Porter Davis homes

exactly!

yep, whoopsies and stuff that nerks our beans! you might have a brand new literary career in the making there snoofie!

Tommorrow having electrical and colours selections done. We really haven't the faintest idea on what bricks we are going to choose. See how we go. No word back from our contact at PD west office. My partner rang before and was told she had taken the day off today.
What to do. We may have to hold off on picking the externals to see what's going on. Hopefully PD will call before our appointment tommorrow or give us more time to pick our new bricks if we haven't found anything and also need to re-think about render colour, fascia colour etc......

Errr.....I never said anything about you or your situation (or anyone else's but my own) and I'm not the one with the issue, I'm simply supporting that persons right to discuss it without the rude responses. I never said everyone has been rude, or that the advice to not get too caught up in minor things wasn't good advice, I only explained that sometimes it's not just a simple process of changing your selection.

After what we have been through, and are still dealing with, changing one brick selection to another without any other issues involved doesn't seem like a big deal but that doesn't give me the right to tell someone they cannot vent about it, or to be rude about it, just because I think my issues are worse! As someone said, it is not an issue with PD over having to change bricks they can no longer source, it is that they have not communicated that fact and as I said in my example, that lack of communication can cause a much bigger problem than simply having to change a selection.

This is not a competition as to who has had the most problems for goodness sake, it's a thread for sharing ideas and supporting each other. The advice not to get too upset about it is sound, the rude way that this was conveyed by some people was unnecessary IMO.

EFC

Guys i think we have all grown from this experience....**Group hug**

And i think the main thing out of this is WESTERN OFFICE needs to work on it's communication!

Humble & Eli i truly hope it works out for you and didn't mean any offence by the term "move on". It's as Joles said, rather than go around in angry circles and upsetting yourself, you know that you have information that is of paramount importance to your build. Use this information to your advantage and work with your CSC to make sure that your experience isn't blighted by this and have a backup plan just in case what you have chosen is not available.

I bet you this is the classic case of one person thinking i'll just put it in the intray and then a mountain of other stuff gets put on top which causes a flow on effect. I know coz i deal with Landlords who haven't told us the managing agent important information that needs to be relayed to tenants...grrr...as snoofie says it really nerks my beans.

Hi HomeOne Members,

It’s come to my attention that there is a lot of discussion about brick options being discontinued over the last few days and I just want to clear this up with you. I hear that communication is key to you all so I’m sure you can appreciate to know that some of our suppliers don’t let PD know that there are changes to their lines or brick options are being discontinued until after it’s happened. This isn’t the first time this issue has come up, and we absolutely understand why this may be frustrating for you, as it is for us. We aren’t trying to be annoying or make things difficult for you. The best way to have your questions answered is to approach your Building Coordinator, instead of making statements that may be incorrect or lacking information. Or if you read something on the forum and want to know what effect it’s going to have with your selections or build, your Building Coordinator will be able to let you know.

I can confirm with you now that due to an unexpected technical issue at one of the Austral plants the ‘Hawthorn’ has been withdrawn slightly earlier. Unfortunately we had not been directly notified by Austral and are working very quickly to find alternative options. We will be notifying those regional offices that have clients with existing orders that may be affected. Clients will be encouraged to speak with their Building Coordinator about resolution options and can visit the Hopetoun Interiors Showroom to review the revised range. On occasions like this with manufactures making changes to lines after clients have had their selection appointment they are contacted by their regional office and asked to re-select an alternative and avoid site delays.

Normally when we are informed in advance of bricks being discontinued we withdraw it from the selection range completely to avoid a situation like this. We do work with clients to find the best option within the selection range at the time of their appointment.

To help you understand further why this can happen we have a great blog post that I recommend you read…... http://blog.porterdavis.com.au/index.ph ... selection/

I've PM'd you - not sure if you got it though... seems to be stuck in my Outbox...

hahaha move over JK!

Hi Team PD,

That PD blog you referred to makes it sound a lot simpler than it actually is. This from the blog:

"If you’re stuck for ideas when rechoosing your bricks, the best thing to do is visit one of our display homes so you can see the brick ‘in-action’".

In my experience, Hopetoun is not able to help you with what is in a display home unless you ask "Can you tell me what that ______ is on display at _______"?
When I have asked them to tell me where (for example) Mink Caesarstone might be displayed, they can't.

