The Contract Appointment

Well the day finally arrived. We were going to find out all the costs, finalise our changes and sign on the dotted line. Little did we know we would need to sign our names at least 50 times and still have to go away and make more decisions!

We arrived at 2pm and met 'Holly' our CSC. Firstly we went through the Post Contract variations we had included ie: items dicussed 'after' our Tender Appointment. One of which was to render just the balcony on the front facade (as opposed to the balcony and Garage). At our Tender appointment we had been told that the cost to render the balcony would be $666 - a price we thought was quite cheap). A few days after the tender appt Lou had rung Glen and asked to proceed with that option based on that amount. When we got to the cost for the balcony render, it was a staggering $2933!! What THE...!

NOT... happy... 'JAN'!

Did we miss a meeting? No - apparently 'he' had looked at the wrong item when quoting the figure & the figure he gave us was to render the garage & not the balcony at all. You can imagine our disappointment & how annoyed we were! Was this our problem? Well...apparently so.

When we explained that this mistake was another let down on their behalf & expressed our unhappiness, Holly invited Glen to join us and explain what had happened. He happily admitted fault, but explained that this should have been the price & we could decide if we wanted to proceed or not. After we politely and in no uncertain terms told him what we thought about his blunder. I asked to speak with the manager as this was the second time they had screwed up the figures and expected us to wear it. For us, it was more the disappointment of thinking we were getting it for a lower figure & then being told "no actually it is over $2000 more than origianlly quoted” that ticked us off. While he went off to speak with the manager, Holly tried to sympathise with us as much as she could, as we were obviously quite annoyed & stressed (to put it mildly). (PS I'm still waiting for a response from PD Head Office re the last pricing mix-up on the garage extension costs)

He returned saying that all the managers were in a meeting, but was able to pull one of them aside and brief him on the situation. They had agreed to halve the difference and therefore we would need to only pay $1,466 rather than $2,933.

After a short break to compose ourselves & discuss our frustrations in private, we moved on from this and carried on with the other items that had changed.

At the end of the session there were still a couple of things that we still needed to decide on (after being given the prices). Holly was great, saying we can go home & think about them & just confirm if we wish to proceed with any additional changes or just leave them out & she would just do them as a Post Contract Variation (no.2). We then signed the HIA Contract and initialled all the pages and plans. Oh, and by the way we also picked up some errors on the plans which they had messed up as well. It pays to be listening & looking!

Although a little soured by the 'rendering cost' debacle at the start, the overall experience was great & we had lots of laughs. Holly was fantastic throughout and made us very comfortable. A PD newbie was also sitting in on the meeting, 'Mary', who was also very accommodating and helpful in making decisions. Before we finished up, a Feedback form was provided for us to fill out at our leisure and Holly encouraged us to be honest and detailed. Suffice to say, we took it home to add some additional pages to it ;-)