I recently bought a home from Centurian Properties, which they had purchased a few months prior and remodeled. During negotiations, my inspector made note of a few items they agreed to address as a condition of the sale. One issue was water drainage problems in the crawl space under the house. They agreed to assess perimeter drainage and repair or replace the existing pump that was non-functional and incorrectly installed on the day of the inspection. On moving day I discovered approximately 18 inches of standing water in the crawl space. I contacted my agent, who contacted their rep. They were prompt in addressing the issue, and had a plumber with a new pump there to install within hours. They claimed, however, that the promised work had, in fact been done and it was in working order on the day that staging items were removed from the home shortly before closing.
That same day, an electrical issue cropped up. Upon plugging my washing machine into the 110 outlet in the laundry room, lights flickered then went dark. Suddenly there was no power in the master bath/laundry (with the exception of the 220 for the clothes dryer), nor were the outlets on the exterior wall in the kitchen working. Upon checking the panel, no circuits appeared to have been tripped. The breaker in question was then turned off and back on, at which time my contractor (for appliance install) said he saw electrical arcing within the panel. He then hit the main switch to shut off all power, and discovered that the breaker had been damaged. When I contacted Centurian Properties about this issue, I was initially told that they would get an electrician out as soon as possible to check it out. The following day, however, I received a call from Centurian's rep, stating that they had not made any changes to the panel during their remodel, and it had passed my inspection, so the repair would be on my tab. Again, I contacted my agent, who contacted the selling agent to attempt to resolve the issue, and was basically told that it was my tough luck. The contractor I hired for the appliance install agreed to look at the panel and the associated lights, outlets, etc. affected. Though he is not an electrician, he is a general contractor and has some knowledge with electrical wiring and circuitry. He was unable to find any wiring issues, but he did remove the breaker switch and replaced it with a new one. Upon closer examination of the breaker switch, he noticed the Siemens component showed a date of manufacture of May, 2011. Just a month or so before Centurian Properties bought the house and began work to remodel it. I believe they purchased this home at auction from a foreclosure, so the likelihood the previous owner would have had any work done on the panel, with brand spanking new components, seems unlikely to me. So it is my belief that Centurian Properties did, in fact, make modifications to the electrical panel in the process of the remodel, and in fact placed the faulty breaker themselves.
In other words, they lied to me when they said they hadn't. I suspect the electrical work was done without a permit or inspection, so they thought it best not to take any responsibility for creating a problem with the panel. The reality is that a component they placed in that panel failed on Day 1 of my occupancy, and when asked to take responsibility for diagnosing and repairing the problem, they lied about having done any related work, and washed their hands of it.
I also believe that they lied to me when they told me the sump pump had been functioning properly just days before. I think they skipped the work they agreed to do, in hopes I wouldn't find the problem until much later, at which point they could just claim the pump must have failed, but that they had honored their obligation.
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