Anyone wish to comment re their experience with s*monds?

claego · May 08, 2008 12:26 pm

good advice, i think i will need to do the same
They have just told me that they have to put the drawing on hold because i want to add on a few things (not structural change), and also that i cannot have the facade that i want becauase of the design guideline set by the estate.. so i am going to meet them this Saturday to sort out everything...

dembi_2000 · May 08, 2008 9:24 pm

But the thing is, the CSO very rarely replies to us. Only 3 times I think, when I have sent a very demanding email. And not even once did she ever returned our call. We haven't heard her or seen her ever.

But I will still give it a try. See how it goes. Thanks for the tip.

claego · May 09, 2008 11:48 am

you may want to raise it to his/her manager, my CSR is quite good so far, return my call very quick. when i recieved the introduction letter from him, he did provide a number that i can call if i am not satisfied about his work, i assume you have the same letter from your CSR

Djelibeybi · May 09, 2008 12:58 pm

claego

you may want to raise it to his/her manager, my CSR is quite good so far, return my call very quick. when i recieved the introduction letter from him, he did provide a number that i can call if i am not satisfied about his work, i assume you have the same letter from your CSR

Yes, I agree -- our CSR has been quite responsive, replying to emails usually within an hour or two, or at most the next day.

They have also confirmed that we're still on track for a site start in August, considering we have bank pre-approval for the construction already.

dembi_2000 · May 09, 2008 10:59 pm

This just frustrates me even more!

I did receive a mail from Simonds with my Job number, the CSO handling the case, etc... but she's just useless. I've already tried talking to her manager, and she helped a bit. She blamed me for the cause of the delay (adding a 3rd car garage 3 weeks before the scheduled appointment). But she got me a new contract date which was 29-April. But that got cancelled as well...

I wanted to talk to the area manager for the West but the CSO wont give it to me.

Don't know who else i need/can talk to...

I'm probably just not a valued customer... heck! i wonder how bad this would get when it goes to build phase!!! :shock:

Sorry for the rants....

dembi_2000 · May 09, 2008 11:03 pm

BTW, just let you guys know, I received the letter last 18/12/2007.

hysterical1144 · May 09, 2008 11:19 pm

dembi_2000

This just frustrates me even more!

I did receive a mail from Simonds with my Job number, the CSO handling the case, etc... but she's just useless. I've already tried talking to her manager, and she helped a bit. She blamed me for the cause of the delay (adding a 3rd car garage 3 weeks before the scheduled appointment). But she got me a new contract date which was 29-April. But that got cancelled as well...

I wanted to talk to the area manager for the West but the CSO wont give it to me.

Don't know who else i need/can talk to...

I'm probably just not a valued customer... heck! i wonder how bad this would get when it goes to build phase!!! :shock:

Sorry for the rants....

Hi

When we were building the 1st house with S and getting to the point where we feel that no one is listening to our issues, we call the S switch board and ask for the General Manager of S , got put to the PA of course but managed to talk to him. Don't bother with the area manager, go straight to the top.

Cheers

miss81 · May 10, 2008 6:38 pm

Hey guys, from my experience it seems like they have too many people doing all sorts of jobs and really horrible communication skills. Paperwork is forever delayed and i put it down to sheer laziness or just stupidity. How hard is it to follow through with customer paperwork. It's like as though they just add our emails and documents on top of the huge pile in the 'too hard to deal with' tray.

but saying that, building has been pretty efficient so far (slab stage). Fingers crossed.

dembi_2000 · May 11, 2008 12:40 pm

the cso replied back saying she talked to her manager and will fast track things. looking at 7-10 days for the contract. i'll believe it when i see it! :evil:

in the mean time, we're seriously looking at moving to a different builder. one with better service. this is our life savings we are talking about. and i want someone who takes us really seriously!

lets see what happens. i'll try to follow up every 2 days and see if there is progress...

everyone, thanks for the tips.

dembi_2000 · May 14, 2008 3:02 pm

Finally made the decision to cancel our building with S. Honestly, we felt so relieved and so good after doing it. After 6 months of wasted time. Manager even offered to throw in freebies just for us to stay. And promised to fasttrack everything. Even to the point of promising to finish the house by this year. But its too late. We were so disappointed no promise would change our minds.

