All Temperatures Controlled, Inc., Issue No. 2

April  2001

The Contractors Critic
All Temperatures Controlled, Inc
Reporting on Safety, Productivity, and Honesty in the Construction Industry.

Breaking Laws, Customer Problems and Litigation

The Contractor’s Critic has continued to probe into All Temperatures Controlled’s business practices in Southern California and elsewhere. All Temperatures Controlled has a checkered history. They have been bogged down in litigation with several of their clients and have filed potentially crippling construction liens against the property of several of their customers.

Now The Critic has uncovered new details about the business practices of All Temperatures Controlled. Court records, legal documents, government filings and a host of other public records show that All Temperatures Controlled problems are just now beginning to come fully into the light.

Most participants in the construction industry know how important an airtight insurance policy can be. Otherwise, any company involved in a construction project could be utterly destroyed by the massive damages that could result from a job running over budget and behind schedule, or by serious job site worker injuries. Recently, several clients and related contractors of All Temperatures have described in writing many problems with All Temperatures insurance coverage. (See stories on page 2)

The Critic has discovered that All Temperatures Controlled (ATC) is embroiled in a recently filed sticky lawsuit with Labor Ready, Inc., the national supplier of "temporary" construction laborers. The fact that ATC has stooped to hire temporary labor should itself be an embarrassment to ATC. ATC’s advertising materials tout the experience of ATC’s workers. "Our General Sheet Metal Division is highly skilled ... our technicians (have) fifteen years experience," boasts one of ATC’s brochures. The Labor Ready court suit casts doubts on ATC’s claims of highly trained workers. ATC’s resorting to Labor Ready indicates that ATC itself is consistently failing to keep an adequate supply of fully trained and skilled craft workers on their own in-house work force.

All Temperatures Controlled (ATC) originally charged the Franklin’s $1,500 to check out their HVAC system at a Sunset Boulevard address. In the October 2000 court suit, the Franklin’s charged that ATC: "did not completely and/or competently evaluate System, neglected to check certain components, made recommendations that did not take into account some components of the System, and did not properly take into account the costs of repeated repairs to the system. (All Temperatures Controlled) initially gave (the Franklin’s) a low price for recommended work in order to "rope (the Franklin’s) in" and thereafter told defendants that subsequent work was needed." 

The Franklin’s charged that ATC first charged $1,500 for the evaluation, then proposed $7,000 for the work to be done and then proposed an additional $27,000 for additional work, less than a week later. The situation got even worse according to their answer to ATC’s complaint.

The Franklin’s were facing high utility bills because some of their tenants were running their air conditioners at unauthorized hours. When the Franklin’s implemented some of ATC’s suggestions to control the thermostats, the power bills still remained high. Then the Franklin’s discovered that ATC had given one of their tenants the key to unlock the thermostat. The Franklin’s responded: "This act totally defeated the purpose of installing the controls and resulted in substantial damages to defendants, in the form of increased utility bills as will as substantial damages ... Some work performed by (ATC) was not performed in a professional or workmanlike manner ... work done by (ATC) could have been done better and at a lesser cost." (Case #BC 235-036) 

continued  under litigation