Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4561Apr 03, 2014 4:46 pm pinny - with a progress claim, they can put it in with the majority of the work being done. However, i look at it, if the company went bust tomorrow you have signed saying that the bricks are complete. With mine, I sat on the claim until the stage was finished. You wont get any reply from the accounts department. I tried to contact them a couple of times over a matter of payment and they dont get back to you. We had the Boral plasterboard manager come out yesterday. Very happy with them and what was discussed. There was a lot more picked up when we all went through together and most of the ceilings in the house will be re-skimmed and then repainted. A couple of the rooms when it is nighttime and the lights are on you can see edges of the plasterboard tape sticking out. They are going to remove the tape in those rooms and then redo. Very happy that they wanted to make sure everything was perfect and we were happy - not like the response that we have had from Rawson that they have done what they can and we have to put up with poor work. Modified Fernside 38 Rawson Homes Blog: http://www.thehousethatmatandjenbuilt.blogspot.com Build Thread: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60501 Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4562Apr 03, 2014 5:07 pm Thanks for the advise jen, will definitely be sitting on it until it's done as SS doesn't seem to be to worried about getting it completed. To say im unimpressed with him at the moment in an understatement. Glad you have at least got some good news about ur plaster - pity rawson won't fix all the other issues without u having to fight for it. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4563Apr 03, 2014 5:55 pm We have moved in and I'm very happy with our house. We have issues with a few things of course but our SS has been great at organising everything in a timely manner. We had heaps of different trades out here early this week to look at what needs to be fixed so hopefully a lot of the stuff arrives in the next few weeks. Major issues are scratches in our high gloss polytech kitchen (already measured and ordered to replace the offending doors), scratches on our stone bench in the kitchen (to be fixed when the kitchens in) and our floor tiles in the main bathroom and ensuite have to be replaced (nearly all are scratched from Gyprock dust after they redid our ceiling from the AC flooding). The tiles will be the most major thing but TD have already been out to order for the job so now we just wait for the tiler. It'll be annoying to only have one operational bathroom for a week or two but at least they'll be fixed. Sorry to hear that so many others are having issues with things. Hopefully they'll get sorted for you soon. Aside from that our landscaping is nearly done and all of our new furniture has arrived and looks amazing . We're super happy with all the choices we made with this house - they styling looks amazing. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4564Apr 04, 2014 8:17 am Your place is looking amazing munchi - cant wait to see yours inside pics of it all furnished! Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4565Apr 04, 2014 8:18 am Hi folks, we are building with rawson but havent actually started yet, just wondering if anyone else has any problems with the sales dept in syd, well maybe not a problem but the guy we are dealing with doesnt seem to ever respond, I email with read receipts so I know he does read them but how hard can it be to just send a short reply? Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4566Apr 04, 2014 8:35 am gregandjules Hi folks, we are building with rawson but havent actually started yet, just wondering if anyone else has any problems with the sales dept in syd, well maybe not a problem but the guy we are dealing with doesnt seem to ever respond, I email with read receipts so I know he does read them but how hard can it be to just send a short reply? Are you just in tender stage or in the actual admin phase? Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4567Apr 04, 2014 8:50 am gregandjules Hi folks, we are building with rawson but havent actually started yet, just wondering if anyone else has any problems with the sales dept in syd, well maybe not a problem but the guy we are dealing with doesnt seem to ever respond, I email with read receipts so I know he does read them but how hard can it be to just send a short reply? Yeah, this sounds like us. Unless he had good news, he was reluctant to get back to us. This was the tender phase for us, we'd paid the tender fee but hadn't gotten near signing a contract yet. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4568Apr 04, 2014 9:43 am gregandjules Hi folks, we are building with rawson but havent actually started yet, just wondering if anyone else has any problems with the sales dept in syd, well maybe not a problem but the guy we are dealing with doesnt seem to ever respond, I email with read receipts so I know he does read them but how hard can it be to just send a short reply? We are at the final stage of admin.. We had trouble even getting attention at the sales office originally (no one seemed to want our business which we thought was crazy).. With that being said, we got a personal recommendation of the name of sales guys at Kellyville and got in touch with him. He was always quick to respond and knew the answer to anything we could throw at him. still at this stage of admin I had a question regarding some plan changes and he was prepared to meet me later that same day, so his service has been great! During admin responses started off slow and we were frustrated but I must say that since the start of the new year we have been really happy with the speed of responses on queries and variations. Jen1977 - Hope everything gets sorted out. If it's any consolation, the lesson we are learning on things to keep a look out on are very helpful. