Excel Homes

Excel homes have extremely poor warranty service and even worse customer service. Everything changed as soon as we got possession. The sales team was nice and we bought the house because of the good service. But unfortunately after possession the sales team is out of the picture and you only deal with the service and warrantee team. The warrantee team doesn't care about the homebuyers. I showed all my concerns to the warrantee representative and he took notes and nothing happened afterwards (October to December). Then i had to report some items to Excel homes Service Manager in early December (then again in March) to fix the items under warrantee, but they haven't even sent anyone to look at them yet (now mid-April). Both times the service manager promised in writing that these issues will be addressed, but shamefully there was no one sent to fix the issues. Issues such as cracked lighting fixtures, chipped tiles, mis-positioned tiles, vinyl warping etc. are still not fixed and it has been over 6 months since these were reported.

We got possession on July 28th, 2017 and since then our garage door was noisy. We only moved into the house in October and used the garage door for 4-5 months and one day it stopped working (in late feb). It was 9:30 pm in the night time and we had to move all our belongings into the house as the garage door came off the grooves and was bent. Excel homes sent in the third party company to check the door and the third party refused to cover it under warrantee. There was no reason provided and neither was any written report provided by the technician or excel homes. The technician verbally mentioned that it could be many causes such as oiling but nothing is certain. But a new house should not need oiling. Even the Alberta New Home Warrantee Program has the "GUIDE TO THE CARE & MAINTENANCE OF YOUR NEW HOME " (http://www.anhwp.com/caremaintenance/guide-to-the-care-maintenance-of-your-new-home) which says "Every few years, the hinges on your garage door should be lubricated" on page 50. They also tried blaming it on ice build-up in emails, but there was no ice build-up as we clean the snow regularly and even the technician saw no ice buildup. The door was not coming down and that was nothing to do with the ice build-up anyways. It is extremely saddening that Excel homes is trying to get out of fixing this door and also that excel homes build homes where garage doors break in 4-5 months. Then these defects are not covered under warrantee. Excel homes sent their warrantee manager to visit and the manager made comments such as the door was once working and this is not covered under warrantee as it was working at the time of possession.

There were lots of other issues with the house as well. The vents have been making noise, there was water leaking through the bathroom exhaust fan (through the roof), the vinyl siding is warped, pieces of vinyl siding were missing, tiles are chipped and are not aligned properly, the hardwood chipped easily, light fixtures were cracked etc. We spend a lot of time trying to reach out to Excel homes and try to get these items fixed. We paid ~565k for our house and we get sub-standard service. Excel homes is really not worth the price as the quality of the house is questionable. I would definitely go with a different builder.