Peter Cooper & ASSOC

If I could give a lower rating than one, I would. We had hoped hiring an architect would save us time and money, spending our hard earned money in the best ways possible while utilizing a professional who has the experience to guide us in this process and make it enjoyable. We thought we were doing the right thing, but unfortunately we chose the wrong person. Hiring Peter Cooper proved to be the exact opposite of this in EVERY way. When we first met, we gave him a budget and discussed our needs. He noted it was a challenge but was warm and bubbly and told us everything we were after should be able to be achieved within reason. We were sold a pipe dream in that the first two quotes I received from builders (one from his 'most economical' suggestion) were over 50% higher than the top of our budget. Yes I realize numbers cannot be known, and builders will vary but as a professional if you ignore my budget or cannot even come within 10-20% of it with a professional guess, I believe it's time to retire. He took ZERO responsibility for this and keep referring to his 'agreement' which just tells me this is a common theme with him and I assume many are just scared to stand up to him because he is supposed to be the pro. He deflected any and all responsibility and even had the audacity to claim "that budget was never made clear to me at all" which of course was a total lie. In fact, he was the 'unprofessional' when I challenged him to the fact that he wasn't meeting our needs. I was baited and switched...and he threw me out of his office (actually he walked out in a huff like a coward and left me there, a true child in an elderly frame of a fraudster). Peter also hand draws everything, which may have been state of the art in the 70s, but as a consumer, I am not trained to understand these drawings and making revisions becomes a much longer process and of course much more expensive from a time stand point as well as the fact he has to outsource having the final documents drawn up in CAD for a builder and permits to actually used. I had read an article of the questions to ask and architect before you hire, and one of those questions was "do you personally use CAD or some sort of computer aided software" and to avoid those that do not. I should have gone with my gut there and I hope someone reading this won't make the same mistakes I did. I learned a $2000 lesson today, please do more careful research than I did before choosing an architect for your building plans.

Working with Peter was a joy. He was very responsive and provided his work on time and within budget. He was very patient with changes and delays and was very flexible with my sometimes changing timeline.