Austex Fence & Deck

Communication seems to be a problem. We wanted them to repair our fence however they repeatedly dropped the ball on contacting us. we will move on to the next company!
Our original fence was done by this company as well. They said the builder paid for cheaper fencing and that’s why it fell down.

I can’t say enough about this company. The guys that installed the fence were courteous, efficient, and professional. Our fence is beautiful, and the pickets are perfectly aligned, which can’t be easy to do on a sloped lot like ours! Our sales rep was Don Dekay. This guy is the best in the business. We will definitely refer them to anyone that needs work done, and we’ll be using them again in the near future.

We didn’t have any problems with Austex. We did our fence in 3 stages and each time, Tom provided a prompt estimate and even went above and beyond to accommodate our special requests. The fence looks great and we couldn’t be happier. 5 stars!!!

This is a terrible fence company. In 2009, when my brand new house was built, I did not realize that they did not bury the fence posts in concrete, they just dug holes and put the exposed wood in the bare clay. Now the bases are rotten and today with the six inches of rain and high winds we experienced in south Austin, my back yard fence just blew over. I do not recommend them to anyone and you should never do business with them. EVER.

The amount of frustration that I’ve experienced with this company is beyond explanation, however for the sake of helping other people make sound decisions when selecting a fencing company in the Fort Hood area, I’ll power through and come up with something.
The initial contact with a salesperson (Randy) was fine. He came out to see what I wanted done which was a fence extension for our backyard. Not a complicated or even laborious job. Everything was coming up roses and, according to Randy, I would, «Be so happy with my decision to go with AusTex.» So I made the deposit with the request that I get on their installation schedule ASAP as I wanted the extension done prior to our new neighbors move-​in.
Of course, the deposit was taken and processed as fast as I could press enter. However, days went by with no word from the company. After a week, I called Randy to find out why there had been no information about my start date. He didn’t answer, so I left a message on his VM. He sent a text telling me that someone would be calling me that afternoon or the next day with a start date. After waiting until close to 4:30 PM the FOLLOWING day to hear someone, I called the home office. I spoke with Felicia who told me that she had, «Just seen that the file containing my job was JUST placed on my desk this AM.» I let her know how odd that was considering Randy told me someone would call me yesterday. Kind of seemed impossible if the lady who was to do the calling didn’t even have the packet to call about, but I digress.
Felicia told me that they would surely be contacting me MAYBE the next week with a TENTATIVE start date as, once again, she had just received the packet and needed to do some more work to be able to begin the job. I told her the fact that things were progressing so slowly, even though they were quick to take my deposit, and the fact that I specifically requested a quick start date and was told it wouldn’t be an issue, caused me to doubt their ability to do the job to my satisfaction and that I wanted to cancel the job and I wanted my deposit refunded immediately. Miraculously, Felicia was able to change EVERYthing she had previously said and assure me my start date would be the Thursday coming. I told her I would give them another opportunity to make things right, but that I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.
Regret it I did. Thursday came and, having not heard anything the entire week like a courtesy call, I waited until 2PM to see if anyone was going to show up. I left a message for Felicia who «wasn’t in the office». Five minutes (exactly) later, she called back and assured me that the installer would be there NO LATER than 4:00PM. I waited until 4:30 and called Felicia who, surprise, didn’t answer. I sent an email to her and Randy both telling them I want my deposit refunded and wanted to cancel the job. I was fed up with their lack of professionalism.
Lo and behold, at 5:30 PM I go downstairs to start my family’s dinner and look out of my kitchen window to see my fence ripped out of the ground. The installer had come and, without letting me know that he was there, ripped out the fence. I can only assume it was because refunding my deposit and therefore losing the job was not an option for AusTex. «If we rip out the fence, she gets stuck between a rock and a hard place.» I stopped the guys and asked (in Spanish, because they spoke ZERO English, good luck if you’re not bilingual) who told them they could rip out my fence. They said, «we just called and they said, go ahead.»
There’s NOTHING about AusTex I can recommend. We went ahead with the install because it was stupid for us to say, «Take two days to put BACK up or old fence.» I believe AusTex used shady business practices to accomplish this. The fence installation was nothing to brag about. The aesthetics leave a lot to be desired. I’m not happy with this company at all. As a military family, I would NEVER recommend this to my military friends. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone for that matter.

