There is this house builder that made our lives miserable. So you can understand how this company operates, here\u2019s a brief summary of what they did to us:<\/p>\n
1. They quoted a reasonable price to build our home. The contract got
\n signed. It was cleverly worded and only someone with a knowledge of
\n the building industry or a law degree would pick up all the clauses which
\n are worded to leave anyone open to heaps of extra charges later.
\n2. Shortly after they started building, we received \u201cVariations.\u201d They came in
\n thick and fast and were for things we expected to be included in the
\n price \u2013 like stormwater, traffic control for concrete pours, etc. But we
\n could not argue with them. They threatened us with litigation and stop
\n work on the building. They reduced amounts \u201cin good faith\u201d but at the end
\n they still charged us the full amount anyway and there\u2019s nothing we could
\n do about it.
\n3. When the home was almost finished, they sent us their final bill. This
\n included charges for things that the builder promised would be credited.
\n They reneged on every negotiated reduced amount that was promised in
\n writing and we ended up paying the higher amount regardless of
\n promised reductions and credits. We tried to argue but they slapped us
\n with a Statement of Claim. In the end, we had to shell out an additional
\n $50,000 on top of the amount in the contract.
\n4. We thought we had some recourse through Dept. of Fair Trading or the
\n Consumer Tribunal (CTTT). WRONG. This builder is so well practised at
\n this game. They have an airtight Contract that CTTT can\u2019t argue. Their
\n seasoned representative argued that the matter is a building claim
\n which meant that CTTT can\u2019t hear it because they are not allowed to \u2013 or
\n that the fact we have already paid what they demanded is equivalent to
\n \u201caccord and satisfaction.\u201d This is what happened to us. We paid up
\n because we were desperate to get the house finished, and signed an
\n agreement, which HAD TO BE WORDED by the builder \u2013 that they
\n would complete everything in return. We paid up, they walked away and
\n only turned up to finish off things when they felt like it \u2013 which took
\n MONTHS.
\n5. The CTTT threw out our case because of the Contract and the fact we
\n signed an Agreement, which the builder breached but that didn\u2019t seem to
\n matter.
\n6. I wrote to a radio station but later received a letter from a law firm
\n threatening to sue me for defamation unless I retract what I wrote and
\n withdraw comments I made to the Product Review Website. I was also
\n asked to send a letter of apology to the builder. It felt like Hitler asking the
\n Jews to apologize. <\/p>\n
Those interested may visit the website: (www.productreview.com.au)
\n ? Name withheld upon request<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is this house builder that made our lives miserable. So you can understand how this company operates, here\u2019s a brief summary of what they did to us: 1. They quoted a reasonable price to build our home. The contract got signed. It was cleverly worded and only someone with a knowledge of the building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}