Lost in space

Lost in space. I started this post weeks ago describing our non-existent tilers who were lost in space at the time. There was a week where they only turned up for about 4 hours of work... that's all. Nothing else happened that week. You'd think that if they were actually trying to finish our house on time they would organise to have tradies on site.

Now, fast forward to today, our house is nearly complete but we're still a long way off handover/settlement. I'm absolutely pissed off about it and have lost the will to produce a positive spin about the build.

We have a new building supervisor. I've been asking him questions and he has been very cagey with delivery dates. We can't get a straight answer as to when our house will be ready. He hasn't been contacting me as I have requested, so I ended up ringing their office to get some answers. As usual, their admin person was defensive from the start of the phone conversation and started pulling out rain delays, and delays caused by us, but couldn't elaborate on what our delays were.... I can tell you why, because it's rubbish. We haven't delayed anything.

There were also not the number of rain delay days they are claiming as I have photographic evidence of them working during these days. How can you claim an "industry wide rain day" if you're onsite working? I'm pretty certain that won't hold up in court and am seeking legal advice. How can they have started other builds after ours and have them already delivered? Why weren't those homes affected by rain delays?

I was informed that at the beginning of December they decided not to finish our house, but we're only just finding out now that others have been given priority - this is despite being advised otherwise by our previous supervisor who was promising dates before Christmas. The new supervisor is either incompetent or not wanting to give a straight answer to avoid conflict.

We have gone from them promising our build before Christmas to around the 12th of Feb now. There is only carpet, driveway, and some painting to go. Probably about 7 to 8 days of actual work, if that. Other excuses include a building industry shutdown of 5 weeks, however, they're only off work for 2 weeks and return on the 5th of January - our supervisor will be back at work then as well. So, I don't accept a 5 week shutdown, there isn't one.

Our experience has been one of delays right from day one (signed tender in March 2013, signed contract in Oct 2013, build started in May 2014).

I'm currently waiting on the construction manager to call me to discuss what can be done. To be honest, I believe they'll just throw more excuses out and there is nothing we can do about it, but I'm not going to make it easy for them.

So, how does the house look? We're happy with the design/colour choices we've made. The house looks really good but I'm not going to post any pictures at the moment as it's putting a positive spin on a company that I'm absolutely furious with. Slick marketing, awful delivery. That about sums it up.