Anyway I can see that S is treating others really well. We probably got a rotten service because of our CSO. Hope those building with them would have a continuously good experience. Good luck.

Djelibeybi · May 14, 2008 6:30 pm

dembi_2000

Anyway I can see that S is treating others really well. We probably got a rotten service because of our CSO. Hope those building with them would have a continuously good experience. Good luck.

We just spent the entire day at Simonds in Melbourne (well, it felt like it!). Two hours from 9am - 11am for our Tender appointment, which went really well. We made very few changes and they had made only very minor drafting errors, so we expect to get that resolved fairly quickly.

Then, we had our colour appointment at 1pm, which took just less than 3 hours. We now have the full colour and finishes selected (excluding tiles). All that's left is YHC electrical, which I'm going to start via email/phone and the home theatre and landscaping.

All in all, it was a very positive day and everything went very smoothly. I'm sorry you guys didn't have the same experience with Simonds. I hope you find a builder that really suits you!

played2 · May 19, 2008 10:28 pm

Hi all,

Well we are in the process of singing up with Simonds…or at least I think we are, I really have no idea what is going on because no one bothers to reply to any of our correspondence.

Anyway, I thought I would search the web for other peoples experiences with Simonds and stumbled on this thread.

We paid our deposit way back in March, the early stages were great, the sales rep was friendly, appeared to be very knowledgeable but once the deposit was paid and we were ‘in the system’ the honeymoon was over.

I had always expected there to be a few problems along the way when building a home, everyone says there are, but this is getting ridiculous. I can certainly say the ‘home building journey’ outlined in their sales brochures is nothing more than a hopeful suggestion of what might take place, or rather a deceptive outline of how long the process should take.

I won’t continue on my rant, rather, I am interested to know if this just the price you pay for going with a volume builder or if this is uniquely Simonds?

Sharee · May 20, 2008 12:41 am

Hi played, we are building with Simonds and have also had a fairly hard time with customer service (or lack thereof) We've already signed and done all of the appointments and were due for a start date in a couple of weeks. Today (after not getting any response to several emails and calls) I finally got through to someone to be told our CSO had left the company!! Several documents needed to start building suddenly can't be found and I have to go through the hassle of sending them though again. The only positive is that our original CSO was pretty dense so maybe this could be a blessing in disguise. To be honest I am absolutely dreading the building process if getting to this point has been so hard!

played2 · May 20, 2008 9:17 am

Hi Sharee,

Well congratulations for getting as far as you have, I find it difficult to believe anything they say anymore so I cant honestly say I know what to expect. Our main problem is that as it stands, given the delays by Simonds, we will not have anywhere to live next year. I will have to see if we can rent for 6 months.

All that aside, I am curious Sharee (and all others too) could I get an indication of how long each stage has taken? The “Home building journey” is useless, I would like to know real life time lines, things like, what month deposit paid, when was tender, and then site start. Also if when they told you a site start, was this the actual site start date?

I am with you Sheree, as much as I want this house build ASAP, I have some serious concerns about the building process.

claego · May 20, 2008 11:57 am

i paid the deposit in March as well, so far i am quite happy with their services.
The sale consulant is excellent, he does follow up my coorespondent before or after the deposit. The CSR is responsive although i talked to the sales consultant more than him
Due to the late variation submission (including some structual changes), my drawing was put on hold a bit and caused a bit of delay, but they confirmed that the drawing should complete next week and then i should get the gallery appoinment shortly after it
So hopefully everything will go as they said and i can keep my faith with them...
i have the tender appoinment set in mid June, hope there is no delay

