"You get good value from Toll. But I knew from friends who had bought Toll homes that they have a reputation: You have to watch them," Francis Shea said.

"We were prepared for the fact that the finish work wouldn't be very good," Lynn Shea said. But she and her husband said they believe their home has fewer problems because he closely monitored the construction, visiting the job site nearly every day.

Yet three years after moving in, they still have problems unaddressed by Toll, including one chronic irritant that has left them baffled by the company's behavior.

The house has a two-story foyer. Between the top of the front door and the window that graces the top of the foyer is a 6-by-6-foot decorative panel that has consistently leaked water into their home when it rains.

For the first year, Lynn Shea said, Toll several times tried without success to recaulk and repaint the panel. Finally, Toll ordered a replacement panel, which was delivered two years ago. Ever since, it has sat, undisturbed, in their garage.

The Sheas said their repeated calls to Toll to install the panel and to address other issues have been unavailing, with one bizarre exception. Recently, Toll sent a worker by to recaulk and repaint the old panel. It still leaks.

"They have selective amnesia" about leftover problems, said Francis Shea.

Lynn Shea, who has spent considerable time calling and writing Toll over the last three years, said she has given a lot of thought to Toll's practices: "It's almost as if they tell people not to do a good job. Unless you stand there and watch what they're doing, it won't get done right."

Most homebuyers, she said, "get worn down complaining... You'd think it would be a lot easier for them to simply fix it than have to listen to us complain about it."

But, Shea added, Toll no longer even listens.

"They used to respond to our letters of complaint with a phone call, but that was just to put us off," she said. "Now they don't respond at all. They just don't seem to know we're here anymore."