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4569Apr 04, 2014 11:06 am Same with us sales staff weren't great but we've been blessed in admin stage. PCA always gets back to us same day and CC in three days. Only thing holding us up now is the bank. http://camdenbuild.blogspot.com.au/ by invite only please pm me Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4570Apr 05, 2014 9:21 pm Progress is slow on our site. We have a new, as in new to us and new to Rawson, SS, who started end of January/Start of February. We feel confident with him, he seems keen to do a great job. However... We do feel like we are slow. Our 2nd SS told us our frame would be complete and hopefully start bricks before Christmas. Frame was erected in January and bricks started with the new SS in February. So already we felt that we were behind when he started. New (3rd) SS told us bricks would finish and roof start in a certain week; bricks finished, roof did not start. Told again that certain things would happen, and they didn't happen when we expected, or when he said. When I questioned him, he seemed offended, and quickly told me there were "checks and balances" that need to happen before things progress. We understand this, and are glad for it, but I'd rather not be told that something is going to happen if things need to be checked, then to be told things will happen, and be disappointed when they don't. Our roof is up and cladding started, 1 month after we were told it would happen. Hopefully once they are inside things will move faster. Has anyone else had this issue? We're thinking it more likely the trades deciding not to show up, than the SS giving us the wrong information. Which is disappointing for Rawson, if the trades are letting them down. Our Benham 33 journey 4571Apr 06, 2014 6:36 am We are having the same issues Sheridanbenjamin. We are 12 and 1/2 weeks into our 30 week build and our bricks aren't even finished. Ss can't even tell me when they will be back to finish them off. He tells me days things will be done, and they don't happen. A simple call or text to say things have been delayed due to etc etc would be nice. It took 3 weeks for our roof tiling to be finished and we still have frame work inside that isn't completed Would be nice for something to start when they say is suppose to, and for it to be completely finished before the tradies run off to another job. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4572Apr 06, 2014 12:49 pm I swear dealing with Rawson certainly wears me out. When we reported the major cracking in the void and the ceiling issues (back in October 2013) we were told that it would take a week to finish and we would be in the house as Rawson would not pay for us to stay anywhere. At that time we were told that the scaffolding would be put up every morning and taken down every afternoon - at a cost of $300/day to Rawson. Then we were told (months down the track) that we would be put up in a hotel as with two young kids it was not safe and too expensive to have scaffolding put up and down. A trip to Bunnings today and I happened to run into the maintenance manager. Apparently Rawson has changed their mind again. We are to stay in the house while the work is being done - apparently on day 1 the scaffolding will be put up and they will work and in the afternoon it will be taken down. The work is supposed to start on Monday 28th April - that day is a pupil free day and it is the day that my MIL comes over to my place to look after my kids - so not sure how that is supposed to work with two kids in the house. The following day apparently they will be working on the downstairs - all of the ceilings downstairs need to be fixed including the ceiling in the powder room that needs to be have the cornice pulled down and fixed. Tuesday thankfully we are out of the house. Apparently the scaffolding comes back on Wednesday when we are in the house and we are supposed to live through it for another three days. Basically every ceiling apart from a couple of rooms will be re-skimmed, sanded and repainted. Can you imagine the dust - and with two kids with asthma it is going to be fun. Another fail for Rawson. Modified Fernside 38 Rawson Homes Blog: http://www.thehousethatmatandjenbuilt.blogspot.com Build Thread: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60501 Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4573Apr 06, 2014 2:45 pm pinny We are having the same issues Sheridanbenjamin. We are 12 and 1/2 weeks into our 30 week build and our bricks aren't even finished. Ss can't even tell me when they will be back to finish them off. He tells me days things will be done, and they don't happen. A simple call or text to say things have been delayed due to etc etc would be nice. It took 3 weeks for our roof tiling to be finished and we still have frame work inside that isn't completed Would be nice for something to start when they say is suppose to, and for it to be completely finished before the tradies run off to another job. Yours might not be so bad pinny, as you know we had the slab before xmas and your build has progressed past our stage lol. Maybe something to do with me only ringing the supervisor once when I noticed the slab was being done. He hasn;t initiated a call to me yet. It will get done eventually I suppose. At least I am very happy with the quality of work done so far. The bricks that have been laid seem really well done. