Hi Guys. Thanks for maintaining such a lovely and informative forum.
We'd like to build a Promende with Clarendon at Lakewood and so far, our experience has not been the best so far... Maybe as a person with IT experience and working as a managerial consultant with a great focus on process inprovement (lean, Six Sigma and all that stuff) and customer service I have a toooooo big focus on customer excellence and I'm too demanding but I've never seen such an absence of customer service anywhere in Australia like has been shown by Clarendon staff.... I've been reading reviews about Clarendon and they are bad. However, same applies to virtually every builder -- people tend to complain more often than sharing enjoyment. Based on reviews I could not reliably determine if Eden Brae were any better -- the ratings are 2 and a half for the most of builders (on the productreview.com.au)... Trusting a rating of 4 for Rawson homes is hard due to only 3 reviews... The same would apply to Clarendon -- 28 reviews does not seem enough accounting for the number of homes they build.
At this time we have paid 4K initial deposit and I've been chasing for a month the tender presenter for finalising documents for DA. The slowness of response gets me. When I started following up and becoming more direct about my frustration I was simply shocked by responses from the tender presenter that delays have been caused by the customer due to not willing to accept the plans.. The reason for not accepting plans was simply because the plans did not reflect 100% what we have asked for (i.e. asking for a slding door between the Master Bed and Bed 5 you would not expect that the sliding door appears to the entrance of Bed 5 instead an original hanging one).. Anyway, I'd be shot on the spot for telling my customer something like this.. Do not know much about the building industry -- maybe it is different and this is OK to blame own inability to understand the customer's requirement on the customer... From my point, I sent a comprehensive list of changes to Clarendon. From my professional experience I know that setting the schedule of requirements upfront and eliminating any changes once everything has been clarified is a vital thing to success so I stick to this principle.
Please do not consider anything above as winging. I was simply trying to reflect the context. As I'm building for the first time I'm a bit lost with the process and behavioural patterns.
Currently what we need to have happened is simply make Clarendon lodging documents, getting approvals and start building. I do not see that our tender presenter who's been the only communicaton channel between us and Clarendon does any decent work (essentially the person makes an impression of a cocaine addict having no clue hollow person). Has anyone had an experience in asking Clarendon changing the presenter? Does this make any sense? Are there any decent guys? I have had a conversation with their site development manager (the person responsible with supervising construction work in the area we're going to build it) and his attitude and communiction were quite pleasant and re-assuring so, I'm hoping that once we've got past those office/sales people things going to get better...
Please feel free to share any advice or comments re the subject... Thanks a lot for your help!