Prompt, professional and reasonably priced. Our fence was damaged in an accident and Austex turned around the replacement fence quickly and to order.

My two-​star rating is because of their lack of communication and a mistake they made on our adjourning neighbor’s fence. I specifically asked that they install the fence during a specific week because I wanted to first cut down a few trees. I asked them to get back to me on an installation date. Instead of confirming a date, they came out on a random day and started to work. Then we received a message saying they had to move the fence line because a couple of trees the in the way. I called and left a message asking them to call me right away. Instead of returning my call, they finished installing the fence the next day. I haven’t heard from them since. The quality of their workmanship is okay. Based on my experience and the mistake they made on our neighbor’s fence, which affected their sprinklers, I would not recommend this vendor.
RESPONSE TO REPLY FROM AUSTEX: I appreciate the apology; however, I find it confusing that my neighbor was the main point of contact for MY fence project, and not me (the person paying for this job,) and that none of our phone calls were returned. Just some things Austex should think about when working with their future clients.

Here we go. I scheduled this appointment about 2 ½ weeks ago. I’m in no rush, but their first appointment — as I was told because they are so busy — was today. I’m off on most Mondays so that was perfect for me. Today was the day — 9:00am. With «Kirk». I’m home — 9:30 passes and goes. I call to advise my appointment was missed — no phone call, nada. The guy I spoke with at 9:45 this morning said he’d find out what happened and let me know. Here I am, still at home on my day off and not a fucking word. This is a simple request, guys.
I only wanted a simple bid on a deck build. It’s not that damn hard. If you can’t get your shit straight just for THAT? Yeah, you have no business to be here on my property nor did you earn your right for my business and money. You just lost at least $ 5000+ for something simple. You have everything you needed — I’m listed. I’m the ONLY one on this planet with this name. You completely fucked this one up. I’ve got other bids coming in, yours is no longer wanted. I don’t expect much — but zero contact with a potential customer? Yeah. I’ll go with another local company. Buh buy.

Had Austex replace a wooden fence for me in October 2014. Things have been great.
About a month ago, I noticed some ponding of water in my backyard near the fence. I passed this off as a result of all the rain we’ve had. A month later, still ponding even after a couple of weeks of little to no rain. So this weekend I start trying to dig a trench to drain some of this ponded water. Trench drained water successfully, except the water didn’t stop. I had created a small tributary instead of having a small pond. I traced the water to a location directly under a fence post right next to the house.
On Monday morning (07/​06/​2015) I called AusTex. After first telling me to talk to the water company (which I did, and whom told me they were not responsible for this), I called AusTex back. The operator told me to hold on a minute while she talked to a supervisor. They would send a plumber out that day.
Plumber showed up a couple hours later, and after about 3 hours, the leak was fixed. The fence post concrete was resting on top of the water pipe.
A+ for AusTex for owning up to the problem and getting it fixed quickly for me. My 4^th of july weekend was a little rattled thinking I might be out both a fence, and an expensive plumb job.

Horrible internal and external communication. So so results.

This is a good company to do business with.
Not just because the salesperson was on time, competent and a good listener (He was).
Not just because the office staff is dedicated to customer service and keeping customers informed (They are).
Not just because what was agreed upon was delivered by the installers. (It was).
Lastly, not just because after the job was completed a quality control guy came out to inspect and to give us every opportunity to complain (He did).
This is a good company because of all of the above.

My fence got completed a day late due to rain, which was understandable, and the the crew that put the new fence in were quick and did a great job. The company did follow up with me on my concerns regarding their customer service (specifically communication) and did seem sincere in addressing the issue. The inspector, John, called me before he came out today, took care of some minor issues and answered all my questions. The completed fence is solid and looks great so I’m upping them to 4 stars.