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4574Apr 06, 2014 4:58 pm Ours doesn't ring us either roadrunner. We have to make contact if we want to know something. I like to text - that way I have proof of what I was told would be done. Think I may have come across ur place yesterday.. Went to take some pics of the display home and drove around while we were waiting for it to open Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4575Apr 07, 2014 12:15 pm I always text or email my SS but he always reply with a phone call. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4576Apr 08, 2014 10:38 am Hi all. We are currently in pre-construction phase and have been for almost 7 months now. Becoming very frustrated and not impressed with Rawson's incompetence. Trying to be patient thinking all will be better when we get to construction phase, but reading a few of the proceeding posts, it appears that people are now experiencing problems in the construction phase. Maybe it's time to choose another builder??? Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4577Apr 09, 2014 12:52 pm Hi All, I'm also in pre-construction stage with Rawson and reading this blog has helped me a lot. I have an issue, if anyone can advice me that would be much appreciated. I'm building a Seaview 27 and have ask for a variation to extend the house by 100cm internally. I got the cost for it and signed off to proceed with plan redraw. After reviewing the updated plans I realised the extension is really 94cm internally. I raised this with them and they came back saying the signed off variation request states 'approximately 100cm' and also the shortfall of 6cm is to do with the brick length. If I want it to have 100cm in total there will be additional cost. It is a 6% difference from the approximate figure. Do I have any say here considering the difference is more than 5%? Thanks Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4578Apr 09, 2014 1:14 pm Hawk19 Hi all. We are currently in pre-construction phase and have been for almost 7 months now. Becoming very frustrated and not impressed with Rawson's incompetence. Trying to be patient thinking all will be better when we get to construction phase, but reading a few of the proceeding posts, it appears that people are now experiencing problems in the construction phase. Maybe it's time to choose another builder??? Just to give you an insight. We are currently building with Rawson, we were not impatient as we were in a good position to take things slowly. We only got impatient towards the last months or so of the admin phase as we were excited. To give you a timeline, we signed with Rawson early June '13 and we only had peg out last week. That is 10months with us not being pushy and having about 5 pages of variations, etc. I will give you some advice, our first PCA was pretty bad, would use acronyms for building terms which we had never heard of, rude, etc. We then sent an email to the PCA's manager, a few weeks later we were changed over to a new PCA, this PCA was the greatest! Super quick, informative and down to earth (we ended up buying her a present), she was later promoted and is no longer a PCA. So we were then appointed a new PCA, this new PCA is super slow. What we have learnt, is when you are waiting for plans, or any details. Always in the email ask in a polite way "when do you think you will know by" or "how long do you think that would take". This will give you a rough timeline, which then gives you an idea of when it will be ready as well as being able to prompt the PCA that week and ask how it's going without sounding pushy. Yes it's a slow and drawn out process to do it this way. But after our experience with 3 different PCA's, I have come to the conclusion that their staff aren't taught proper customer service skills. To give credit to Rawson, I used to work in Customer Service centric workplaces, and no job ever taught me or others how to deal with a customer. It's more about how much experience you have and how willing of a person you are to want to help someone, and to be honest 90% of them don't care. Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4579Apr 10, 2014 8:20 pm I realise we have moved on from the flooring topic already, but I thought I should mention this before it's too late. Check how much expansion gap your flooring needs and make sure the skirting is thick enough to cover it. We just found out that the standard 10mm thick skirting is insufficient for bamboo floorings that require 10mm expansion gap. Our only option is to have beading or scotia, or replace the skirting to something thicker (which may affect the architraves if there were the same thickness) Re: Our Benham 33 journey 4580Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm Are you doing your bamboo flooring through rawson or after handover pongie? We are doing ours through rawson and were told direct from the supplier that we will only require scotia around our kitchen island. Any advice on how to ensure the kit home granny flat that im thinking of buying will get council approval. The kit home companys wont release plans without a deposit and… 0 7222 of course there are legal avenues. You've already mentioned it. Sue them. I find it odd that lawyers wouldnt be willing to take on the case, given CCT evidence and… 1 23777 "Losers" "humanity" "off time" "your" "top notch" "love symbol" Sounds like ponzo is done using other people's toilets 36 23896 |