United Steel Buildings reviews and complaints
FRAUD AND DECEPTION
Ordered a building from these clowns and Its been a ordeal the whole 14 months. The price they quote you is a starting price, seems to go up daily when your getting ready to buy. The salesman ( Richard ) called daliy to remind me to pay my deposit before the steel goes up or else its going to be more, tried to charge me sales tax, charged me extra money for steel and enginering because I wanted a couple of windows, later to find out the windows are field located and never got any extra steel to put in the windows. Delay after delay, excuses after excuses, unreturned phone calls and then It finally arrived ( only part of the building) 7 months later. They told be they would sent the rest of the building a week behind the first shipment. Well it's been 6 weeks now and after a dozen phone calls they told me maybe some more of it would be shipped out next week but couldn't be sure. They are rude on the phone ( it seems they are always in a meeting when I call and don't return phone calls ) when you do get threw to them and just give you the run around. They want your money right now and will remind you to lock in the stell prices but once they get the money your on your own. BEWARE OF THESE CLOWNS !
Company Business Name: UNITED STEEL BUILDINGS
Country of complaint: United States
Address: Florida
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
This company is a RIP OFF!!!!
PLEASE do not send any of your money to this company! These people are a scam to take your money and so far nothing has been done about it. I read some of the complaints about the business before going forward and I even forwarded these websites with complaints to the salesman (Paul) at USB. With their smooth talking they insured my husband and I that those were only the complaints of a few customers out of thousands. Unfortunately, their smoothing over worked and we believed them. We sent a deposit of which was all they were requesting at the time before delivery and so they said the balance would be paid upon delivery. However, only a few weeks later they tried to go up $2000.00 dollars due to building code changes (which they were supposed to have already checked and a beam they needed to add due to where our doors were going, which again they were supposed to have known and figured out all of this before our initial deposit). Thank goodness that due to our county code inspector writing a letter they agreed to take off the amount for the codes but still added on almost $400.00 for the beam to our initial estimate. We went on assuming everything would be fine. We did not hear anything for a few more weeks so upon my husband calling back they said they were waiting on our fabrication deposit of $2300.00 + before they could begin. However, no one had contacted us and made us aware and furthermore, in the beginning they told us the building was already fabricated due to the previous guy backing out on it and this is why we were supposedly getting such a deal. We couldn't understand why a fabrication fee needed to be paid for a building that was supposed to have already been fabricated and also this was the first we had heard of this. At this point we were just fed up and even called the owner of this operation William Knote at home. They offered us a refund of our deposit less the cost for the stamped blueprints which we said we would take. In the beginning Melinda-Ann clearly stated the blueprints normally run a "couple" of hundred dollars. However when it got down to it they told us they cost $850.00 and they would deduct that from our initial deposit of $2600.00. We agreed although we thought that was a bit much we wanted to get back what we could and just be done so that we could get as far away from this company as possible. We asked for a certified check, however, Melinda-Ann stated they will not be sending a certified check and that it will take them 30-90 days to get our check back to us anyway. Therefore, we could receive a bad check and them have to end up suing and going to court for something as simple as what could be an honest refund. However, honesty is something this company knows absolutely nothing about and they are out to get whoever will fall victim for their scam. Unfortunately, we did and we want to let everyone know how their business runs. Remember, without customers they won't have a business, they will eventually have to close down if they aren't doing business and their days of scamming people and taking honest people's hard earned money will be over!
Company Business Name: United Steel Buildings
Country of complaint: United States
Address: 2700 West Cypress Creek Road, Ft Lauderdale, Florida
Phone: 888-448-6963
Website: unitedsteelbuilding.com
I submitted an online request for a simple metal garage. I got a call from a sales rep who immediately started playing games. He said that he had a cancelled order for a slightly smaller garage that he would sell to me at cost. He said normally the garage sold for $49K and that he would give me a deal at $23k. You can buy a garage of this size for $10 from homedepot.com. There was lots of pressure to commit the same day and that they would need a $5, 000 deposit. I just hung up the phone its clear these people are scammers...
Harrassment
I completed the compan's on-line forms requesting a price quote. I received a voice-mail the very next day. I did not return the call. That first week, I received at least one, sometimes two, call per day every day. I started recognizing the 925 area code, and would just not answer. I got tired of listening to the phone ring and ring, so I set-up call forwarding directly to my voice mail.
By the second week, I started receiving 3 or 4 phone calls a day. By the third week, I was receiving 8 to 10 calls PER DAY. I got calls at 7:20AM, 7:24AM, 7:40AM, 8:05AM, etc., etc.
