Massachusetts family discovers newly constructed backyard wall cracking, crumbling
Getting a company to stand behind its product. It's not always easy as a South Coast couple found firsthand this summer, after they spend thousands on a product that turned out to be defective. So they turned to Newscenter 5's Ben Simmoneau for help.
Kelly and Brent Burishkin of Acushnet saved up a long time to put in their backyard patio and pair of retaining walls in the summer of 2018.
It was "somewhere around 17-grand for the whole entire operation," Kelly said. "We took a lot of time to save up for this. We wanted to pay it off in cash and not have it financed."
So this spring when Kelly was outside enjoying it on one of the first nice days, she couldn't believe what she was seeing: on some bricks, entire chunks had fallen out, while others were cracking and crumbling.
"Something's wrong with the wall," Brent said. "It shouldn't be doing this."
What's worse -- it was happening after just one winter. The Burishkins worried it would only get worse with another round of cold weather.
Since the walls were less than a year old, the Burishkins say both the landscaper and the brick supplier were eager to help figure out the problem. But the brick manufacturer -- a company called Pavestone -- was considerably less responsive, they say.
"At one point, I was waiting two weeks and then I'd contact them via email or phone, and then no one would return my phone call or my email, and I'd try it again," Kelly said.
The last week of August, a Pavestone representative came out, and the Burishkins say he admitted the problems were caused by manufacturing issues with their bricks.
The rep "pointed out additional ones that were horizontal fractures all the way through the length of several other blocks," Kelly said.
Pavestone's warranty says it will cover defective products but says it won't cover labor or the cost to haul away bad bricks. But like many landscaping projects, labor is the bulk of the cost to replace the two walls -- in the Burishkin's case, they say it's $15,000 alone.
After months of running into a proverbial wall with Pavestone, the Burishkins called Newscenter 5, and we reached out to Pavestone's parent company -- Quikrete, which is based in Atlanta. Within days, the company agreed in an email to pay to replace both walls from the ground up.
After several attempts to reach out, the parent company of Pavestone sent us this brief statement in response to our request for comment: "Pavestone places the highest priority on customer satisfaction and is committed to resolving any customer issue in an amicable manner as quickly as possible."
The company would not comment when we asked how these bricks became defective.