When I have been to displays and have asked the SC for the name of the brick used etc. some will help and look up their file, some will even give you a copy of the colours file. But the majority will say they don't have it and refer you to Hopetoun. You're in luck if someone from Hopetoun answers the phone or even calls you back.

I am not sure what the answer is to this, but I have found this quite frustrating and not good customer service.

Rups we were told to contact Boral direct and ask for a list of houses made with the bricks and roof colours that we liked. They were able to give us a few houses in our area that we went to look at before making our re-selection.

Yes, we had the same with Austral, they gave us a list of homes built with the various bricks

I've called Hopeturn over 50 times and not once has anyone ever returned my call.
I have even PM team PD asking for the wall colour of the Waldorf display at Kingsford Estate and still no answer.

All to hard!

My CSC is the best and I can relie on her.

Thanks guys - understand re: bricks, but I'm commenting a little more generally. There are a lot of choices to make with many options to consider, and sometimes looking at a teeny sample can't give you an idea of whether a material you think you like will look good on a larger scale. And sometimes you haven't seen that material at a display home, so it can be quite a challenge to find it 'in-situ'.

If there was a way that PD / Hopetoun can tell where a particular material is on display, as compared to telling you what the material is in a display house, it may take away the fear of selecting a material you haven't actually seen used, and you may get an even cooler house!!

Also, If there was a service like another volume builder's M-Studio, that would be great too...

This is what I did.... I went to Laminex and got a heap of samples. Pretty much any colour I liked. I rang QQ and got them to send me out samples of the stones that I liked. I got colourbond samples from a place in Sunshine. I got a paint brochure and a stain brochure and a brick brochure and any other brochure I could think of.

I had everything in my little bag with a big note pad and pens and highlighters and every weekend I went display home looking with my little bag. I had all my samples so that if I saw something I liked in the home I could compare it to my samples and make a note of it.

Was it leg work? Yep! Was it heaps of fun? Yep!! Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I just decided I'd be proactive and find things out for myself rather than wait for them to get back to me.

Yep. Did that too. Still have the bag

Agree that there is significant effort to be put in to get the right result.

But... I think there are just a couple of things PD can do with the information they've got (they know every product in every display they've got open around the state - maybe they can put it all into a sortable spreadsheet type thing on 24/7?) to increase the comfort factor and the end result... Which is good news for everyone!!

Glad I'm no the only bag person from the displays! I did get some funny looks!
Yep, m'con (who we dealt with before PD) had each home on their intranet and the sales consultant could just print out the entire colour schedule for the home. I got a few print outs from my sales guy. It was really difficult when we switched to PD to adjust to their processes... definitey harder than some of the other builders. But it is what it is, and we just had to work around it.
At least PD managed to get our home right.... 7 contract appointments later with M'con and the drawings still weren't the right house!

Yeah, we ended up with PD because the previous builder we chose threw their hands in the air in defeat and screamed "oogie boogie" when faced with our 1:5 slope driveway after the site cut.

PD were more than accommodating and didn't even flinch at the slope.

Joles i too will confess to the hoarding of samples/brochures/magazine cuttings except i had a big pink folder that held it all and that came everywhere with me when we went display home looking

I'm glad your CSC has helped you because I never got that help. I can tell you that hopetoun have a draw (in the room where you wander around looking at items) with white folders and in these folders are all the displays homes they've built listing all the information that went into building that particular home eg. names of colour paints used, name of flooring used, name of benchtops used, bricks colours etc. PD Customer Service have always told us we can't give you that information you need to speak to hopetoun so when we went for a browsing session we asked them and they pulled out one of the folders. Everything is there and if they don't get it for you or say they don't have the info, just direct them to the long bench (black or white can't remember but the draws are white) in the middle of the room and it's in the big draws in white folders. If your feeling helpful, I would open the draws and pull them out for them. hehehe One thing is they don't allow you to photocopy the sheet. They will right down the name of colours, items you want to know.

Gosh, really? My positive then is that when we did our colour selection at Hopetoun the girl we had was very accommodating and happily looked up almost everything that was in the display home we liked because we wanted most things the same. The only thing she was unable to tell us was the carpet IIRC.

We visited that display with various samples so many times that the people there know us by sight now and just wave us through