James Clyde Homes

For the most part, James Clyde builds a decent house at an affordable price and he builds it on schedule. Unfortunately, in our experience, those are the only things he does well. James’ proclivity for delegating everything to subordinates (while taking no responsibility for outcomes), his refusal to acknowledge his client’s legitimate concerns – let alone communicate with them directly - and his tacit acceptance of his staff’s lack of professionalism, is regrettable and makes it impossible to endorse him as a builder or professional businessman. During the building process, the truecharacter of his company tends to be masked by everyone’s desire to complete the project so the lack of concern only manifests itself in small ways. However, prospective buyers should be advised that, when it comes to relationship management, service and treating the client with mutual respect, they can anticipate being condescended to and dismissed as afterthoughts. They should not expect James to personally get involved at any level. Recent examples of lack of professionalism or mutual respect for the buyer: When James' customer service staff scheduled a service appointment and then the person wasted hours of our time by not showing up, James' staff insisted that they had no obligation to actually arrive because the scheduled service was not expressly covered under a written warranty - a point they did not think was important to point out until after the no-show. Then, they tried to transfer the blame for wasting our time by stating they were doing us a favor agreeing to fix the problem in the first place. I attempted to address this lack of professionalism with James directly and I am still waiting for a response. Today I was told that our solid wood exterior front door - which is shrinking and cracking to the point of being able to see through it - is not warrantied against weather damage as this was expected given the hot Idaho summers. The quality and features of this door were discussed with the subcontractor and the foreman prior to installation, so I am amazed that a reputable builder would recommend it be used in the first place and then not back up that decision regardless of the supplier's warranty.