by Rod Hughes

Prefabricated houses are supposed to go up in a hurry with less labor cost once the foundations are set. Right?

Tell that to the more than 11 families who a La Nacion report says are still waiting for their nice, new PrefaHogar of Costa Rica S.A. houses to be erected on their lots more than six months after ordering them. Nor are they all cheap homes and some families have paid up to 11 million colones (500 colones per dollar) as a down payment.

Monday some family members presented themselves in a group in the PrefaHogar offices to demand that their homes be built immediately or their downpayments refunded. In the worst cases, plans for the houses have not been delivered to their owners for approval or alterations.

At least the company has offices in which customers can complain. In the 1970s several scams resulted in customers filing legal papers only to be told that the prefab company office had mysteriously disappeared, right down to the sign out front.

In this case, at least, the company has a spokesman, general manager Carlos Maria Jimenez, who told La Nacion that the company was experiencing “organizational difficulties,” namely, that they do not have an engineer to supervise construction. The customers live in the San Jose area, Guanacaste and Puntarenas.