Sharee · May 20, 2008 3:29 pm

We paid our initial deposit in mid December and chased and chased them to eventually sign our contract the end of March. The issue wasn't so much the time for us but just the lack of communication and the fact we had to fight every step of the way! We were called two days before our contract signing and told it was ready (even though they had promised they would send it out for us to read prior to the signing) , we had already told them (and followed up several times) that we wouldn't sign anything until we had our colour and product appointments so when they realised we were serious they organised that appointment for the morning before our signing.
As I said above our CSO has left and speaking to our new CSO today was absolutely painful. After asking him when our anticipated start date now was and how long it usually took to get the permits we needed he told me 'I have no idea I only started yesterday!' When I asked him to put someone on the phone who had a clue he said 'Everyone has gone to lunch I don't know when they will be back!" I have told my husband we should prepare for the fact we will be living in our current rental for the rest of our lives...

nlx · Jun 06, 2008 12:28 pm

Hello everyone.

I stumbled upon this thread and I think it is a good one. I also signed up with Simonds in December last year and thought it would be useful to give my account of how things have proceeded so far. Here goes ...

We paid the initial deposit ($1500) on 12th december 2007 so they could start with the soil test and prepare a Preliminary Quote (PQ). The sales assistant was very cluely and knew what he was talking about. We chose the "Villa Grande" and made some changes to suite our needs. The sales assistant advised the house will be scheduled to start in June/July. We whinged a bit but had no choice.

We got a call from our CSO end of April for us to make an appointment to come over and sign the contract. I was surprised to hear that from her as we wanted to sight the PQ prior to going to the contract. Anyway, I told her this and she agreeded they made a mistake and prepared a PQ for us. I got another call from a chap who said he will discuss the PQ with us when we came over; he also kept insisting we went straight to contract and bypass the PQ stage but I disagreed.

We went to Simonds yesterday to sign the PQ. The guy representing simonds was in rush was pushing us all along to sing the PQ asap. We singed the PQ and got him to write down all changes we wanted.

The bottom line is they have been pushy and you have to keep telling them what you want and not let them have everything their way. I have also done the colour selection and I have emailed by CSO to arrange an appointment with YHC to sort out the electrical stuff BEFORE we sign the contract. I have a feeling they will tell me to sign the contract before agreeing on the electrical layout but I wont let this happen.

Djelibeybi · Jun 06, 2008 1:44 pm

nlx

We went to Simonds yesterday to sign the PQ. The guy representing simonds was in rush was pushing us all along to sing the PQ asap.

Interesting. Our PQ appointment was anything but rushed -- we actually went over the entire tender about three times making sure that we were getting all of our required changes recorded (and there weren't actually that many actual mistakes -- just a few changed minds on our part!).

We've also done our colours, landscaping and home theatre stuff. We are being delayed by the YHC appointment, so we've escalated that to Simonds management that they're being slack. Should see some movement there soon.

miss81 · Jun 06, 2008 2:31 pm

I will put this lightly.
Sales consulatant - wonderful.
Once you leave the sales office - Miscommunication, too many people involved, not enough knowing what they are doing.
Double check everything on the contract (doubling up, not giving promotions, paying extra)
With a fine comb go through plans - correct product numbers, wrong pictures of products. this CAUSES lots of errors.

You know the commercial when the happy couple go and sign for a loan and then as soon as they sign on the line, the walls are removed, the desk is taken away and they are left simply sitting on two chairs alone?
EXACTLY.

(But the house we chose is perfect for our block and i love it's layout

claego · Jun 06, 2008 5:06 pm

interesting, looks like i am and will be in a similar situation..
they booked me in for contract signing next Friday.. i told them that i never have a tender appointment, i don't even seen my plan, no color selection (booked in on 20 June), so how i can sign a contract?
So they suddenly changed and said that if I want it to be a tender appointment, then it will be a tender appointment...
i feel a bit ??, really can't think of a word to describe their reaction..
Anyway, i just email them and make sure that tender will happen without confusion, i do not want to be rushed to sign anything (i will not do anyway), i just want to see my plan and everything is correct before moving to the next stage, lets prey for next week.. .. :oops: