- Chris Hampton
Please. Please. Please read this while vetting suppliers.
I wanted to start this Blog with a short story.
You may have read a story if you have googled steel buildings about a class action lawsuit happening against a steel building supplier in Colorado, I believe the attorney general is involved, etc...it's very sad that people get scammed. Google it, it may save you!

Anyway, in the news channels coverage of the lawsuit they interview a man who gave his deposit, waited, called, waited, called again, someone got back to him with a change order for double the price, he waited again, and again, and again. Received another change order, a %350 increase!!! Eventually losing $18,000.
I don't start with this story to "bash" other companies, we don't do that, we don't pressure, we don't have sales, we are project managers who love construction and love seeing new projects finished, not telemarketers.
I start with this story because before this gentleman bought from the scam company, he spoke to me.
After speaking I got his building to estimating, designed some renderings, reached out to two erectors in Colorado that are friends of mine, and had pricing, preliminary drawings, renderings and project costs over to him in less than 6 hours.
He was grateful but a week later he told me he had sent my work to other companies who were getting him quotes and they should have them back within the week.
Again, we don't bash competition but I told him that was a "real" number, we have no escalation clauses, and can guarantee timeframes.
I also told him I have been hearing horror stories about some companies stealing deposits and never delivering and that there ARE NO SALES, this is a construction project.
I never heard from him again and now he is in the news.
We don't have to preliminary engineer the building for your local loads and codes, but we do.
We don't have to make sure openings, collateral loads, insulation, erection and all component numbers are correct from the start, but we do.
We don't have to do renderings so you can see what different colors look like, but we do.
Each person I talk to I spend 1.5-2 hours making sure everything is correct and clients will be happy from the get go, AND WE LOVE IT.
We have enough recurring business that, I'm being %100 honest, we don't mind if you buy from someone else. There are good suppliers in this industry.
Just don't get scammed.