When we bought our property last year there was no signage at all on the property, and we are not on the main highway, so after a lot of planning we deciced on a large lighted sign 6' tall 16' lg. and 20' up in the air that would give visibality from the highway. We got with a sign company that seemed very noligable and helpful at the time, so we paid half up front and was told the sign would be ready to install within two weeks. two months later still no sign, finally about 7 weeks ago it was installed, the first thing we noticed is that half the sign would come on and then go off, then we noticed the photo eye was not working and it was staying on full time. after a month of calling them 4 or 5 times a week they came out and replaced the photo eye, still half was going off and on, then tuesday night we had a storm come thru, not to bad they claimed wind gust to 30mph, but we got a call yesterday and was told are sign was leaning very bad and was busted up and about to fall on one of our buildings. I called the sign company right away and they came right out, but then I got a call back from them and they said it was an issurance claim and would not touch it into insurance was filed on it, and they just left it as it was. I called our insurance and they said to do whatever it took to try and prevent it from falling, by that time it was after 4pm, so we called another sign company, all their people were sent home for the day and they said they would be out first ting this morning to give an estimate and would do what was necessary to prevent it from falling, hopfully it hasen't fell yet, I am out of the state and my wife is trying to handle this. The other sign company was very helpful and when we told him what was going on he said the people we had put up our sign was in trouble with the city and was in the process of reinstalling all the signs they had just put up for them because they did not bury them deep enough. Our sign was buried 4' deep, he said that there is a standarn calculation that is used to determine the depth needed and without even looking at the calculations he is sure our sign should have been installed at least 6' deep. He is suppose to provide us with the proper calulations and an estimate to give to the insurance. I am just not sure what all we need to do here. Should I just let the insurance handle this? or do I need to take other legal action in order to make them responsible?

Wel after having some other sign experts come out and our insurance come out, we were able to convince the sign company that they were responsible, they made it out and removed the sign before it fell on our building, I just hope now it gets fixed right and not take another four months to get it back.
Why can't anything ever be simple

I feel your pain -- seems that you have to be a master at everything these days because if you want it done right you have to do it yourself!*


















* Or be willing to go to court to get it done correctly!

__________________
Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.


All arguments can be resolved ... with high explosives and Humor!!!

That's why we do everything ourselves, because it always turns out like this when we try and hire something done. in a case like this you have to rely on someone else to do the job right. Little did this guy know when he said it wasn't his problem and that he put it in according to code that he was dealing with two engineers

I'm following up on this so that maybe it will help keep someone else from getting into this type of situation.
Long story short.
They picked up our sign on a saturday, that monday the person in charge, his wife that does the graffics, and the secretary all walked out, and they shut the doors on the business. With our sign in there shop
So we started trying to find out what to do, Keep in mind this place has been in business for over 15 years.
In our search we discover the owner had gone off the deep end and had been committed. And his daughter had gotten power of attorney to take care of things. In the mean time the owner had taken a lean out on the business for a house and gone into default and the bank was in the process of seizing the assets of the business, All this happening right after we bought our sign and it was being built.
We talked with an attorney who wanted about one third of what the sign cost just to start looking at the issue with not much hope of getting anywere.
We filed a complaint thru the attorney general, they never even responded.
We found they had canceled there libility insurace right before we started business with them. Our insurance would not cover it because it was new construction issues.
We ended up filing a complaint thru small claims court in hope to mabe recope part of our loss, all this was a major effort because we had to locate were the daughter lived in order to serve her.

Then a week ago the same guy that installed our sign to start with call my wife and said the company had a new owner and he was working for that new owner, and that the new owner had only bought the company assets from the bank, so he wanted to quote us a price on fixing our sign.
I was out of town, so my wife paid them a visit, needless to say this guy spent over an hour getting chewed out in front of his new boss.
The new owner was very nice and very helpful, he agree to fix the sign at a very low cost and have us pay whatever we wanted when we wanted while we try to get money from the originial owners. We will probably just end up having to pay for the repairs ourselves, it appears the old company nas no assets.

Lesson learned, always check on proof of insurance from a company that is doing work for you. If they had insurance we would not be in the mess were in now. Even if the company is licenses and bonded, at least in Arkansas it doesn't help. But That's another long story.

Thanks for the advice! In today's economy, we all have to be careful about the people and businesses we work with. The last people to know when things go south are usually the customers!