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Our Clayton Homes Nightmare.

Welcome to our Nightmare

Buying a new home should be a wonderful, exciting experience! Not so if you buy from Clayton Homes. Especially the one in Ashland Virginia. That's what this site will be devoted to; our personal experience buying a new 2006 Avondale made by CMH Rutledge Division Doublewide mobile home from Clayton Homes in Ashland Virginia.

At the end of June 2005 after waiting and saving and doing without for 15 years, cashing in everything of value that we had, selling our classic car, and a year and half of research we decided on a floor plan from Clayton homes. They are supposed to be the best when it comes to manufactured housing. We went to the Clayton Homes dealership in Ashland Virginia; Fredericksburg Clayton Homes would have been much closer for us but for some unknown reason we could not get the floor plan we wanted there.

Our sales representative was Joy Ramos. The manager was Bob Lucas. We started out our process by going to every Clayton Homes dealership within reasonable driving distance of our home. We talked to several sales representatives at each location, finding out what floor plans they could and could not get and the prices of the homes. You would be surprised at how the price of the same exact home changes from dealer to dealer. Sometimes by as much as $10,000.00. After getting in touch with the home office of Clayton we had to settle for the Ashland dealership as they were the only ones who sold the floor plan we wanted. We started dealing with Ms. Ramos and soon found out that she had almost no knowledge of any of the floor plans at all. We would ask questions and she would give two or three different answers. She had no clue what options were available for the floor plan we wanted. For instance, we were under the impression, and were never told otherwise, that the whole house was OSB wrapped, not so! We were not offered that option at all. Nor were we told of the option for skylights in the kitchen, smaller bathroom and master bath. Nor were we offered the option of a second sliding glass door in the family room. We had wanted three gables on our home and were told that was fine, then a day later Ms. Ramos called us and told us that wasn't possible. In short this woman had no clue what she was selling, doing or saying.

Another for instance, we had two different sales agreements, each with different prices, she kept changing the price, she couldn't figure out what the total cost was. We were about to just give up when she finally came up with a sales agreement that was right and stuck to it. We put our 10% down, as per Claytons 10-80-10 plan, and started to get ready for the move. Now throughout the buying process we were told repeatedly by Ms. Ramos that it would take 2 weeks, 2 1/2 weeks at the most to get the house out there and setup. We contracted separately with Sean Redmond who works with Clayton homes to break down (which we did almost all of the breaking down ourselves) and pull our old home to the dump. We were told and told and told, day after day after day that they would be out and get that done, they would be there bright and early the next morning, they would be there for sure on Friday, so it went on and on like this and finally after 4 weeks, July 30th old home was pulled out. So that was a long 2 weeks wasn't it? One of Mr. Redmond’s great excuses was there had been so much rain. There had been no rain all through July. In fact it was one of the driest Julys since the 1800's as stated by the National Weather Service.

The following week, early August, no one came out to grade the land or start the footers. Mr. Redmond had an awful lot of trucks breaking down and family emergencies during the weeks that followed. The third week of August someone finally came out to start the footers. The footers where finally done and poured by the end of August. We had a hold up because Mr. Redmond got smart with one of our inspectors in King George Co. and that caused all kinds of trouble. Then on August 30th our new home was finally brought out to our land, 8 weeks after signing the closing papers with Ms. Ramos.

Now the fun really starts. On August 30th Ms. Ramos was right on the spot to collect the 80% and then didn't bother to stay around as the house was moved up our very steep driveway, that we had told them and told them and told them that they needed to make special preparations and really come out and look at how they were going to get that house up the driveway. Mr. Redmond the owner of the setup company was not there, nor anyone from Clayton to make sure that our home was safely got up the driveway. Just a few of Mr. Redmond's employees and one man who was supposed to be a expert at difficult moves like this with a little remote control machine with tracks that looked like a mini bulldozer without the front blade on it. The machine was apparently not in very good repair as its tracks kept coming off and they had to stop and put it back on every couple of minutes. The first half of our home, the back of the house was got up by the skin of its teeth. When the front half was delivered they were all tired and just wanted to leave so they really didn't care much how they did things. As a result they got the second half of our home, the front of the house, half way up the driveway and LOST IT. The tracks had slipped off of the machine again and instead of tying off the house to one of the many many trees we have, and putting huge chocks behind the wheels of the house they did nothing but put some 1x1s under the back wheels. As they were trying to get the hitch back on the machine it wasn't lined up right and hit the hitch and because there were no safety precautions taken the front half of my brand new $90,000.00 home rolled back down my driveway, across a state road and into a creek on the other side and hit an embankment!!