HIA state that by law in Victoria a minimum of 6 years structural warranty must be carried out after the certificate of occupancy has been issued.
Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Simonds Homes problems 22Sep 29, 2008 3:25 pm HIA state that by law in Victoria a minimum of 6 years structural warranty must be carried out after the certificate of occupancy has been issued. [/quote]
thanks for that, snake! have been looking at the volume builders designs, haven't decided yet. Re: Simonds Homes problems 23Sep 29, 2008 3:34 pm I guess I will be able to tell you what simonds are like in the next 4-6 weeks My dad built through Henely homes and they were pretty good. We would have built with them but nothing would fit on our block! Re: Simonds Homes problems 24Sep 29, 2008 5:16 pm that would be super nice, lyndaurch3201!
I have looked at henley floor plans etc, not happy with their first floor designs, i mean, they don't seem to utilise upstair space much, i have got big kids, they have a lot of stuff that need bigger bedrooms. some henley's ground floor designs are pretty good. I like Simonds' design in terms of space and wet area on one side and also most of their toilets have windows! but just the quality and customer service, i am not convinced yet. then again, all volume builders probably are the same. Re: Simonds Homes problems 25Sep 29, 2008 6:30 pm What i can say is their admin process is very slow. it took me 4.5 months to have color/electrical selection, and another 1.5 month to finalise everything and signed contract
I just have my land settled and loan approved last week, so they are about to start the building permit approval... just hope it comes quick.. another 'waiting' game... I have a few friends built with them and the houses are nicely finished... but the main reason i go with them is because they have a house that suit my block and my budget When we signed the contract, we have raised a few PCVs, and they promoised to post it to me within a week for signing, but i just jump into their office a few days later and ask my CSR to print it out and signed... rather than to wait... My experience with them so far are good, but i must admit that i do most of the follow up (may be i am just too efficient ). No builder is perfect anyway, so i tend to call them and chase up things rather than to wait for their call (may be i am not patient enough ).. My CSR so far is quite good only she is on sick leave since Thurs, hope it is not caused by me Hope everything is going well for you all... Blog - http://clageonewhouse.blogspot.com/ Building Thread - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=10886&hilit=milan I am in, with my husband and my beautiful bunny Re: Simonds Homes problems 26Sep 29, 2008 7:34 pm I have learnt quickly to carry my diary with me everywhere and everytime I am contacted I write it down..names...times ...what the conversation was about...EVERYTHING. It would be good if Simonds customer service was just a bit better though and they weren't so slow with things. I have a friend who just built with Simonds and they said you just have to keep calling and hasseling. There house was finished well and they have only had a couple of quality issues.
Simonds called today and we get to go do our electrical plans and colours on the 15th of october!!!! Oh and we picked the Atherton 2300 in Melington Estate lyndhurst! Re: Simonds Homes problems 27Sep 30, 2008 1:19 pm In the early days of this 'building a house' roller coaster we were going with them ourselves. After nearly 12 months and still no building contract we walked away leaving our deposit as they would not refund it.
I would call then nearly every day to find out what was going on and would never receive a call back. When I did get through to someone they generally had no idea what was happening. The funniest part of it all was after we notified them we were not proceeding 2 days later we were told our contract was ready... Sorry but a little to late. Then over the following 4 months we received almost daily calls from all different levels within the company trying to get us to change our minds. I even received calls from the Victorian Sales Manager. A shame they were not that attentive when we were trying to contact them! Finally Designing and building the home I always wanted to! Re: Simonds Homes problems 28Sep 30, 2008 2:35 pm I applaud you Daffy for making a decision on gut feel. I wish we had done the same and left our deposit behind.
