What our Lives have been through the past year, and counting.

Here's our Story.

I'm going to give a brief run down of events of what has transpired over the past year and what our family is going through right now to this day. One of the main things I want to accomplish is so no other family has to deal with what we are going through and what other families are going through at this very moment with the same stuff.

We are the Griffith Family. We had a pretty serious house fire in March 2014. This is my families 2nd house fire in 4 years, first was a candle and this is from faulty electrical wiring/or the garage door opener. We just bought this house. I can't even begin to tell you how much we loved this house. Our very first home as a family, which is a big deal, it was ours, something we took pride in. After the fire, utter choas, devastion. Lucky for us our insurance company brought in their preferred vendor Phoenix Renovation and Restoration. We were at a complete loss for words, here come Phoenix our knight in shining armor going to make it all better and take care of my family. You can guess they gave a pretty convincing bait and switch and we fell for it hook line and sinker. My insurance company said they were the best, we could pick anyone we wanted but if we wanted it done right we were advised to go with Phoenix. Our insurance backed them 100%, saying they do this all the time, Phoenix never disappoints etc. One of the major selling points was they were going to seal the walls from smoke odor etc. Having 2 kids with allergies this was a must. Come to find out they had no intention on sealing the walls.

Construction on the home didn't start till after May 22. I began to start questioning things and quickly took note of things not adding up. Here is a break down of things thus this far that have been noted.

Windows- We had retrofit double hung windows before, they installed single hung new construction windows and installed them incorrectly while ripping out the entire casing. They charged us for double hung window and added additional money for installing retrofit windows when we didn't even get them. I asked the owner and he said I don't know why you would want retro fit double hung windows anyways. *FacePalm*

Framing- Failed city inspection right from the start. Their mason guy built the garage out of square so for the framing to be built square 2.5 inches of the 2x4 is hanging off the back corner of the garage. They want to add a ledger plate to provide support being it's a load baring wall. This is an issue for me to the fact it wasn't there before. Does this bring down the value of the house, should we be ok with it even though our home wasn't hanging off the foundation before? With the new cinderblock framing there is cracks in the mortar which is going to allow water intrusion in the garage.

Electrical- was not completed and their electrician wouldn't finish the job, kept the cover for the breaker box. After a home inspection, and a new electrician it was noted that they used wrong size wires in the breaker box. Had they not caught it, we would have been lucky if it had tripped the breaker before causing another house fire.

Heating and Cooling- Neither Furnace or Ac was serviced but it's on the invoice that they completed it. To find out the furnace isn't even working so what did they service?

Roof- They dropped our roof line 12 inches, flashing is done wrong and shoddy, chimney cap was not sealed so we have new water coming into the house from the chimney, there is now a gorgeous silver trash bag covering the chimney.

Attic- Is not properly ventilated, they took out our attic storage space because they said it was against city code, and it's not. Some of the boards are not even being supported.

Basement- They claimed it didn't have water damage but let's get serious, the fire department puts about 4,000 gallons of water on a home........where does the water go.....it went straight to the basement, I had spotted mold and asked about, Phoenix then replied that they were just going to clean that spot off the drywall. I got a 2nd opinion and the mold levels were so high in the basement that it was RECOMMENDED that no one enter the basement without protective equipment on.

When asking about the sealing of the walls and the soot that is still on studs in the home, The owner came out and said "Whoops" we may have missed that. WHOOPS.........how professional!



I can go on and on about how slip shod the work is. ALL sheetrock needs to be removed and walls need to be sealed. The roof needs to be redone like kind, the tub is damaged, garage floor has severe cracks and separation, windows, siding, their dry wall guy swept all the extra debris in the vents, Phoenix was supposed to provide a porta potty for their workers and they didn't so I had the luxury of picking up bottles of piss in the backyard, ac/furnace needs to me serviced and or replaced, the duck work they installed has detached and was laying in our sump pump, they installed untreated lumbar on garage frame that has warped.  Here we are in the Month of November, our house is no where near ready to move in. We have paid Phoenix $31,000 not to include the money directly given to them by our insurance company. They are asking for an additional $69,000 for the "work" they have done to the house. It's going to cost in excess of $115,000 to get the house back like it was.

I have had several people (contractors, restoration companies, independent contractors) come to my home to take a look and the questions/comments I get all the time is, "Were they even licensed?" "What the hell did they do." "You said it was bad but I never imagined it was this bad."


