Porter Davis homes

Has anyone installed powerpoints on their kitchen island benches that have waterfall edges? I was just informed that Porter Davis are not able to do so which surprises me

If I was in your situation I wouldn't sign anything until I had a full price or a fixed price contract. Everyone is different I guess.

A while back I was reading in this thread about people who had poor experiences with their Tender appointment - meetings that went well over time, or were very poorly handled. For the most part I assumed it was a combination of bad lack and bad planning (from the buyer). Boy was I wrong.

Yesterday was my tender appointment. Based on the numerous pieces of helpful information in this forum I had prepared extensively for the meeting - I had a detailed checklist, diagrams of any customisations, cabinet layout reference numbers, you name it. All of this had been provided to my Building Co-Ordinator of course, weeks in advance.

When I turned up though not a single detail had been taken into consideration. The tender was so far from correct that essentially we had to start from scratch!

There are three people involved from the PD side at this phase: the Sales Consultant (SC, the person who sold you the house in the first place), Building Co-Ordinator (BC, who organises your appointments and makes sure all your information is collected) and the tender presenter (who is only involved on this one occasion).

I feel so sorry for the presenter, because she was stuck apologising her way through seven hours of hell. We spent two hours sitting downstairs in the cafe waiting to be called back up while they rewrote the document, then another two hours trying to fix the remaining issues. She did a great job, but was ultimately unable to finish the tender because the person doing the editing left for the night without warning.

After some unpleasant discussion this morning on the phone I managed to get in to see them this morning and finalised the tender. So it got done. But it wasn't particularly pleasant.

We did make one thing harder for them - we changed house designs about a month ago. The switch from a Prestige to a Lifestyle design probably did complicate life for them. That said, I sent through a 10 page PDF of diagrams and detailed notes that covered every change so I'm not cutting them much slack for the layout change.

Some of the things to watch out for (all of these happened to me) include:
- house & land package deal missing (it had reverted to a tear-down/rebuild contract instead of a package, introducing tens of thousands of dollars of inaccurate costs)
- last-minute changes of appliance vendors (we had to make binding decisions on several key appliances without warning or research because they either failed to answer my earlier questions or had given incorrect answers)
- missing customisations
- randomly added customisations (surprise!)
- missing inclusions
- missing packages
- ambiguous descriptions of cupboard layouts (I had to fight to get the specific layout reference numbers documented on my tender)
- items added which won't physically fit (the bathroom mirror was too big, so would have overlapped the window in the bathroom)
- measurement errors (50mm instead of 500mm)
- surprise changes in price when compared to preliminary quote (some items blew out in price significantly compared to the original quote)
- complete lack of oven selection (they offer only one 600mm oven, and it is rubbish)

Despite all of this, yes I went ahead. Why? Because PD builds good houses, even if they struggle to put a contract together. None of these items were hard to fix, but they all took serious time. It will be worth it in the end, of this I'm sure. But the process might not be much fun.

With all that in mind, here's my advice for people about to do their tender:
- document all of your selections yourself in plain english, send it to your BC, send it to your SC and bring it on the day assuming it was ignored
- be fussy. Don't settle for "near enough", stick with it until everything is right
- walk away if you aren't comfortable with the wording, you can always come back another day and finish it
- take a copy home to review before signing if you're uncertain (they will say you can't, but to the best of my knowledge that isn't legal - I'm pretty sure you can't deny a person the right to have a contract reviewed)
- bring a laptop, iPad, or similar with 3G Internet access so you can do emergency research
- remember that if they can send you to the cafe for two hours, you can make them wait while you check something
- expect it to be a full day, regardless of what they say (better safe than sorry, my partner and I missed work because it ran overtime)
- don't take your frustration out on your presenter, they only just received the file. Your BC is probably the one to talk to about problems, or possibly your SC
- remember that budgets and allowances aren't on the tender contract (don't get excited when you see a smaller number than you expected)
- read every single line. Twice
- bring a second set of eyes to help out
- remember that it can be fixed, it'll just take some time. The mistakes aren't unfixable until you've signed the document
- keep thinking of the end result, you get a nice shiny house in exchange for these painful meetings

At the moment I'm seriously considering insisting on a change of BC because my experience so far has been awful. Maybe it'll pick up, or maybe somebody else behind the scenes let me down, but the impression I have is that my BC isn't giving this build the right amount of attention.