In under 8 years since the house was built, we discovered a major structural blunder by Signature Construction. The architect specified in the drawings that these beams would be sitting on column caps (Simpson ECC44) and the wall properly flashed.
Signature:

• Did not have these caps.
• Did not properly flash the wall (the top was opened to the elements).
• Had small flashing strips on the top that channeled rain water into the wall.
• Notched 3 inches off the laminate beam.

We hired a structural engineer that reported the wall wasn't properly flashed and a laminate beam should not be notched this way. Signature Construction decided that this was not their problem. The 2-10 warranty had an exclusion clause for decks so they wouldn't cover this either.
The contractor opened the wall to find that:

• Used non-treated lumber for the wall and posts.
• Any water that got into the wall had no place to get out.
• The support posts were the consistency of balsa wood.
• The internal walls were seriously rotted.

The remaining walls were inspected. Fortunately two of them were under a gazebo that shielded them from any rain. The other wall had minor water damage and could be repaired and flashed properly.

Bottom line is that two support posts and two support beams, along with one wall had to be removed and replaced costing about 8 thousand dollars.

If they came out to look and gave reasonable reason why they wouldn't assistant in fixing this I wouldn't be this upset.