Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1641Feb 24, 2018 2:08 pm Hi vegiegirl, We are at the same stage. Kurmond delays everything without explaining anything. They probably still have problems with receiving building insurances therefore they make people wait. If we knew that in the beginning, we would never choose Kurmond. We are also considering walking away. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1643Feb 26, 2018 12:04 pm nada17 Hi vegiegirl, We are at the same stage. Kurmond delays everything without explaining anything. They probably still have problems with receiving building insurances therefore they make people wait. If we knew that in the beginning, we would never choose Kurmond. We are also considering walking away. Hi I am feeling bit fortunate that I have passed that admin/documentation stage (MOST FRUSTRATING) as we are now in construction stage! Kurmond's CSO - I will rank them 3/10 *lack of enough information and customer service skills - they simply don't know how to troubleshoot the client's issue / how to help client!! if there are easy questions from us then they being so sweet and getting back to us so quickly and nicely!!! In our case. everything was ready to roll to start construction but w[i]e have been waited for nearly 2 months just because Kurmond was having some internal issue to lodge the new extra building insurance thingy ... they have not enough Building Insurance for their clients which they were aware of it since many months but they DID NOT bother to inform us - when we went to sign the final contract they disclose it their issue!!![/i] [i]Kurmond's sales and office staff (colour team, CSOs, drafter, estimator,etc) are having BIG COMMUNICATION GAP...[/i] We have been assigned a supervisor (1st Supervisor) which was SUPERB - THE BEST but unfortunately now they have replaced with new supervisor (New Hired) for our job!! - Now wait and watch how this new Supervisor is turning out.... Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1644Feb 26, 2018 12:24 pm we got the CC today. I informed Kurmond about that (they of course knew that) but they said they will just sit on their bottoms and do everything according to their schedule. according to them we are schedules for April (whatever that means). today is 4 months from our internal color selection appointment and there is no paperwork for us to review . they simply don't want to work on it and they say they will work on it in mid March. there is no explanation why we need to wait. they just don't do it. so guys, if you are now thinking of going with Kurmond, get used to be waiting without explanations. PS: when I look back at the communication with their sales team it all looks so funny. they are so nice and quick to give you a quote or send you tender to sign and pay deposit. oh, they are just jumping out of their pants so you can pay asap Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1646Feb 26, 2018 12:57 pm Nada17 GREAT - CONGRATS for having CC finally With our Construction Stage - So far so good! We are at Bricklaying stage... Construction Stage In this short period of times I can feel the difference the way construction team is working and the way those office staffs are working!!! There is no MATCH... ! Construction phases were all organised and if there was a waiting over 3 days then our X-supervisor was taking it seriously too and pushing the job and subcontractors or trades!! FINGERS CROSSED - hope we'll have a same experience with our newly assigned supervisor now!!! Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1647Feb 28, 2018 9:17 am Hi guys, am new here. We just signed the tender with Kurmond. For the fairness for them up until now, I don't have complains about them, especially Kellyville sales person (Mike) was excellent and worked proactively to make sure all the changes we need in plans to be updated, and also we asked him to include all those changes in the tender which he got his head office to do so without much delays. I paid the tender acceptance fee of $6000 to them last week. Probably one person or few in their head office might let them down which I didn't significantly experience yet although I feel that they might be not the best in customer services such as responding to an email or even acknowledging a receipt of an email. I honestly hope the company owners will address those issues and identify the people who have become a bottleneck to their company and would address those issues. I am trying to be positive and honest in this process. I am preparing a website/blog to share my building experience which I soon would provide the link here. My building experience https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=91499 Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1648Feb 28, 2018 9:45 am Mallik Hi guys, am new here. We just signed the tender with Kurmond. For the fairness for them up until now, I don't have complains about them, especially Kellyville sales person (Mike) was excellent and worked proactively to make sure all the changes we need in plans to be updated, and also we asked him to include all those changes in the tender which he got his head office to do so without much delays. I paid the tender acceptance fee of $6000 to them last week. Probably one person or few in their head office might let them down which I didn't significantly experience yet although I feel that they might be not the best in customer services such as responding to an email or even acknowledging a receipt of an email. I honestly hope the company owners will address those issues and identify the people who have become a bottleneck to their company and would address those issues. I am trying to be positive and honest in this process. I am preparing a website/blog to share my building experience which I soon would provide the link here. I don't think that anyone had problems with their sales team. hopefully you will have pleasant experience with the rest of admin team. as for us, we are still just waiting for them to find time and proceed with our colour papers. it is 4+ months from our colour appointment and still no outcome. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1649Feb 28, 2018 9:55 am vegiegirl We are another unhappy Kurmond client. We went with Kurmond as they provided a floor plan that met our requirements with very little modification. We first sat down with them in late 2016 to discuss our build, signed the preliminary tender in May 2017. The DA was approved by council in November 2017. We do not yet have a construction certificate and apparently are still months away from signing a contract. They have basically informed us we probably can’t expect construction to commence before April, possibly later. This would mean we can’t expect to be finished this year. Ridiculous. Kurmond stuffed up our landscape plans with council, not doing the proper checks prior to submission, and then hit us with a $450 fee to have the landscape plans redrafted. When we complained they revised it to $350. My husband called twice last week to try to get a progress report. No one had the courtesy to call him back. The 90- day fixed price tender period is a feel good exercise that Kurmond make no undertaking to meet. We were quick to make our appointments for internal and external colours, air-con, security, tiles etc. Kurmond sat on the air-con approvals for a month, as they lost it in their own internal communications. I had to follow up with the air-con company to show Kurmond it was submitted the day after our appointment. When I communicated my concerns we were going to fall outside the 90 days they responded that I had nothing to worry about. Seriously, it is now 9 months since we signed the preliminary tender. When people ask me how the build is progressing they are shocked at how long everything is taking. I’m very up front with which company we are building with, as there are lots of knock-down rebuild projects going on in our area and I’d rather they chose a company that valued their clients and actually had a decent project management strategy in place. I know people who have built with Lily and Clarendon Home which are pretty happy with the timelines. We unnecessarily evicted our tenants last August so we could have the house demolished in time for the building to commence, having now foregone 7 months rental income we sorely need. We are at the stage where we are considering walking away, either buying a house that meets our needs and selling our dream block, or going with another company, which would mean starting the process all over again. I wish we went with another company. The parties have reached a mutual understanding in resolution of each of the other parties concerns Simeon McGovern Affordable Custom Homes, We design and build to your budget Ashington Homes www.ashingtonhomes.com.au Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1650Feb 28, 2018 10:19 am nada17 I am really surprised at how this kind of small to medium size company can't reslove their admin and coordinating issues that most of the people complain here. As I understand it is a family own business so I would expect to work much better than any other larger organization. What actually prevent them to restructure their organization to perform better? Where is the bottleneck and who causes that? I see everywhere the companies just hire good people and eliminate the ones who underperform or with negative attitudes. Why those guys can't do it? Wouldn't this way the entire company would sink with everyone in it? Anyways I really can't say anything yet as my experience is positive so far. I wish it will be same in the future too My building experience https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=91499 Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1651Feb 28, 2018 3:14 pm I think they don't see any reason to improve their performance. They have good sales team who makes a good company image. After the client pays deposit and then 5-10% of tender price, that's when they stop caring as they know they got the job. They will do it when it suits them and they don't bother much that their delays and mistakes cause you to lose money. Most people do not want to lose money already paid and time already spent that's why they just stick with Kurmond. