Meritage Homes and Monterey Homes Attorney "Austin Woffinden" is one of three Monterey and Meritage Homes Corp employees who said I could get my confiscated $20,000 earnest money refunded upon COE when I repurchase from them again. Mr. Woffinden told me that during a long phone conversation bewteen us on Oct 2007. Since then I have *tried* incredibly hard to contact Austin Woffinden about this again making a number of calls (and many non-responded to emails) but always only got his voice mail or a secretary. Typically I left a detailed message and asked Austin politely to return the phone call but he never had the courtesy or business ethics to return any of the many calls! I wonder if perhaps Austin displays no obvious empathy for my position and monetary loss since he too has apparently been cheated by a greedy corporation according to his own words below, as witnessed by this posting found on The Complaints Board web site below. Note: Unfortunately I can't dispute the $20,000 I lost with my own credit card company as Austin Woffinden himself did (see below), since Austin's employer only accepts bank cashiers checks for earnest money. That is smart thinking of Meritage Corporation what with quite unhappy customers such as myself who wish they could also do a credit card chargeback as Austin did and wrote about doing for publication on the-web.

"We were also scammed by these crooks (editors note: the firm name and product was the subject of the the Complaint Board thread). We put a deposit on our $4,600 unit back in August and were called last December to pay the additional funds to put the unit into production.

We bought our unit from Chris Ades at the Phoenix Home Show. We were told that if we paid in full, we would get a cash discount, so I did. I had no idea any of this was going on until yesterday when I called to see when they would be delivering the unit. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath. I was able to work with my credit card company to dispute the charge. They told me that if I never receive the merchandise, I will have an excellent chance of winning my dispute, at which time, the amount would be credited back to me and the credit card company would then assume the obligation of going after these guys.

My credit card company has a 60-day policy, and I fortuitously called to dispute the claim on the 60th-day. Anyway's, if anybody has paid with a credit card, call your credit card company immediately and see if there's any recourse through that avenue..... ...written by Austin Woffinden.

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