Early last year I contacted AusTex to replace a couple broken fence posts with galvanized steel ones. I’ve replaced posts on my own before, and while it’s not difficult, I just didn’t want to spend another weekend doing it. They returned my email quickly to set up an appointment. Due to work constraints, I could not be there for the estimate, so I just marked the posts that needed repair.
After calling back to discuss the estimate and payment details, the job was scheduled and completed within a few days. The workmanship was excellent and the crew left the job site clean. Since I couldn’t be there again while the work was done, my phone rep (sorry, I don’t remember her name) also followed up to make sure I was satisfied.
All in all, an excellent experience. I will definitely call them up if I need more repairs.

I called and got Tom as my representative. We needed a fence to keep our two dogs in. The backyard was almost fully fenced in, we just needed two small sections to close the gap. He was very nice and told me he could come out and give me a quote without being home. He returned the quote within that day and said as soon as I paid the first half they could get started on the job. We only needed a walk through gate and a small part of a fence insttalled so it was not a big job. The morning of the installation, a man and his wife showed up to do the job. The wife sat on our porch, while her husband who had taken off his shirt dug up our yard. Well, not long into it, he hit our sprinkler system. No big deal, stuff happens. However, he ran around the yard yelling for my husband (with his shirt off) to turn the water off. Then he told my husband «I hope you bought insurance» because they do not cover the insurance for their own mistakes. Luckily, Tom tacked it onto my bill (an added expense that shouldnt be put on the customer.) After the situation was finally under control, he proceeded to finish the job. My husband left for work leaving the man (and his wife) to finish the job. Later in the afternoon I got another call, this time they hit the electric line! (I was still calm about this, because after all, sh*t happens right?!) A lady from the office called to tell me this and that they would fix it thanks to me getting the insurance plan. (RIPOFF — companies should fix their own mistakes). I was never once apologized to for the inconveniece of having to have both the water company, and the electric company out, as well as someoen to fix the sprinkler line. Also, the lady on the phone told me that they were not making any money on this project. Why she felt the need to tell me that, I don’t know. It’s not my fault they are the ones who messed up.
I got home later that night and noticed that they installed a piece of fence so high that my dog could easily run right through it. The whole part of the fence was for my dogs to not get out, and creatures of the night to not get in. I had to get them to come back out and put a bar in to fix the problem.
My whole point of this review is not to tell you not to use them. But do so at your own discretion. You never know who will actually show up at your house to do the job and how well it will be done. And the customer service was nice, but not appologetic at all for any mistakes that were made. Now that the fence (and all of the problems) have been fixed, it does look nice. However, I would not hire them again for the bigger projects we have in the future (EX. Our $ 50K deck that needs to be replaced) But ever since the snarky comment about them not making money on our small job, I will not be calling them back to do the big job.

