went and bought a tape measure and found it to be five feet wide. We had requested a six-foot sliding door and the permit drawings reflected this. We went to NorthStar and complained to Doug. He said that Barb had changed it to match the sliding doors on the modular. Doug and Barb told us that you could not get six-foot sliding doors from the factory. Doug said we could stop them and resize the door. We said we didn't want to delay moving into our home so we settled for something we didn't order. Guess what! When the house did arrive the sliding doors on the modular were six-foot doors. Doug and Barb do not even know their own product. On December 8, 2000 our home was delivered to NorthStar. No one at NorthStar bothered to notify us that it was coming. We just happened to drive by and saw it parked off the road by their office. At first I didn't think it was our home because there was not a window next to the patio door as we requested. We went on to our property and ran into Barbara on the way. She told us the other half of our home is sitting in their yard. We were upset that this was our home as it was not what we had ordered. Anne went back to NorthStar and complained that two windows were missing and that the living room windows were not moved as we requested. Doug said that the two missing windows could be installed on site and it would be taken care of. He also said that the living room windows could not be moved to the corner of the house because of engineering requirements. Doug, this is the first lie we caught you in (look at your models). We went to the house and peeked through the windows and saw that the utility room door was 24 inches wide. We were never alerted to the fact that doors were this small when we ordered the home. We found this out when we began studying the factory drawings. We alerted Barb to this fact and wanted the door changed out to 30 inches before the home shipped from the factory. How can you get a washer and dryer through a 24-inch door to the utility room? Both Summit Crest and NorthStar don't think about these problems and don't seem to care as this has happened to previous buyers. On December 28 we were also able to see that the main bathroom door was also 24 inches wide. We had ordered a UBC home and asked if we had to order carpet. Doug said he would check and let us know. We asked several times about this matter. When we signed the contract Doug said he didn't have an answer from the factory yet but said that if we did get the carpet he would have Anne (carpet business across from NorthStar) sell it for us. He said that if we upgraded the carpet we would sell it faster and recover our money. We went along with this and ordered it. Just before we left Doug told us we were not required to order the carpet. We said to cancel it then. Well the carpet was never canceled. It took us six months to be reimbursed for the carpet from NorthStar and it was only for the upgrade amount. We have yet to be reimbursed for the base cost of the carpet. Doug had the carpet taken from our home on Feb.12 and stored in his garage. We later found out that we had been charged $25.00 for taking the carpet to Doug's. Doug you owe us money. On December 14 the four walls were complete on the foundation. We were scheduled to set the house on the foundation December 15. It didn't happen and we were rescheduled to December 22. The crane company canceled because they were awaiting parts for the crane. We were rescheduled to December 26. We went through Divide and saw the crane sitting off to the side of the road. We were happy because we thought our home would be placed on the foundation. We stopped at the office and told Doug we saw the crane. He got a funny look on his face and said it was not for us as they had canceled the crane because of snow (another lie Doug). It snowed no more than two inches the previous day. The set was now rescheduled to December 28. Well we finally did set the home on this date. I asked the crane operator if that was them sitting in Divide and he said it was. Barb had not canceled the crane until they had driven from Colorado Springs to Divide when they received her phone call. We told Barb we were not going to pay for this trip when she should have canceled earlier. They were not even ready to set the home on that day anyway. We never received an invoice on this and are not sure what was charged. Now our home was on the foundation and we thought we would be in our home in four to six weeks. We were told that we were their number one priority. The home would not settle on the foundation. They tried pulling it down with come-a-longs. After about a week of this the steel beam that was the center support for the home looked as if it wanted to twist off the foundation. I mentioned this to Terry (one of NorthStar's sub-contractors) and he said it did look bad. He checked under the home on the beam and found that the home has 2x10's under the home sitting on the beam. This was the reason the home would not settle on the foundation and never would. We went to the office to tell Doug but Terry was already there and Doug knew. Doug had told us that the evening before they had all set around and discussed why the house wouldn't settle and they thought this was the problem. Yeah, we buy that Doug. If that were the case why didn't you have Terry or Troy out there first