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1652Mar 01, 2018 9:34 am Nada17 - Glad you’ve got your CC, nice to feel like you’re moving forward. Malik - glad you’re feeling optimistic! Good luck, and I hope you progress faster than we have. As for us, our CSO requested we do all the council applications for Roads Act etc (big fat lie on their website that they take care of all the council approvals), and said they will apply for the CC once we send the receipts. We asked for clarity on which Roads Act applications they require - concrete pump? Skip bins? Cranes? We didn’t know, and it wasn’t evident from the DA. Of course they didn’t tell us. So we did the driveway application, which we at least know we do need, and sent through the receipts, as requested. Long story short, after we asked several times if there was anything else we needed to do, a number of unanswered calls and emails, a few weeks later they declared they need the council driveway approval docs before they can get the CC. When we asked why they didn’t tell us this when we asked earlier it was the usual bluster and deflection of blame back on us. What the..??? It’s like talking with people who have never done this before, yet this is their profession. I would be embarrassed if I conducted myself at work in such a manner, so unprofessional. So, it’s now been almost 14 months since we paid our initial $2K to kick-start this build. I think we might move into a new geological age before its finished. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1653Mar 01, 2018 9:52 am Hi vegiegirl, you can actually see whatever applications you need to do in your DA. We got it from Kurmond. They sent it together with PCA appointing forms.I am just thinking now that my CSO is not that bad... It is bad that they did not give you that list. As for us, we are not very happy with the CC, because it doesn't move anything on. We are still waiting for them to start working on our file. They just put us on hold and don't do anything. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1654Mar 01, 2018 10:01 am Hi Nada17, yes I looked at the DA docs, but we wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anything, then have Kurmond tell us it was our fault we didnt do all the applications required. So I didn’t think it was unreasonable for us to ask them to specify, which they never have 😠 If your CSO is being clear and thorough then that’s great. 80-90% of a Project managers jobs is keeping people informed, so at the very least they should be giving us updates in the long waits between milestones. They don’t seem to be very good at this aspect of the whole customer service gig. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1655Mar 01, 2018 10:16 am vegiegirl, of course they had to inform you about needed docs. and yes, they are very good at blaming the customers. they also blame us in all their faults. one time I called them to remind them that they needed to pay council fee so council could issue the approval. i called them in 10 days after council contacted them and no payments were done yet. so instead of accepting the fact that they simply forgot about council request and quickly pay the fees, the compliance lady told me that the fact that I am bothering them with phone calls is actually slows everything down and causes delays. if I tdidn't call them then I would probably still be expecting council to issue the approval today. so guys, if you still have a chance to run from Kurmond - just do so. Don't just hope that miraculously your case will be different. it won't! We were also optimistic a few months back. and now look where we are. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1657Mar 01, 2018 12:27 pm nada17 and vegiegirl Thanks for your updates and tips. Please update your progress here frequently, this way our journey will be easier (at least we will feel so My building experience https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=91499 Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1659Mar 01, 2018 1:17 pm Nada17, it has been over 9 months since we signed the 90-day fixed price tender. So it expired over 200 days ago. Laughable, really. We did everything we could to get all the internal appointments completed within that timeframe, but our effort was not reciprocated by Kurmond (eg. How they lost our sign-off on the air-con in their internal email, which I had to chase up for them a month later when we hadn’t heard anything). Do you know if they have implemented any price hikes recently? Agreed, Mallik, don’t sign off anything until you have thoroughly checked it, both against their own documents for what they say they will provide, and for what you have requested. We found lots of errors (such as no doors on the set square doorways to the wardrobes and pantry, the wrong bathtubs, incorrect specifications provided to the kitchen contractors etc), sometime we had to ask three or four times for corrections. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 1660Mar 01, 2018 2:49 pm same here, we currently have 20 revisions of our drawings because they just cannot do anything without errors. we had to comment again and again. they also keep changing things you didn't ask them to change. so when you ask them to move a partition wall you still have to check all the drawings just to make sure everything the way you want and nothing has been changed without your knowledge. before signing tender we made sure most of the critical for us things would be on plans. for example, we moved mixers in showers the way they are easier to access (we don't like it when they are directly under shower heads ). how surprised we were when couple months ago they put the mixers back to their original places and asked for extra money if we want the mixers to be moved. Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74717 I would never build with Fowler homes. 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