In this industry it is not good enough that we are saying "I guess they are all the same" and just accepting poor service, lack of general customer care and common courtesy. Why should we feel the need to take photo's, diarise calls, confirm conversations by fax. I have to drive by each day just to check if they are working on my overdue house.... I hope that this forum is viewed by some of the large builders, so that they realise how they are being perceived by Joe Public. There is a genuine need in the industry for good service and I believe that customers would rather pay a premium to avoid the stress that I have been through. Re: Simonds Homes problems 29Sep 30, 2008 5:19 pm mg In this industry it is not good enough that we are saying "I guess they are all the same" and just accepting poor service, lack of general customer care and common courtesy. There are some really good builders out there. We as the customer just need to spend the time doing our due diligence to find them... And they don't really cost that much of a premium over the big volume builders. These smaller volume builders (I am talking the 20-50 homes per year range) do not have the budgets for big advertising or multiple display homes across the metropolitan area so we do really need to find them. After I walked from simonds I spent 6 months looking for the right builder. It took a long time to find him but I do now sleep well at night because of the confidence they have given me! Finally Designing and building the home I always wanted to! Re: Simonds Homes problems 30Oct 13, 2008 8:54 am YAY!!! We go to the Simonds Gallery this week. So excited. I took snakes advice and went to a display home and spoke to a sales consultant about what hadn't been going on. He emailed my rep and I was booked into the gallery later that week. Since then the service from my rep has been great. I think she must have received a foot up the bum.... Re: Simonds Homes problems 31Oct 13, 2008 10:05 am Hi guys,
we are nearing settlement for the house we built with simonds. it's been a long journey. just want to share our experience. From selecting the house to the house contract - this took months but we were not in a hurry and did not complain as our land didnt settle until much later. Colour selection/electrical etc - very painful if you are a first time owner. there was a lack of information or options avaialble to us. Note that whatever you choose at this stage, may not end the same during construction. they made a few errors here and there. a lot of hassle. construction - was unexpectedly fast - took us less than 5 months from slab to pci. Our sales consultant: fantastic service. always helpful and got everything done fast. always found a solution to any of our problems. customer service officer: from the 3 we had, the first one was ok, helpful. the other 2 as bad as u can hear. no communication, no knowledge of anything, no help at all. we ended bypassing them and went straight to our sales consultant or site supervisor Site supervisor - Good throughout the construction. helpful and made sure we knew what was going on and rectified anything we say. Although in the last stage of construction, site supervisor was always busy and hard to get answers. Quality - if you don't check the work done every week, and don't keep them on their toes, a lot of things arent done properly. there are a lot of small defects to be found out there. Overall: happy enough Re: Simonds Homes problems 32Oct 13, 2008 12:56 pm Alot of horrible stories, l really do feel for you guys!
In the early stages, the biggest problem we had was a delay with the contract being ready, we went to our sales consultant, and within an hours that was solved, he was great (l guess also helps he has a lot riding on us going to contract, anyway, it was still good to have that extra push!) From then on, l've had two CSO, the first one was pretty good, the second one and current one, well, l've never once had the 'promised' fortnightly call to catch up, she is very slow at replying if she replies at all, and overall the lack of communication from her is pretty bad! The funny thing is when i question her she said quote "lve built before and know how bad some CSO can be that is why l went into it" made me think if she thinks she isn't bad then l'd hate to see how bad her one was!! We had two supervisors the first one, BAD!! needless to say he isn't with the company anymore (thank goodness!) and the second one, he is great, doesn't call as often as some companies, but he gets he job done! his always friendly and if we have a problem seems to get right onto it! He said to us he will push things through, since him coming aboard that is exactly what he has done! We are up to the 'final' stage, and its taken us 14 weeks to get here, we are now offically starting week 15 (whos counting ), not sure how long to go, been told by our supervisor that hopefully within the month! the early stages for us went really quick, we came to problem at lock up with their lack of brickies, but they continue work on the inside while trying to solve that!! So far the quality of the work is good, that accounts for something! If i was to say to a friend should you build with Simonds, l would warn them about the lack of commuication with the CSO for sure, (and our earlier on experience with the supervisor) apart from that l would say build with them, their houses are nice and affordable, just be perhaped for a bad CSO, who knows you might get a good one! Re: Simonds Homes problems 33Oct 20, 2008 12:49 pm nh lyndaurch3201 Thanks heaps snake. I'm all new to building a house and even owning one as this will be our first and I guess I just want it to be perfect! I suppose the fact that nothing has been done and we can start building in 4-6 weeks just freaked me out! we are very interested in a floor plan from Simonds, but the problems that others have had really frighten us - depays, lack of communication etc etc, but all the volume builders seem to be the same. anyone has any experience of the quality of simonds homes? is 7 year structural warranty a norm? (i am abosolutely new to building a house) any comments would be much appreciated nh We have almost finished building with simonds, we have had a great time, site scrape was done July 28th this year and construction is done, and we settle tomorrow, our first CSO was pretty crap but we just ignored him if we had a prob and called the site super straight away, he was/is great and always calls us back, our newer CSO has always returned our calls when she needs to. We have had no troubles that is hear about on here, but we are dealing mainly with the geelong Office, that might be different. Cant wait for my keys tomorrow simonds still delaying my home 34Nov 06, 2008 7:17 pm Well, it is now 8 weeks since our contracted end date and Simonds Homes have still not completed my family home
We had our PCI inspection 2 weeks ago and at the time there were a few items to be corrected before final inspections. 13 items in total. As at today only 3 of them have been done and my site supervisor has again not delivered on his promise. I have escalated my concerns and even the Western Region general manager met us at the property for the PCI. But again since then they have left everything to the last minute. Simonds poor co-ordination would be laughable - if it wasn't happening to me and my family..... I genuinely feel that they do not care about us. I will keep you all updated over the next week with my progress in escalating the issues..... Re: Simonds Homes problems 35Nov 06, 2008 10:50 pm Hi mg,
A family member of mine recently had settlement with S!monds. Completion date was suppose to be late Aug 08 but didn't occur until a couple of weeks ago. My family member had the same problem, supervisor promise to fix defects at a certain date but never did. Had to keep chasing him. At the moment they are still waiting to get a couple of defects fixed which were promised to get fixed before settlement. The defects are minor so wasn't big enough to hold settlement up. Let just say they are not happy with S!monds, both in service and quality of the house. One thing they regretted were not listening to me to get an independent building inspector to check their build. I guess can't blame them due to budget reason. My advice is to keep chasing the supervisor, manager - construction or regional until they fix your issues. Worst come to worst go to their headquarter in South Melbourne and demand to speak to the company manager. All the best. Re: Simonds Homes problems 36Nov 07, 2008 6:09 am I agree that communication is the most important thing. My contracts administrator always emails me back within minutes of me sending an email to her. That sort of communication keeps me happy and is not hard to do. Re: Simonds Homes problems 37Nov 07, 2008 7:00 am lyndaurch3201 YAY!!! We go to the Simonds Gallery this week. So excited. I took snakes advice and went to a display home and spoke to a sales consultant about what hadn't been going on. He emailed my rep and I was booked into the gallery later that week. Since then the service from my rep has been great. I think she must have received a foot up the bum.... Fantastic, choosing colours is always exciting Re: simonds still delaying my home 38Nov 07, 2008 10:32 am mg Well, it is now 8 weeks since our contracted end date and Simonds Homes have still not completed my family home We had our PCI inspection 2 weeks ago and at the time there were a few items to be corrected before final inspections. 13 items in total. As at today only 3 of them have been done and my site supervisor has again not delivered on his promise. I have escalated my concerns and even the Western Region general manager met us at the property for the PCI. But again since then they have left everything to the last minute. Simonds poor co-ordination would be laughable - if it wasn't happening to me and my family..... I genuinely feel that they do not care about us. I will keep you all updated over the next week with my progress in escalating the issues..... That is really bad! suppose to be a good experience, an exciting time not a horror story you just want to end! We were told today under the contract they have 7 days to complete what is brought up on the PCI, clearly they are over that with u! is there any one higher you could speak to about that? We were def lucky, our SS came over from industrial background, he also brought with him a lot of tradie contractors that work with him on all his jobs, from what we can tell have done a good job! Must be real dishearting to have something that is suppose to be exciting become frustrating cause ppl don't know how to do what they are PAID to do properly! l hope once you do move into your house all this mess will be a distance memory! Re: Simonds Homes problems 39Nov 11, 2008 1:30 pm My SS came up with a great excuse yesterday. After telling me in the morning that he would have 5 tradesmen there, nothing got done.
He said that someone had 'tripped' the locks and the tradesmen couldn't get in. Does this mean I should now ask for all new locks to be fitted? Anyway, he has assured me that Friday will be the day for final inspection...3 weeks after PCI and 9 weeks after the contracted end date. I'll believe it when I see it. My CSO and the Western region manager are not returning my calls now. I just want some info about the settlement process and to schedule a time to meet them in the office next week. I have no idea about the process, and have to push them for information. I have not been rude or demanding, I just want a firm answer. If anyone from Simonds reads this, please help me... Re: Simonds Homes problems 40Nov 11, 2008 1:40 pm mg My SS came up with a great excuse yesterday. After telling me in the morning that he would have 5 tradesmen there, nothing got done. He said that someone had 'tripped' the locks and the tradesmen couldn't get in. Does this mean I should now ask for all new locks to be fitted? Anyway, he has assured me that Friday will be the day for final inspection...3 weeks after PCI and 9 weeks after the contracted end date. I'll believe it when I see it. My CSO and the Western region manager are not returning my calls now. I just want some info about the settlement process and to schedule a time to meet them in the office next week. I have no idea about the process, and have to push them for information. I have not been rude or demanding, I just want a firm answer. If anyone from Simonds reads this, please help me... I have a number to a Rosie in the settlement department, PM if you want it l was told by my CSO (who im assuming could be the same person as im western melbourne too), anyway she told me yday that going forward l wouldnt be dealing with her much and that any queries regarding the settlement process i should speak directly to this Rosie, im assuming its the same for you! Your not having much luck at all are you I am not a brick expert, but rendering would be 1 option, it would be costly to do the entire house though.... 2 6679 Hi all, has anyone been ask to do the weeds in their property while in the middle of build? We are under the impression that they are in control of the site while they… 0 2770 Have had a few issues with out recently done bathroom floor. Probably around 18 months old First there has been been a crack running through a grout line which I put… 0 2176 |