I didn't know what else to do so I began Picketing Phoenix Business, (I have never picketed anything before in my life) It was really rather interesting. I received alot of support from neighboring vendors. I had the cops called on me twice, the cop asked for my id I asked him If i did anything wrong he said you are sitting on a side walk and it's against city ordinance. (Which it's not) He said If I didn't give them my id then he would give me a ticket for an ordinance that didn't exist. Meanwhile he's telling a tale of how Phoenix is doing his house after a fire they had in August and they are almost ready to move in. He began to say how they had dryer's in his for 4 days sucking all the moisture out so they didn't get mold. That's fantastic, they didn't do that to my house. After Picketing for 4 days, the owner stopped traffic to film us, a car full of their employees drove by several times video taping my car, after about their 3rd pass I got out my phone to record, my brother was crossing the street at this time to get his drink out of my car when she rolled through a stop sign in the opposite side of the road to attempt to strike my brother with her car. Police did nothing as Phoenix is a Partner with the city (according to the website). Would it had been taken seriously if she had struck him?

Our contents were "cleaned" by servpro. They didn't take inventory when they packed out the contents that weren't damaged. They claimed our stuff was in a locked down storage unit. It wasn't it happen to be in a side office that was not locked down and everyone had access to our stuff, which brings me to My next complaint. My Halloween stuff is missing.......kids first Halloween costumes, decorations that We have collected through the years, and now my other Christmas tote is missing with alot of Hallmark ornaments, kids things, decorations, lights. It's one thing to have them lost in a fire but its another thing to assume someone took them. My sons bedroom set is broke, I pride myself on finding deals so when I happen to score his locker bedroom set piecing it together from different people until I had the full set, which all happen to be from pottery barn, I could never afford a set like that just regular price, so this was huge for me. I get the comment that I can go get a set like it from Walmart. Now there's nothing against Walmart but just because we are a young middle class family you assume that the average joe can't catch a deal and have nice things, or maybe because we live in a small town we don't know any better.

The contents list, met with the adjuster and she said she was going to take care of it. It caught me off guard because I had to do it last time and I documented everything and photographed everything in the home. I not only asked her once but three times how she was going to inventory and what she was going to do. She explained she had been doing this 10+ years and she would be at our house for hours inventorying the house. Well she came up with a list but it was nothing that we had. For example my 13 year old son dresses nice, Abercrombie, Under Armour, American Eagle and like any other boy he had nice shoes, Nike, Under Armour etc the adjuster says he had OshGosh jeans, random shirts Target and $1 socks when he had saved and had a bunch of Nike Elite socks which are $14 a pair. (I know it's insane but he bought them himself.) My youngest had a bunch of star wars guys that she gave him $1 for his toys and $20 for his crazy amount of Nerf Guns he had, Mentioned husky tools, when my husband had craftsman and snap on, his tv we bought the exact same one and in insurance world she gave me $600.00 to buy his tv with $17 deprecation, keep in mind we have full replacement cost on everything. I bought the exact same tv and just so happen to find it on clearance for about $900 she in turn only gave me and additional $17 because she said she only allowed me to spend $617.00. There's to much to list on the contents also on how bad they screwed us on that, now we have to try and "remember" everything we had because she took some pretty vague photos.

The evidence I have doesn't lie......the work they did speaks for it's self. We are not the only family, there are so many others that Phoenix has done this to, one family I spoke to their house is falling apart, hardwood is buckling, cabinets fell of walls, doors don't fit and they they blame it on the temperature outside, not to mention the other families that are in litigation with them, some are even homeless living with family because insurance will only pay for a rental for a year and a lot have gone past that mark as my family is heading to that mark really quickly, our rental is only paid for until February. Just a side note, check my research everything is public record look up court cases in Missouri and Kansas, I have reached out to alot of people from just that and the things they have to say about Phoenix will blow your mind.  My kids are devastated because they wanted to be in their house for Christmas. I don't know what to say to them. I keep saying "I just don't get it........I don't understand how people can treat people like this." My husbands thoughts are you have to try and quit understanding, it's the nature of the business. Although he may be right we have very different opinions, I take everything to heart and it to be has become very personal. I know there are good Restoration Companies out there, I have met them after the fact when I got their opinions, but with Liberty Mutual thrusting Phoenix on us we made that decision to proceed why wouldn't we, we wanted the best. No we are in the appraisal process which it a process all in itself, as well as getting papers from Phoenix saying they want to put a lien on the home. Phoenix and Liberty deny having any contact with each other trying to put off that don't talk with each other to conspire their stories. Their appraiser came out to my house this past Monday and I had small video and auto cameras hidden in the house. This is why because everything they have said they recant it or say I'm lying when I know the conversation that took place. Our building Adjuster was at our house when I met him recently and he just started cutting into me, Yelling, calling me a fucking liar, he was belligerent and yelling about everything from the dirt I had put around the foundation, having the mold removed by not one of their vendors, he said that if I had wanted it done right I should have babysat the contractors as they were at my house. I was upset and beside myself.  So I recorded the whole process and have everything on Audio, the conspiracy between vendors, the lies, them knowing everything that took place in our Mediation. It just never ends and is disturbing the lengths these people go to. This should be considered criminal. People have went to jail for less than what this company does. I mean people go through something like a house fire only to have their world ripped to shred by a company who prides themself by ripping off the consumer. They also pride themselves on being good church going folks, so does that make it all better, screwing families over during the week and as long as you attend church you shall be saved. What a joke.

