I am a principle in an architectural design and renovation firm based in Vermont. We’ve done high-end projects on the West Coast and New England for over thirty years. One of the most recent, on a large restored farm in Vermont, required a modest-in-size bespoke greenhouse to be attached to a new barn, and we chose Hartlety Botanic to design and build it at the substantial cost of over $53,000.
While ultimately producing a superior greenhouse, Hartley Bontanic currently suffers, to our enormous frustration, serious quality control problems in the UK, problems which are exacerbated by a remarkable lack of understanding of the company’s product by their client-contact person in its Woburn, Massachusetts’s office.
Serious issues arose when Hartley manufactured our project’s custom greenhouse with, unbeknownst to us, incorrect handles on the vented windows. This inexplicable design error prevented the units from closing tightly. It rained the day after installation, and water poured into the structure from the leaky vents, as well as from open mitre joints on the outside of the greenhouse. Hartley had also failed to instruct its installer to caulk between their base rail and the sill we proved per their explicit specs. As a result, rain also infiltrated the building under the length of the base rail. It was a disastrous situation because we knew that in winter frigid air would find its way in through those same routes, rendering the greenhouse useless.
Hartley had, additionally, failed to provide its installer with all the needed downspout pieces and the caps to cover large, exposed bolting inside the greenhouse. A small oversight, but, alas, part of a larger pattern.
We immediately contacted Hartley US and informed them that we were withholding the small completion balance of $2844 due on this $53,449 greenhouse until the building was rendered water-tight. We at once provided Hartley with multiple photos of the leaks. They were baffled. No one at Hartley UK or Hartley US, looking at closeups of the water infiltration which showed the handles quite clearly, initially realized that the hardware was incorrect. Instead, the firm set about devising improvised remedial fixes and sent a technician to install rubber washers between the vent frames and the handles to increase closing pressure. An utter failure: the vents still closed poorly and leaked, and after-the-fact caulking stopped none of the base-rail or open-mitre leaks.
For the next seven excruciating weeks, I repeatedly had to neglect other pressing business responsibilities and spend 32 hours photographing the continuing leaks and writing 45 emails to Hartley’s Woburn, Massachusetts office, and reading 46 replies from Hartley’s stubborn representative there, until, finally, in desperation, I contacted Hartley UK directly to resolve the problems.
The whole of my efforts, Hartley was informed, could be conservatively valued at $2400, based upon a discounted per-hour design fee we were willing to extend them. During all those weeks, we also found it necessary to pay our project’s Clerk of the Works over $600 in hourly fees to meet repeatedly with us on site to discuss possible solutions to the continuing leakage when Hartley’s first attempted remedies failed.
A month into this exchange both of correspondence and photographs of fresh leaks, someone at Hartley UK finally realized that they’d installed the wrong handles at their production facility. Hartley US abruptly informed us that new handles and vents would be fabricated in England and installed as soon as possible. In order to have some input on the exact redesign of these new “bespoke” units, it was then that I was forced to go around the Woburn office, find a way to contact someone at Hartley UK, and set in motion a reasonable collaboration between us and Hartley. This resulted in a relatively leak-free greenhouse.
Hartley then expected full payment of the small balance due. I objected, saying that since we had occurred additional costs of over $3000 and the balance due was $2844, we should just call things even. No. Not to be. Hartley finally agreed to shrink the balance due by half, demonstrating ill-advised business judgment and insisting that a client they had seriously inconvenienced remit a check to them for $1422. They cited, in their defense, that they had suffered additional FedEx charges when they shipped the new, correct vent units to Massachusetts.
This review is an admittedly lengthy cautionary tale, but it is also a lament. We had expected far more from Hartley at every turn. When quality, integrity, and standing behind one’s product begin to matter far less than profit to a highly regarded firm, we are usually witnessing the beginnings of an irreversible slide from greatness.
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