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May 27, 2005

A public relations disaster for the Builders Commission

The Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC), appropriately pronounced "tricky" held a public seminar in Houston on Thursday evening to discuss the new home warranty standards that take effect June 1, 2005.

In short, it was a Public Relations disaster for the TRCC.

The lone Commissioner in attendance, Mr. Porter left the meeting before the question and answer session began. He never returned. Some believed it was because Channel 13 set up a camera at the back of the room and was looking for comments.

A professor from Texas A&M Department of Building Construction (the same group that built a 80ft tall 100 ton stack of logs without a foundation that fell and killed 12 students) along with a representative of the TRCC gave a very "rosy" presentation of the TRCC that, to the untrained eye, described the TRCC as a consumer protection dream.

Unfortunately once the tough questions were asked by consumers the professor became short and at times rude enough for a number of people to confront her about it after the meeting. Many questions were left unanswered and many of those who attempted to ask questions were cutoff and quit in frustration.

All of this would have all been recorded by CH 13, but the A&M professor told them they could not film inside of the public hearing even though it was being held with tax dollars by a public Commission.
After the event was completed, the TRCC representative and the Texas A&M Professor refused to be interviewed on camera. And the lone Commission never returned, leaving only the homeowners who took their time to attend the meeting to talk with the media.

All in all, it was an embarrassing disaster for the Commission and their representatives. It was a very poor showing and was insulting to many of the homeowners.
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John R. Cobarruvias

Posted by John Cobarruvias at May 27, 2005 05:34 PM | Permalink

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