Anyone have GreenChickenCoop.com experience?

[rarebear]

I have an Elizabeth coop from Green Coops and it falling apart after 18 months...doors fell OFF, vents broken, paint job or wood cracking and peeling and I live in the Southeast bit bitter cold. There were wide ope spaces everywhere. I have hurt my head so many times from that ridiculous overhang. Chicken door warps shut in summer and has gaps in winter. The nesting boxes leak badly. The roosts are placed almost right over the nest boxes so the chickens laying eggs get pooped on by the roosting chickens. The coop looks adorable when new. I will post photos of what it looks like now. Owner called me names when I complained.

 

[marktoo]

I have an Elizabeth coop from Green Coops and it falling apart after 18 months...doors fell OFF, vents broken, paint job or wood cracking and peeling and I live in the Southeast bit bitter cold. There were wide ope spaces everywhere. I have hurt my head so many times from that ridiculous overhang. Chicken door warps shut in summer and has gaps in winter. The nesting boxes leak badly. The roosts are placed almost right over the nest boxes so the chickens laying eggs get pooped on by the roosting chickens. The coop looks adorable when new. I will post photos of what it looks like now. Owner called me names when I complained.

Those of us looking to buy will appreciate your review & will take heed. BYC is about to hit 260.000 so your comments are reaching a lot of folk. Green Coops is gonna take some well deserved heavy hits. Sorry you've had such a negative experience.

 

[efalls]

Hello all

I thought I would chime in since I have close personal experience with the company. Started by DAN, he has a good idea and good design for a coop, which he was throwing in the back of a truck and delivering around Michigan. Then, in 2008 or so, he hired my brother. A civil engineer with knowledge in computer aided design and drafting. He took Dans plan and made it the "pallet of coop" most of you have been shipped via freight. Let me tell you how Dan works...

He hires woman because in his words "they do not think for themselves, so when you hand them a paint brush, they just paint"
He will fire an employee for thinking outside the box because he fears they will one day compete with him. He really has the paranoia that everyone is out to compete with him, so, employees know very little. I have even seen him try to keep the finished product away from the people painting the pieces of wood. weird...

He is abusive to his chickens and dogs, which I have seen first hand. I called the police when he hit my dog with canoe paddle, and that was my last day working for him, my brother was gone weeks later.

He builds the coop in an assembly line process, so the reason a lot of you see delays in shipping is because he is stacking orders and building 5 or so coops at a time.

The lumber they use is NOT reclaimed. It is purchased from the local lumber yard. The green paint they use is from Home depot as well, and is in no way meant to be eco friendly. The entire website is made up by my brother who wanted to give it an eco friendly feel. Nothing about the coop is sustainable.

I cannot imagine how he has partnered with William Sanoma, and I see now they are starting to remove the Green Chicken coop name because of the bad reviews online.

It has been stating here already and I will reinforce that you can hire a contractor or local builder/handy man and have a quality coop build on site for the same price, minus all the BS

 

[foothillsco]

I have no dog in this fight but to say the coops he builds look beautiful and I think the price looks commensurate with their high quality. I have a construction company and we rebuild homes that have sustained fire and water damage. All my employees seem like good friends of mine when I'm around. When I'm not, some of them run me down because they are just used to running down employers and it's considered a way of fitting in with others. I think some of them really dislike me but just don't show it but will never tell me why.

I one time mixed up two employees names and their checks came out wrong. I fixed it immediately and then I had to go to the bank for something unrelated to this. One of the employees was in front of me and didn't realize it and just ran me down to the teller stating how stupid I was to make such a mistake. Also told her that I once gave the wrong directions to him for a job and it was almost 200 miles off (and that was true)! Boy, he really thought I was a moron for making some mistakes. Wish we could all be so perfect. When he turned around, I was just smiling at him and he waited outside to tell me how sorry he was. He went on about how he really liked me and this was just a bad habit of his. I got in my truck, rolled down the window and told him he was fired as I was driving away.