I started researching this company on-line, and found complaint after complaint. Stay away from this company at all costs.
Company Business Name: United Steel Buildings
Country of complaint: United States
Address: Texas
Website: unitedsteelbuilding.com
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
I ordered a steel building from United Steel buildings, of Ft. Lauderdale, FL. the sent me a purchase order with building specifications with total price listed, asked for an $1, 800 deposit, then upped the price. They then refused to return my deposit.
I had a complaint on this board about United Steel quoting us one price and then after 2 deposits, raising the price, not doing what they said, etc. and now my post is gone.
This exact thing happened to many a couple of years ago. The incoming calls were unbelievalbe and even after asking them to stop calling, they wouldn't. I would block the calls on my phone, but they used multiple numbers so it became impossible. I ended up filing a complaint with FTC for the harassment. Quite frankly, I was more pissed that they woke me up at 7 am every single day for weeks.
very rude bunch of folks,
was ordering a steel building and was offered a deal that seemed to good to be true, and a friend found many complaints about United Steel Buildings so he sent me the links to this site and others. I was offered what most places were selling for about $12K for $6500, they said some one had ordered it and then canceled the order. Then they said I would really be helping them out if I could take the 30X32 building rather then the 30X30 I was going to order. Once I found the list of complaints I emailed them to Mike my sales person, who responded that they were all put up by one unhappy customer, once I read all of the complaints and sent Mike a second link to these complaints the response was that their competitor was filing complaints and they they have thousands of satisfied customers. So not believing every thing I read, I asked if Mike would send a list of references in Georgia where I am located, copied below is their response:
Mike
Just got a response from his manager. We are not interested in doing
business with you. The last thing we need is another quack from Georgia.
Mike Sparks
United Steel Building, Inc.
Phone: (888) 448.6963
Fax: (954) 957.9352
Web: www.UnitedSteelBuilding.com
Email: [protected]@UnitedSteelBuilding.com
I think, best case is that these folks are pretty inept at dealing with customers and probably at designing buildings as well, and the lack of a reference tells me they probably don't have many satisfied clients and I can guess some of them are in Georgia. The other concern about the management of this company is that they seem to have a prejudice for people in Georgia, and I am guessing every state they have ripped people off in, what's worse is that this poor manager does not know I am from Miami, FL. My final word, these guys are not the sharpest tools in the shed, and i would not want to stand in a building they have any thing to do with, with some luck they have not killed anything but their own business.
Company Business Name: United Steel Buldings
Country of complaint: United States
Address: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
blatantly mislead
When my husband and I were shopping around for a steel building, we already knew what we were looking for- a 50'X90' with 4 garage doors and 3 entry doos. One of the entry doors was to go in the front center of the building with 2 garage doors on each side of it. The remaining 2 entry doors were to go one on each side of the building to meet fire code. We were ecstatic when the salesman (Woody) told us he had just what we wanted- in fact it was already in production - but the customer had defaulted, so we could have it at a discount. Great!
We asked for a drawing of the building and was told they couldn't send it until we put down a deposit...buyer beware! Anyway we didn't put the deposit down at that time...but then Woody calls us and says the building is fixing to be pulled from production! Oh no, we'll lose our discount- out comes the mastercard and we put down the $7, 000.00 deposit. I receive our drawings shortly after - a shell of a building that I had to draw my doors on? I then dropped them off with the building inspector, who signed off on them and sent them back to United. A couple days later I receive a fax - they need more money because of my revisions and the building no longer meets code. 1st off I didn't add anything else just put the doors on the building like we had discussed and it was already "in production" Remember? We refused to pay the additional $4500.00, we also found out that the engineer (Jack) called our building inspector to enlighten him that our building would no longer meet code. My husband called to talk to Woody, maybe he could straighten this out - all we wanted was the builing we had ordered at the original price quoted to us. His phone call was intercepted and he was told he did not need to talk to Woody that Woody no longer had our paperwork! We were grossly mislead on this "in production'" project and they are refusing to refund our money. BUYER BEWARE!
Company Business Name: Bunch's Collision Center
Country of complaint: United States
Address: 122 County Lane, Jacksboro, Tennessee
Phone: 423 562-3016
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
I was taken for 10K in 2015. I am interested in anyone who is willing to work with me on a class action lawsuit against United Steel.
