Sunday, March 15, 2009

Time for a whinge.

As the title suggests, it is about time I let off some steam and had a little whinge. I seem to have done my fair share of whinging pre-start with all the 'Customer Service' (or lack there of) issues. Well, it seems the issues have not yet been resolved.

If you can remember on the 27th January, we arrived at Henley unannounced and wanted some answers as to why we still hadn't received a start date, over 100 days since demo, and 1 month after Christmas. It was agreed by a CSA Manager at this particular meeting that our official start of contract was to begin there and then, regardless as to when construction began, as a form of compensation. This was passed by the Construction Manager, and we were to receive a letter stating the dates.

Well, on Friday 13th March (unlucky for us, perhaps...) we received that letter, only with the dates they started construction as the 4th February. No mention of the official start of contract period beginning on 27th January as previously agreed. The expected completion date in the letter states 310 days from this date, making it the 11th December 2009. We agreed to having the 310 days calculated from the 27th January, bringing the expected completion date to 3rd December 2009. I know it's only 8 days difference, but it is the principle of the matter, and it is NOT what was agreed on back in January.

I will be writing a letter to the CSA Manager, whom we had the meeting with on 27th January, explaining that these dates are not acceptable, and they are to rectify them immediately.

The gutters and fascias were delivered on Wednesday (11th), and I also noticed that some levelling compound had been poured onto the slab near the front door:



Great to see, BUT, it is in completely the wrong place to what was measured with the SS last week. The 5mm gap is close to the powder room in the hallway, where as this is by the front door and along the wall of the study. This next photo shows, after rain, that there is still pooling of water on the slab next to the area that has been 'levelled', and doesn't even come close to the powder room:



We also have issues with scratched window frames down to the bare metal...but that is for another post.

4 comments:

Toni said...

Stormy, having had handover last year on 19th December I can assure you that those 8 dyas will have a huge impact on your home (or you moving into it). We just scraped it in getting a hot water service on the 22nd - they did want us to wait until 12th Jan! Then there is carpet, flooring, oven, heating and cooling commissioning etc etc. I'd be making them stick to their word back in January and having 3rd Dec as the end of your contract date.

As for the pool of water.....could they not see where the slab was wet or pooling? Surely it didn't have time to evaporate?

Good luck with for this week.

stormygirl said...

Thanks Toni,

Oh don't worry, they'll be hearing from us. I will not let them go back on their word...it's not fair. I'm not a pushover! Hoping they'll be finished by end of September, anyway.

If today's experience is anything to go by, the rest of the week will be fairly average too...(see next post).

p'diddys said...

Hi Stormy
We are building with Henley and the customer service has been a little disappointing for us also..it took a long long time to get through the administration stuff and actually start and it has been incredibly frustrating. However I have found that if you get onto the Construction Manager etc. that they are pretty reasonable and it seems that there is a lack of communication between Managers/Admin staff etc so I am sure that if this was promised it is probably the person/s doing the letter that have mucked it up. My big advice is to ring and then put it in writing - if you do email you have copies of everything sent/received. We have been able to prove our point because of emails we have sent/received. Good luck!

Houman Tarash said...

Careful Stormy with the pool of water, this was a reason we were late by 20 weeks!, get them fix that, and make sure that the frame around those areas are straigth as well. Email me when you need more information...