Anyhow, I wouldn't base an opinion on these coops based on one former employee's said treatment of others. I would believe the lack of eco-materials. That's just hard to do 100% or it's just very easy to do if you lower your standards to what actually defines eco-friendly. Me? I care a lot about the environment. I don't think timber to lumber and chemicals to paint is one of our pressing problems.

Now about these coops, what would I do if I bought one? I would buy some $6/tube construction adhesive glue and a couple pair of cleaning gloves and push glue into every interior seam you can find. I usually use about 5 tubes on my coops when I'm finished with them. I wouldn't mess up the pretty paint job, just do everywhere else. This glue will be stronger than the wood itself.

Once upon a time, due to a mix-up on some engineered plans, a foundation contractor built a foundation 6" longer than the house pack we ordered way up in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. We used a back-hoe to get our pack up the hill to our site. Swapping out the house pack was almost as scary as redoing the foundation. What to do, what to do? We bolted the rim of the house pack to the inside of the foundation and glued it to the concrete. Mind you, we didn't use standard liquid nails for that glue job but my point remains. We built a 15 ton building that is being suspended by 30 tubes of glue. The bolts? Get serious. The shear strength of those are less than 2000 lbs. Our engineer thought they would lend credibility to our idea. That was 20 years ago nobody has called me yet to tell me the house suddenly dropped to the bottom of the crawlspace.

Back on topic...

About warping, freezing and heaving. Don't let them get soaking wet. If it snows, brush them off. If it rains, keep them out of puddles. Set them on wood preferably (like a sunken 6x6), not dirt, especially not concrete. It's one thing to have rain run off it, it's another to sit in a mud puddle and absorb water constantly.

One more thing, get ducks. Way easier on grass, less mud muddles.
And one more thing, people start out with a run but immediately want to go open range. You will too someday.

 

[JaxGrits]

So we ordered a pretty nice coop 4 weeks ago from Green Chicken Coop. We spoke to Dan on the phone a few times, paid over the phone, and were emailed an invoice. We have heard nothing in regards to the status of our coop so I emailed only to receive a automatic response "I not longer work with Green Chicken Coops please email Dan." So I emailed Dan. No response. I attempted to pull up our invoice that was still in my email and after clicking on the link that would direct me there, I received a "the file you are looking for is no longer in the database." The company's website had all of the content removed.

So here we are....we paid $1500 for a chicken coop that we don't have. They deleted our invoice from the server so we no longer have that. To say I'm livid is an understatement. We were able to find one additional number for someone associated with them and left a message but I just have a bad feeling about this.

I will give them one day to respond before we take this to the next step.

 

[AmyWho]

One day? You're a nicer person than I.

 

[JaxGrits]

One day? You're a nicer person than I.

I'm pretty furious. We are 3 months away from our wedding and throwing $1500 away on a fraudster is not really what we had planned....I mean, that can pay for a napkin at a wedding!

The only reason I'm giving them one day is because there isn't much we can do at 9pm. The ironic part is, his coops WERE available on mypetchicken.com a few weeks ago as well as Williams-Sonoma. Both sites have removed all of his coops since we ordered.

I'm pretty good at digging up people's personal info on the internet so I know a heck of a lot about him at this point.....he can run but he can't hide.

 

[foothillsco]

Wow, I get going out of business. But to take the money and run is something else. Very sorry to hear this. This is just rotten.

I didn't know coops sold for $1500. I'm going to have to try this out. I sold my last coop for $1100 and she thought it was a great deal. It was a mid-century modern looking coop with a sheet metal roof and raised panels ala 1970s.

 

[HighStreetCoop]

Did you pay with a credit or debit card? Or via PayPal? If so, file a dispute IMMEDIATELY! This is so awful to hear. I hope you get it resolved quickly so you csn get something else.


I was considering the Saltbox coop from Wiliams-Sonoma, but when I tried to talk to the company who builds them, I got no response. So WS is 0/2.

 

[efalls]

He always kept a back log of orders so I am sure there are LOTS of $1500 payments lost now...