PLease respond at [protected] or veronicn1@gmail.com
I made the very big mistake of filling out a form on line, requesting info on steel buildings. I was only contacted by this ONE company. The sales staff is RUTHLESS and would not honor my request to be deleted from their call list because they said they paid for the leads, and there were several other people who purchase the list individually. They've insulted me, hung up on me, yelled at me, and not ONCE have they answered a question on cost, and indicated they wouldn't UNLESS I would pay a "small" deposit TODAY. When I ask for more information the salespeople lose their temper.
Their sales line is "A large dealer went out of business and we have a surplus of buildings that you can save 50% on - for a very limited time." What's so amusing is I've had over 40 calls from them leaving messages with the same "pitch" for over 3 months. Must be it was a really big dealer with LOTS of buildings that went out of business. Clearly their idea of a "very limited time" opportunity doesn't match mine.
Today I got a call from one because I had butt dialed the last call on my cell phone accidentally. A call received from them. I told the salesman I was building stick and he said "have a nice day" and hung up on me.
As a sales manager for many years, I know short fused folks don't belong in sales! I understand being assertive and persistent are fine attributes in sales. Aggression delivered rudely is not.
If you want steel, do yourself the favor of contacting a local distributor or manufacturer.
Having the same problems with no delivery and surly personnel - Have been leaving messages for the President - Will Knotte - but he is not answering either.
Where can I locate more informaton on the class action suit?
thx
Dick E.
Same old story, I know their game and they are in big trouble.
What is the outcome of the class action lawsuit against them?
My situation is a bit different, however United Steel has taken my money and refuses to either refund it or even address the problem in a reasonable manner.
I was charged money for engineering the building then had to modify the design. They redrew the building and sent me the copies, without further charge. When it was time to submit for a permit I noticed my drawings were stamped 'preliminary' so I contacted Jack Rachlin who stated he would send out the drawings stamped for 'permit.' However I received an invoice for $13, 626. The invoice was a material cost breakdown for the building I was trying to build and it required a 50% desposit before they would send me my permit drawings. Since I needed the drawings to submit for permit I paid the $6, 800. No where on this invoice was there a charge for "re-engineering'" the building.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, my permit was denied. I contacted United Steel to inform them and was told there would be no refund. I was then directed to speak to a Melinda Podlas, the manager.
Melinda Podlas was as unprofessional a person I have had to speak to. After explaining that I was charged for 50% of the material cost of a building I could not build and wanted a refund of this money, Melinda continued to repeat, "you signed the contract." She was evasive in answering questions and claimed the money I paid was for material desposits on garage doors. However, $5, 000 of the money I paid would have covered the cost of steel which Podlas admitted no desposits were made until a permit was issued. When I challenged her on United Steel keeping $5, 000 of my money without purchasing anything with the money, she then stated that the fees were to cover engineering costs. I got nowhere with this person and was given the owner's voicemail. He never called back.
Congrats. You are probably the 100th person this has happened to in the last year. My story is the same. Send a demand letter for all fundsto be returned, certified, immediately to USB.
Contact the Florida State Attorney General and file a fraud complaint ASAP. Don't wait for them to do anything they won't and it will take two months to find this out. I went through the process. The State has a large file of fraud complaints against USB but to my knowledge has done nothing to stop them.
Call the Ft. Lauderdale Police and file a fraud/criminal complaint with the Economic Crimes unit, TODAY! Just maybe you will get your money back without giving more to a lawyer. Good Luck.
Fraud / Steal your money
Takes your money you get 0000000 Nothing ask for Jack Rachlin he will teach you how to lose yor money
Company Business Name: United Steel Buildings
Country of complaint: United States
Address: 2700 cypress rd , Fort Lauderdale, Florida
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Also, file a complaint with the FTC(you can do this online).
More importantly, file a criminal complaint with the Economic Crimes Division of the Ft. Lauderdale Police Dept.
I agree - if you have had problems with this company- you need to contact the Atty. General of Broward County and the Division of Consumer Services
These guys have taken money from churches women with breast cancer and just plain good people. They desire what you can give them. Help them advertise with the IRS the IRS will give you you 10% of moneys taken in from an investagation Contact FBI ICU3
unit. To mention ectical business is a front to the word ethical. They love their lawyer boy too! These guys came south to work in a state like FL. Flordia can not even hold an election so it draws this kind of individules and then turns their head. Keep calling say their names. Knute and Zimmerman real nice guys. IRS is the answer.
I am still waiting for my building. I wonder if they know anything about real engineering and engineering good practices in business.
Their PE should enforce the code of ethics.
I have many PE friends and colleagues that are rigid in their business ethical standards.
I was a victim of fraud practices as well. These people ought to be shut down and put in jail. They stole thousands of dollars from me with deceptive contracts and smooth talking sales people. Beware of this company!