Design Drafting Inc. - Sarasota, Florida

Cliff P.

A very disappointing experience. I hired Dave Pommenville, the proprietor, to transform a floorplan that I had produced in one of the simpler architectural programs into final blueprints for my contractor and for permits. A simple drafting assignment as the design work had already been done. The project took from Feb 21 to April 28, over two months, in no small part because his turnaround times were excruciatingly long. With each round, I would email five or six revisions, and when the next draft was eventually returned several of the requested revisions were missed. This caused excessive delays and an excessive number of revisions--each round of which he billed handsomely for despite the fact that the rounds were required because he missed items from the list of changes. He was cranky, irritable and difficult to deal with, and he clearly wishes he were retired instead of still having to work. When the job was finished, he refused to release the files until I had paid him in full despite the fact that I had promptly paid each and every one of his progress invoices along the way. In addition, he fought very hard when I asked him for the digital files in case I wished to embark upon renovations in the future. He claimed he owned the copyright, even though I had designed the original floorplan myslef and furnished it to him. Even my contractor found him remarkably prickly, unresponsive, unable to follow simple requests, and combative. In the end a simple floorplan with a few simple rounds of revisions took far longer than he quoted and cost far more than he quoted, and the process was extremely unpleasant. He appears like a nice enough guy at first, but he seems to dislike people in general and have no level of trust or cooperation with other people. This reviewer recommends you stay away, there are too many other architects and draftspeople who would be far more appreciative of your business. As an aside, also look them up under ripoff report; another customer has posted very ominous complaints on that site about the way Design Drafting does business.

Andrea C.