Negotiating with Porter Davis

ksutcliffe · May 02, 2008 11:32 am

stonecutter1309

Quote:

Hope we are talking about the same bulkhead entry. It's when you come in at the front door and the ceiling looks like its been cut out and there are down lights in there aswell. Otherwise it would just be levelled.

I think this is technically termed a coffered ceiling

hi,

thanks for that

cheers
kat

ksutcliffe · May 02, 2008 11:34 am

dancelisah

I agree with Mozzie there is no negotiation you just have to budget for the prices as they are, I guess the only good thing about this is that you know other people are probably not getting a better deal than you just because they are better negotiators!

Hi,

yup that is good to know hehe after all the feedbacks, we're really not expecting anything.

cheers
kat

ksutcliffe · May 02, 2008 11:37 am

vanderlay

yep, we found it just about impossible to get anything extra out of them too! As Mozzie said, pretty much take or leave it!!

Some of their upgrades were reasonable, so were a shocker. Its a balancing act about being worth spending the extra so you dont have the hassle of organising it yourself later!

yeh we did find some of the upgrades were reasonable. Sounds like everyone who has dealt with PD has had no luck negotiating. We wont be expecting anything. But it was worth asking

cheers
kat

ksutcliffe · May 02, 2008 11:44 am

Mozzie

You were lucky. A very similar thing happened to me when signing the tender (the drawings said one thing and the tender another). I ended up having to pay a post contract variation. They seem to value the written contract over the drawings every time - one would expect them to reflect the same thing!

I've had quotes from a smaller independent builder on a spec home and their costing was to charge 4.5k for raising the ceiling from 8' to 8.5'. Also a raised bulkdead in the entry was 1k. PD on the other hand charged 3k for that along with about 15k of other extras in their special offer. So it really depends on the builder but I wouldn't say PD are unreasonable in that regard. Sure a custom builder may throw it in for nothing but you are probably paying about 14k a square for the privilege

With our promotion you get higher ceilings which we are happy about. by the sound of things we will need to keep a detailed eye on the drawings and contract!

Thanks again for your advice

Cheers
Kat

ksutcliffe · May 02, 2008 11:47 am

dancelisah

We have had an issue with PD in the last few days about the height of a void, where the wording of the contract said one thing (not what we wanted) and the contract drawing was what we wanted and then the final drawing suddenly got changed to be not what we wanted and we signed it without noticing :oops:

. This was the perfect opportunity for them to be hard nosed and say bad luck to us but they actually came to the party and are giving us what we wanted! The carpenter even has to come back out especially (we are being charged a little bit for this but that is reasonable). It is nice to know we don't have to have something not how we wanted it because we did not notice it had been changed in the drawing

hi,

yeh it seems like they do go by what the contract says rather than the actual drawings. Will need to remember that before signing anything! But glad to know they were pretty reasonable in the end

Cheers
Kat