I’ll try to keep this explanation of our nightmare as short as possible.
We needed a new fence. I called several companies out and explained what I wanted, a privacy fence where the pickets butted up together. Not only did I verbally explain this but I showed each company my neighbors fence as an example. Long story short… I was very specific when explaining what I wanted. I even went to Austex’s website and saw photo examples of what I wanted.
I hired Austex and they installed the fence in two days. My invoice from Austex clearly states that I was buying a STANDARD PRIVACY FENCE. Everything seemed fine at first. Two weeks later I noticed that all my pickets had shrunk and had large gaps between them. I contacted Austex immediately and they sent someone out to inspect when I wasn’t even home. They said that a couple of pickets did qualify for replacement because they had too large of gaps. I was shocked that I was not able to meet the inspector at my house due to them showing up announced. I was also shocked that they did not admit that my entire fence had shrunk. Needless to say I was very upset.
I then emailed our original rep. He came back out and I prepared several photos for him and tried to explain what our concern was. He then told me that after installing hundreds of fences that I was the only one who has ever complained. He then said it really didn’t matter because they were going to «work with me».
Austex’s solution to selling me a privacy fence that shrunk was to install a small picket over every single gap. This is definitely not something I want for the next ten years but I guess it’ll be better than having large gaps in my fence. I said okay… but then Austex informed me that they would only give me half off the job. They wanted another $ 1128 to fix their mistake.
I told Austex that I would consider doing the extra pickets. Of course in the meantime I asked some other fence companies to come out and also quote me for the same job. I did not tell any of the other companies that Austex quoted me $ 1128, which was half off their normal price. All three of the other fencing companies quoted me between $ 1100 and $ 1200. I was very shocked by the fact that my «half off» price was actually what everyone else normally charges.
While I had the other companies out I asked them if cedar normally shrunk like my fence had. All three companies explained to me that cedar shouldn’t shrink as much as mine did if the cedar was properly dried. All that meant was leaving it out in the sun for a day or two prior to installing.
At this point I noticed a new issue. My pickets were now buckling. They were bowing in the middle and curving in at the top and bottom. Keep in mind that at this point my fence is not even two months old. I called and asked Austex to come out and fix these. They came and replaced all the ones I flagged but my major concern is that the rest of the pickets are going to buckle as well. You see Austex did not install a third rail on my fence. There is just a top and bottom rail. Again all of the other companies that came out explained to me that the third rail is the only thing that will prevent the pickets from buckling. After my 1 year warranty is expired I’ll have to randomly replace pickets as they decide to bow… and then the replaced pickets will also bow unless a third rail is installed.
Long story short… get EVERYTHING IN WRITING if you decide to use Austex. They acted dumb about the entire situation but in my last email from Austex our annoyed rep actually admitted that I do not have a privacy fence but instead just a standard cedar fence. My invoice states it’s a Standard Privacy Fence. Now that they have actually admitted that I did not get what I paid for I’m in the process of filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

We’ve had Austex come out on two different occasions to replace sections of fence/​gates on our property.
Both times Tom came out when he said he would, and provided an accurate quote on the work. Even when we made small revisions, Tom updated the quote and asked for our sign off. The Austex crew performed the work as scheduled. Even when they were short materials, due to a larger than anticipated ground level difference on the back fence line, they communicated promptly and set reasonable expectations on when they would return to complete the work (just a couple days).
Tom and crew were courteous, communicative, and consummate professionals throughout the process. Even with February ’13 windstorm delays, Tom made sure we were taken care of and set our expectations appropriately about when the work could be completed given their schedule, and then followed through on his word.
I highly recommend Austex for their professionalism and quality of work.

Called for a new fence estimate, was transferred to a salesperson’s voice mail who never returned my phone call. Guess they don’t need my business.

Really nice estimator named Jason came out to meet us TWICE because our lot was a bit complicated. He gave a fair price compared to another bid I received. Considering I couldnt even get a quote sent to me from another company, the fact that Jason was patient and came out twice spoke volumes. Our fence is in now, and it looks great. I really had a good experience with them.

Austex recently constructed a backyard 6′ cedar privacy fence for me, with a locking gate, with the help of their residential projects guy (Jason). The fence looks awesome and their pricing was good compared to other companies. I would definitely use them again and recommend them to others.
The only hitch I had was that a few pieces of the old fence were not hauled off as they were supposed to. I let Jason know about it, and he had someone out there the next morning to pick everything up.
Edit: 3 years later, the fence still looks good, and the gate is working perfectly.

This is really a 4.5 review… The only reason why they are not a 5 star is they broke a cheap flower pot and left a little mess which we picked up in just a few minutes. Their service tech Neil was great. The fence went up in 2 days and looks great! Since my neighbor and I shared one side of the fence replacement, I received a coupon for $ 100 bucks off my full fence replacement and my neighbor got a $ 100 referral bonus. I was also sent coupons to give to my other neighbor to use. pretty schweet.
I received today a personal Thank you note from Austex… that was really nice and a lost art in service these days…