Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Dec 20, 2011 7:06 pm Hi Guys Thought id share with you our poor experience with AV Jenning/Sekisui House and purely from our view i would avoid [*]We received an estimate for a new home [*]Confirmed a number of things in writing from the Sales team (eg price for variations). These were marked as fixed, not provisional list site costs on the estimate [*]Paid a $2K deposit for a tender after being all excited [*]Tender came back with those specific items at incredibly inflated prices + further costs which were guaranteed to be included in the base price of the house (eg site fencing, etc) [*]Argued that these were confirmed in writing to be included [*]Sales team disagree and wont provide a refund of the deposit. Now they are trying to sell us a cheaper house from their range. WTF I think in my 10 years in the commercial building industry this would have to be the best display of incompetence. Ill have to now take it to the appropriate people to deal with it. As you can tell im not happy about being tricked and told porkies, furthermore wasting a month of our tendering time. Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 2Dec 21, 2011 12:33 pm Exactly why I pulled out from them and cut my losses mate. I had been given "fixed quotes" for our footings which they stuck too, but then piled a heaps of extra footings under structural to hide the cost. My footing on a flat block came to $34k through Sekisui for a single dwelling. I then went through Metr!con and have now just got up to the council approval stage with all contracts signed and fixed with a footing cost of $19k (Includes fencing) for the exact same footing... Go figure! Sekisui are nothing more than an average builder, who cannot be trusted as they will happily take your extra hard earnings. It would probably end up as a payment on their Austin Martin anyway. If I could give advice, look into Metr!con. Don't just shop around for the right house design, shop around for a good consultant! Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 3Dec 21, 2011 1:00 pm Gee guys. Sorry you've had bad customer service and tender problems. So far my consultant has been more than reasonable and accommodating. No surprises. All explained. Time will tell about their builder, but if it's the same team as the one that built the AVJennings Meridian house for the people two doors up I will be more than happy. As they are. Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 4Dec 21, 2011 2:10 pm and what really leaves a sour taste in my mouth is that we came to them because our builder had gone into liquidation recently and they knew the whole story about us losing a deposit with them. Talk about kicking someone when their down. If anyone would like to PM me i can happily tell you more. Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 7Jun 23, 2012 10:39 am Hi All, Thank you to everyone who has gone to the effort of posting reviews. It's very helpful. Has anyone had any experience of Sekisui adding more charges after construction has began? We have had approx $10,000 of charges added post-contract signing - none of it related to changes that we requested....mostly to do with a very large cost related to site drainage that appears to have been overlooked in the initial site costs (it's a sloped block - anyone can see that it was going to require drainage). We have finally been given final approval from the bank in relation to the Seksui contract and the builder is ready to start, however, we just cannot absorb any further unseen costs and are now considering pulling the pin unless Sekisui can supply in writing that it will be fixed-price from now onwards. We are really keen to hear how others have gone. We are building in the Illawarra, NSW. Cheers, Suz Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 8Jun 23, 2012 11:17 am In my opinion this is typical of the volume builders. Either the sales people are clueless and have no idea of actual costings, or it's much more sinister and they intentionality put very conservative prices so you sign and then afterwards inflate them. My sister went through this with AV and walked away and lost the $2k. Glad you managed to get a refund. My Hamptons build (completed): viewtopic.php?f=31&t=63370 Moved in Wednesday 11th Dec 2013 Front landscaping completed June 2016 Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 9Jun 23, 2012 7:12 pm Suziree Hi All, Thank you to everyone who has gone to the effort of posting reviews. It's very helpful. Has anyone had any experience of Sekisui adding more charges after construction has began? We have had approx $10,000 of charges added post-contract signing - none of it related to changes that we requested....mostly to do with a very large cost related to site drainage that appears to have been overlooked in the initial site costs (it's a sloped block - anyone can see that it was going to require drainage). We have finally been given final approval from the bank in relation to the Seksui contract and the builder is ready to start, however, we just cannot absorb any further unseen costs and are now considering pulling the pin unless Sekisui can supply in writing that it will be fixed-price from now onwards. We are really keen to hear how others have gone. We are building in the Illawarra, NSW. Cheers, Suz Hi Suz. I have just taken the keys to my house by Sekisui. While I think my site supervisor was a unit and a half and difficult to like, there were no surprises. In fact I had a variation for the piers and beam footings and of $32000 and I received a credit of $6,000 on my bill. Lucky for me the customer service person was my point of contact and overall did a good job. Anyway I'm in now with just painting stuff ups to fix and a few door handles to install. DRG Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 11Jun 23, 2012 7:46 pm Scone. You can check my thread if you want some more info. Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 12Aug 18, 2012 10:56 pm phildaleg update: they finally issued a cheque refund after recieving an investigation phone call. buyer beware Hi Phildaleg, can you pm me who you report to get the refund? I've paid the deposit for two months, yet they still didn't do any proper drawing and estimate and their excuse is they're expecting us to provide the elevation. I don't even know what elevation is until today. Miismydream Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 13Oct 24, 2012 4:36 pm Hi Phildaleg, or debbieqin, could you pm me or post here who or how you dealt with Sekisui to get your deposits back? in the process of cancelling my contract with them atm.. so many problems so far and this is before construction has begun. they are trying to slog me for almost $10,000 which includes $5,000 commission to their sales staff who is the main reason we had all that trouble. Re: AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Tricked us 14Oct 24, 2012 7:29 pm For what its worth, we had a terrible time in the pre-contract / sales phase with unreasonable delays and being given incorrect information by the salesperson. However, we have been happy since we signed the contract. Our "customer care" person is fantastic, and the building manager and site supervisor have been very accommodating in working with us so that we can do some owner-builder work on our large block site ourselves (shed/ landscaping) partially before handing over the site and partially while they build the house. We are just about to hand over the site and have them commence building, so hopefully things continue well from here. We have also found the costings to be pretty fair so far, though we haven't reached the more contentious issues like finalising the provisional sums following slab etc. Tender /1/12 Contract 14/6/12 Planning 12/10/12 Site 23/10/12 Piers 27/11/12 Slab 12/12/12 Frame 15/12/12 Trusses 17/1/13 Roof 24/1/13 Bricks 13/2/13 Plaster 1/3/13 You’re on the right track, wire brush in a grinder then a zinc rich epoxy primer then a top coat of some sort, like a waterproofing membrane. Raising the concrete would… 1 6980 How good is Simeon?! Always taking time to help others out! Wish we were building in NSW and could work together. Thanks for all that you do! 7 6515 Really tight at the top of the stairs- how to get furniture into those rooms? Study books - does anyone really use them these days? Large storage closet would be more functional. 2 6848 |