Batt + Lear

J Shafchuk is my husband who reviewed Batt + Lear below. I’m concerned about Jason Lear’s response as we did not agree to part ways, we fired him and his company for lack of performance, lack of communications, and, quite frankly, lack of honesty. According to other couples who have contacted us about Batt + Lear as recently as of today (2÷3÷16) and last year (2015) he hasn’t worked out his honesty and communication issues. Since putting a single line in a blog about their service, we’ve been contacted by 3 other couples with similar issues. I just wonder how many other folks have been hurt by their business in not only trust in the construction green-​building business or lost valuable time in building their dream homes. Luckily, we found some good, honest people who helped to finally build our home after wasting 6 months on Batt+Lear.
And yes, I’m still upset, because it upsets me that we lost so much money and time, and the company is still doing the same things to good, honest people.

As a subcontractor for Batt and Lear, I have found that communication and payment to be sub par compared to other builders of the same size. If I have to make MANY phone calls between project managers and office staff to get payment for work done, then I can only imagine the difficulties a customer would have. As of now they owe me over 3000.00 and all I get are run arounds and promises for payment.

We loved our experience working with Batt+Lear. We worked very closely with Jason and
Jan on a major kitchen overhaul, as well as a big energy efficiency upgrade
that included new windows, insulation, and a new ductless heat pump. We knew it
was going to be a big project, and neither one of us had much experience with
any other kind of remodel. They walked us through all the steps, were great
project managers, and the overall experience was great.
Everybody we worked with was delightful… from B+L employees to the subcontractors they hired for the energy efficiency work. They were all really friendly, nice people who performed high quality, exceptional work. In fact, the best thing we can say about working with B+L is that they created a kitchen design exactly how we envisioned, and they did it with a sustainability ethic that was extremely important to us.
They were not the cheapest bid we received and we knew that when we started. But we had a big project and we needed it to be done well. B+L were upfront with the costs, organized and accurate with the budget, and extremely helpful when it came to securing financing. What tipped the balance was that of the contractors we interviewed, only B+L really listed to us and helped design the kitchen we wanted. Others tried to cram their design ideas down our throats, and weren’t willing to really be creative about with our small space.

Description Of Work:
Batt & Lear was supposed to design and build an addition and renovate our house within a budget provided to them in writing. After much miscommunication and lack of responsiveness we severed our relationship with them. The design was not complete. They charged us for every minute with spoke with them or talked to them.
The most disappointing part of our dealings with Batt & Lear were responsiveness, communication, and price. When we initially interviewed Batt & Lear one of our questions included our budget parameters. Their response to this question indicated that they could do what we wanted within that budget. We were sorely disappointed. We hired Batt & Lear near the beginning of June, 2013. After many miscommunications, long lags in responding to our emails, and disappointments in costs for the designs we ended our relationship with Batt & Lear in mid October of 2013. We had hoped to have started the build phase of the project by then.
Our initial disappointment with Batt & Lear was responsiveness to our emails. The time between sending them an email and responding was long. Then we noticed miscommunication within their own company. We had discussed the option of tearing down the house or remodeling at the very beginning. We were told by the principal of the company that renovating would be the same cost as tearing down and starting over. Based on this information we went forward with having them design a house that would be renovated. The principal of the company brought in a project manager to look at the house two months later. The project manager asked us why we weren’t tearing the house down after inspecting it because of the amount of work that was needed to renovate. Needless to say our mouths dropped. The project manager said that he and the principal disagreed a lot about whether to renovate or start over. It didn’t make us feel better.
At a meeting that we thought was supposed to be fit and finish selection, they told us that they had realized the day before the design was way over budget and we needed to cut back. Again our mouths dropped. We didn’t know what to do. We told them we couldn’t afford the design and they needed to go back to the drawing board. They took some of the blame and told us they would give us a break on the amount they charged us. We decided to go forward since we had so much time and money already invested.
They finally submitted a design that did not include all the changes we had requested and a budget that was considerably higher than what we could afford. In that budget were top of the line items we had not requested and had not been consulted about. When we questioned them about this we were told that they could change whatever we wanted. Of course, it would continue to cost us $ 85.00 an hour to do all this. We called other builders, sub-​contractors, etc. to get pricing on a number of the items. All came in lower or we could find less expensive alternatives than what Batt & Lear wanted to charge.
In the meantime, we also had hired them to install heat pumps in the house as we had no heat. This dragged on and on and on with delay after delay and a new install date postponed time after time.
We finally decided to sever our relationship with them and move on. This was the most frustrating part of our dealings with them as they insisted the problems were all our fault and they would not give us any break on the costs. They kept insisting that we were the ones who couldn’t decide on a design. We pointed out that we had no idea how much their designs cost and assumed that they were within the budget constraints we had provided them. We told them we could not afford to continue to pay $ 85.00 an hour for designs and budgets that were not what we requested.
We hired another company to install the heat pump and had no problems with communication, responsiveness, or price. The cost was cheaper than what Batt & Lear quoted us.
We are in the process of hiring another designer to redo the plans so that we can afford to renovate our house within our budget.
Our experience with Batt & Lear is «buyer beware.» Our impression of the way they work is to design what they think would be ideal without concern for cost and then charge the client for the redesigns. They also had difficulty timely communications. Their lack of communication to us and with their own employees us needs a lot of improvement.