thing in the morning to check on it? Terry was not there to check if this was the problem. He was just checking to see how the house was settling. This was on a Friday and they did not work on removing the 2x10's until Monday. Makes you wonder who else became their number one priority. Once this was resolved we should have been in our home in about six weeks. Doug told us we would be in by Anne's birthday, the end of January. (Another lie and he knew it, say anything to get the customer out of the office). Barb did not schedule an electrician or plumber to come out to give bids until February 19. The propane gas was not done until the end of April. Why Barbara? Well we think it is because you were using our money that we paid you in full in January for our home while you still had a loan on it from Conseco. There was an incentive on your part to delay this project as long as you could. Doug and Barb are two of the most unethical, dishonest and uncaring people we have ever met. We were not allowed access to the home for a walk through until we paid for the home. When we did we found a bedroom reduced in width by four feet. Barbara said they could fix it by moving the walls. Well there is more involved than moving walls and she knows it. We told her that was not a viable option. We finally started asking for cash compensation. She was willing to pay someone to do the work but would not give us cash compensation. To this day NorthStar has done nothing to reconcile this problem. We ordered and paid for a linen closet in the utility room and an exhaust vent for the kitchen stove that we never received. NorthStar has no intent on fulfilling their contract obligations. They have your money and that is all they care about. NorthStar never completed installing a leach field and septic system. They had more then 8 months to do this. We were able to have it reengineered, installed and approved by the County in six weeks. This project went along in spurts with something happening infrequently. NorthStar had Kodiak Grading & Concrete Work put in the concrete slab for our walkout basement on frozen ground. This was specifically not to happen per the engineering design and NorthStar knew it. We now are developing cracks in the slab. We were told that they would bring in a source of heat before pouring the slab but they never did. We thought they knew what they were doing. In April we asked about when the stairs and garage were to be finished. Barbara never was able to find a contractor to build stairs per the engineered design. We received two bids for the garage but never a complete bid. Our home was not secured to the foundation. NorthStar reneged on building a deck on our home even though it was in the contract. They never had intended to build the deck because they never had it engineered. We fired Barbara Robbins on May 17 as nothing was being done and what was being done was wrong or shoddy. Per Barbara we were to receive all invoices at the end of this project. More lies as she refused to give us copies of most invoices. The reason is she doesn't want you to know the true cost of the project and what you are being billed for. You cannot challenge costs without invoices. The customer can only feel cheated and that they are scamming you because of their refusal to give you all invoices. We finally had stairs put in connecting the basement and the modular. We found two contractors who could design and build the stairs. Barbara never found any contractor who could do the work or design the stairs. Even the engineering company she hired admitted that the design she had would not work. If you want poor workmanship, no quality control, don't care attitudes, incompetence, overcharging you and not delivering on contract items on your project then Doug and Barbara Robbins at NorthStar are whom you want to do business with. We finally were able to contact the foundation company who did our work before pulling off the job and was provided an invoice. The invoice showed a 10% discount on the bid and NorthStar kept this amount and billed us for the entire bid. When confronted with this Barbara knew exactly what we should have been billed. Isn't that coincidence? Barbara says she can prove it but our records say the opposite. Barbara and Doug prove it! Otherwise, we believe that you have stolen the money from us. Also, the invoice indicates an additional charge of $600.00 for not providing electricity to the property for the construction workers. Barbara, this was your fault as we provided electricity to the property in the second week of September and you were to provide temporary electric to the house. This is another example of NorthStar not giving a damn what it costs the customer. One last thing I'd like to add. We learned in late April that Barbara told one of her employees she wanted to be fired off our project. She had said this in either late December or early January that she would cause delays and force us to fire her. I wish she had the courage and decency to tell us this herself. We would have let her go and finished the project ourselves. By her not being honest up front she caused us the expense of living in a motel for over 6 months and storing our furniture for almost a year. She really had us fooled. We spoke about being friends and neighbors. At one point I thought we could be, but friends do not do this.