A local concrete vendor, with whom we had a 3-year-long relationship, was recently acquired by Cemex. The previous owner, Tom Nelson, and Cemex called on all accounts to be paid in full so that they could complete their transaction with a clean balance sheet -- this at the beginning of the building trades collapse here in California (circa July 2008.)

HCC Surety Group gets brought into the dialogue. The company's young rep, Jeremy Hozinsky, sends a query with 6 specific questions including "Were you paid in full for each job?" Our company was given 15-days to respond in writing, which we did. Today, we discovered that before they even solicited our response(s), they contacted ALL of our clients by mail with the same question -- while providing the list of every other addressee whereby everyone could see one another on that list.

The company's claim that "HCC Surety Group is committed to protecting your privacy..." is FALSE. In this case, the company did NOT protect the privacy and/or rights and assumptions of Bautista Concrete, Inc., before it literally PUBLISHED all of our customers' names in a letter, which questioned our credibility, business standards and practices.

As I write, we have begun making calls to attorneys who we believe will find an interest in this matter.

Needless to say, HCC DOES NOT PROTECT ITS CLIENTS INTERESTS AS ADVERTISED. We work in a competitive trade that is on the ropes. Businesses that take short-cuts and/or choose not to abide by their corporate code of conduct and sound business policy need to be outted -- and it should be known that if you are considering doing business with HCC, I would humbly suggest you keep looking because they are not the company you want to serve your business interests.

With us, they have failed the test of honesty and transparency in the most miserable way... We found out about what they did in this letter of circulation from a client after the fact with absolutely no notice from HCC Surety Group.

Contact me if you've had a similar experience with HCC.

Julie at [email protected]