BUYER BEWARE! Many Warranties Are Deceptive!
If a company presents a warranty for a specified duration, it’s easy to assume the company would stand behind their work for that amount of time. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. In fact, many concrete raising companies offer warranties with Terms and Conditions that can eliminate all value completely!
The fact is, you can find yourself dealing with contractors highly motivated to make sales. A contractor’s verbal discussion with you regarding warranty terms can be part of a well-rehearsed sales pitch. However, in the long run, their warranty may fail to provide the value or protection you assumed you had. Therefore, we urge consumers to specifically look at, and understand, written warranty terms and conditions when evaluating a contractor’s offering.
Simply put, consumers need to do their due diligence and “read the fine print” to ensure they are truly protected.
Warranty Scenarios You Should Avoid
The “Lifetime” Warranty
This is the epitome of all bad warranty based marketing tactics. Unfortunately, there are contractors who use the term “Lifetime Warranty” in a very deceptive manner. With no other intent than to hook you into trusting them with your business, this dishonest marketing strategy offers a false sense of security. Unfortunate are their customers who fail to drill down into the terms of this agreement before signing a contract. They think to themselves “how can I go wrong – they’re going to stand behind their work for the lifetime of my concrete”.
Unbeknownst to so many trusting consumers, this warranty is likely limited to “ONE RE-LIFT”. This means if the contractor didn’t raise or support your concrete correctly, they may have to re-lift it a month after it was originally raised. After that re-lift, the warranty is now VOID. Your “Lifetime” warranty was just reduced to 30-days!
The Four Year Warranty
If a company is pitching a four-year warranty, we encourage you to read their warranty terms and conditions carefully. Also, if a warranty is limited to “labor and materials” you may want to exercise caution.
Some contractors, who when called upon after their raised concrete sinks again, won’t necessarily raise your concrete back up. Some contractors will propose to drill multiple holes into the slab to determine if their “labor or material” has failed. You can guess what their determination will be.
When these contractors determine their product is indeed under your concrete, they could fall back on their warranty language stating their product has not failed. This way of handling their warranty leaves you with additional holes in your concrete and no resolution to your problem. It also leaves you without a warranty repair. Acme Concrete Raising & Repair does not operate this way. We stand behind our repairs.
HINT: Always look contractor’s up with the Better Business Bureau and review their track record regarding complaints.
The Three Year Warranty
Are you being sold on a three-year warranty? We have had customers share with us their experiences with a certain Three Year Warranty that’s not so “customer-friendly”. In this case, the warranty states that if the raised concrete drops more than ½” in three years – the contractor will replace the dropped concrete with new concrete – at their regular installation price, less the price of the “mudjacking” that the customer deemed unsatisfactory. We find the proposition of “regular pricing” to be highly suspect at best. In our estimation, this is another warranty that is essentially worthless to consumers.
Other things to look out for are “conditions” that can void you from obtaining warranty repairs. In some cases, you might be required to backfill along the sides of all raised areas. You might also be signing on to an agreement that says you will seal all cracks and joints. Although we agree these are generally good things to do, we do not think you the consumer should be denied a warranty repair just because you failed to seal a joint to the contractor’s expectations.
The One Year Warranty
A one-year warranty is simply not sufficient. If a contractor says they’ve been lifting concrete for 20, 25, or 30 years and only offer to stand behind it for 1-year, you should reject that offer immediately. If they’ve been raising concrete that long, their experience must be that their repairs don’t usually last longer than a year. Our guess is that they’re proposing to raise your concrete with a mud or cement slurry (mudjacking) and they don’t have the confidence to warranty it for longer than a year. You should expect more for your money!
A Concrete Raising Warranty That Works For You!
Acme Concrete Raising & Repair provides an honest and straightforward warranty. Since we only use commercial grade high-density polyurethane to raise and support concrete – we have enough confidence in our work to not “limit” our warranty to labor and material. We also DO NOT use tricky language to enable us to void the warranty for various reasons. Aside from certain “Acts of God“, our warranty states we will re-raise any areas that re-settle. It’s simple, our polyurethane is very strong. In fact we use a polyurethane that is about twice the strength of what most competitors use. It will not crack, shrink, or washout. In the unlikely event your concrete settles after we raise it, it’s probably because the ground underneath the polyurethane has continued to settle – which is extremely rare for concrete that has been poured 10 or more years prior to raising.
Acme Concrete Raising & Repair provides its customers with a no-nonsense warranty. Unlike many other contractors, we do not put conditions on our warranty for the purpose of being able to “void it” if you require service.
Bottom line – we value great long-term relationships that result in word of referrals more than simply making a “quick buck”.
