If you’ve been following us for a while, or if we have ever worked with you then you know how we have always taken great pride in announcing to high heavens that we are the only ones with a real life-time warranty.
Why do we do this? Well, because we have the absolute certainty that the work we do is of the highest standards and we know that only under special circumstances you would require our warranty to go into effect.
But every now and then these special circumstances arise, and you can rest assure that we will honor our word. In the same way we pride ourselves about or work, we also pride ourselves in how we make good on our warranties.
So as you can image warranty jobs are few and far in between. And when they happen they are usually quite small in scale. Readjusting 3, 5 or 6 piers at the most. And generally when this happens it has more to do with lack of maintenance than anything else. Take dental work as an example. Maybe you had cavities and you went to the dentist and they were able to fill them out; but they clearly mention that you have to brush your teeth 3 times a day, that you need to use mouthwash and floss. But you don’t really listen to these recommendations and within one year you are back to see the dentist because of new cavities. What would you say is the cause of these cavities? A poor job on the dentist part or the lack of ‘maintenance’?
The same is true about foundation repair. Bad plumbing, leaks, lack of gutters and many other things can damage your foundation once again, in spite of having it repaired in the past.
And this is certainly what we’ve been encountering through out all these years. If the reason for the adjustment is because of inadequate conditions, we have no problem readjusting what needs to be readjusted, as long as the homeowner commits to get those conditions sorted out. If an additional service is required, for instance needing to install gutters, then they will have to get those gutters installed (It can be by us or someone else). Because if the problem reappears a second time because the homeowner did not follow our recommendations yet again, then it would no longer be covered by our warranty.
Now, most of the times, it does not recur given that homeowners understand that the readjustment needed was not due to poor workmanship but because of additional external factors causing the damage.
Having said that, we do not void warranties. In fact there has only one single occasion when we had to void a warranty in the ten years since iFix has been in service. And this was because every single suggestion we made to the investor was completely ignored. (The owner was an investor and not a homeowner. Which makes sense as a homeowner would have done what we suggested in order to better take care of their house).
You can watch our video detailing this story in great detail, but in short the investor put all his money and effort into the exterior of the house; into aesthetics; making a nice looking house instead of investing into prevention and maintenance after the foundation was repaired, just as we suggested and even after warning him about the possible consequences.
This house specifically is on top of a hill with a very steep slope; we recommended installing drains and gutters and performing a very necessary soil grading. A little over a year later we got a call from him; the investor was getting ready to sell the house; and the report they gave us was asking us to adjust 6 piers in one of the corners and re-shim the interior of the house. We did that, no problem, bringing it back to the position we had originally left it in. But we had to let the investor know that warranty only covers our workmanship and materials, but the problem was that none of our recommendations were followed. As mentioned in the video, keeping a house safe and in good condition after a foundation repair is a matter of teamwork; if we do our part but the owner of the house does not do his, ignoring our recommendations regarding whatever additional services are required to keep your house safe and stable, then eventually the foundation will fail again, and under those specific circumstances we cannot be held responsible for the damage.
Make no mistake, we always hold ourselves accountable. We will always be there to fix whatever needs fixing if it was our mistake, we do no void warranties, but much to everyone’s chagrin, this specific example, represents the one occasion where we were forced to do it; but not without adjusting the needed piers first and leaving the house back in the original level we left it in.
So remember, if you hire us there is nothing to fear; the job will be of the highest quality and if for any reason the materials or our workmanship fails we will be there, having your back and rectifying our mistakes, but know that this is a symbiotic relationship. As a homeowner you must do your part, and as long as you see to that you can rest easy know that iFix and our unique lifetime warranty will always have your back.
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