The conspiracy with the whole mediation process I just don't have words for. Maybe it's my wanting to see the good in people so I didn't question the mediation process and their choice of mediator. During mediation we all sign a privacy contract saying nothing inside of mediation can be used against you or be let out by either party. I wanted to step out side during a break and the mediator told me I had to leave my stuff in the room, I couldn't take my phone I can only discuss it with my husband. No problem, I understood. How is it that Pat Murphy can call another company say hey I'm in mediation I heard you were at the Griffiths and wrote them and estimate. what was your estimate? How is it that there is a double standard in the mediation process and me and my husband didn't stand a chance. Nobody still didn't know about us going to mediation until people heard the video of Liberty Mutuals appraiser telling everything that was said in our mediation. How did she find out if Liberty Mutual and Phoenix didn't have this conspiracy to save each others ass. 

I wanted to inform other families so they didn't encounter what we are going through and what several other families are going through. Below are pictures of our house, take a look for your self.

One of the pictures of mold behind drywall they were going to clean.

PVC pipe from sump pump that they broke off on the exterior.

Looking upstairs under bedrooms shows water damage that was not controlled or dried out.

Toilet that was Broken

How the garage was secured.

Visible soot and water damage in basement they said no water damage was in basement.

Water damage in Basement through ceiling.

Water coming in from Chimney because it was not sealed properly.

Mold coming through drywall.

How chimney Flashing was done.

Water intrusion from new cinder framing and mortar.

Wall in garage.

Some of the mold growth in the basement.

Water entering the basement through chimney.

Untreated Garage Framing.

The owner said these are a new kind of double hung windows, and they are not.

Water entering garage.

Owner of Phoenix blocking traffic to video tape us.

One corner of the roof. 

Wall in garage.

Attic Framing

Undersized wires in breaker panel.

Chimney cap, which is allowing water to enter the basement.

2x4 framing hanging 2.5 inches off back wall. 

Video of Phoenix crew driving on wrong side of road where my brother was walking.

This is a letter my 10yr old wrote to the owners, this caused me to get a phone call from one of the owners saying his kids need to be left out of it. Call me crazy but they directly messed with my children and our home my child simple mentioned them in a letter.

UPDATE:
Liberty Mutual is still dragging their feet. I have contacted the Department of insurance multiple times with letter after letter, call after call, they have said they were going to investigate  the bad faith bestowed upon my family by Liberty Mutual. I have basically hand fed the Department of Insurance Liberty Mutual own evidence against themselves. I supplied only the facts, when their supervisor said she was going to get to the bottom of it....call me crazy but I had faith that finally someone was going to put a stop to what is going on. That's not the case. I have been told not to call the Department of Insurance again, all of my requests need to be done in writing, which I have done and don't get a response. I have called and said none of my emails are being answered and they said to send that complaint in writing. I call the Kansas Governor and he called the Department of Insurance which led no where. He said that he can only go on their word that have investigated the claim. I literally do not know what else to do. Who is on the consumers side? So are you telling me the insurance company can do as they please and no one can sanction them because they all lay in the same bed together. Unbelievable. My family wants to be home. Why is it so hard to just make it right, what ever happened to treat people how you want to be treated. We are approaching the one year marker of the house fire and it's hard for me to grasp that we still won't be home.