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Saturday 20 December 2014

Update - 21st Dec'14

Merry Christmas everyone! 
Not much activity over the last few weeks, but some good news about the weeks ahead.  The underfloor heating in the bathrooms was completed, and a pile of sand was delivered.  Some screed has been laid down just recently, in preparation for floor tiles going down.  A few other things have been completed, such as installation of some sinks, and the extractor fan going in. 

We learned that the kitchen cupboards either side of the extractor were the wrong size, but that was fixed up without any hassle whatsoever which is great.

Some good news from the site supervisor - the tiling company is planning to work over the xmas break to get the tiling done before the industry re-starts mid-Jan.  We really hope they get this done as it'll help things along nicely.

We had a response from the owner after we responded to his letter and removed the email from one of our posts.  It noted that someone reading the blog doesn't have both sides of the story and asked that we be mindful not to say things that could be seen as negative.  It also noted that they're working tirelessly to build our home to expectations and due to the magnitude of the build, some issues will be encountered along the way. Nothing was sent to us which challenged the accuracy or reasonableness of the specific issues we've flagged through our posts.

Fair play or not?  Let us know what you think.  In our opinion, it's perfectly reasonable to encounter issues along the way.  It's also reasonable to ask that we're mindful when posting.  We don't think it's reasonable to ask that we don't post negative comments.  

Issues as they arise should be dealt with such that Alkira would be happy to have prospective customers see the way they've dealt with them.  I don't think there's anyone out there who expects to build a home without any issues.  It's how those issues are dealt with which will make the good stand out from the bad. 

Anyway, it's great that they're trying to make progress over the break on the tiling and I'm sure many builders wouldn't bother.

Sunday 7 December 2014

Progress to 7th December '14 & letter from the owner

Things are clearly winding down now.  The carpentry has been partially completed - kitchen cupboards and also cupboards in the bathrooms are in, along with the marble worksurfaces.  Further work has been completed to try to rectify the issues with the fireplace previously mentioned in other posts.  It looks like it's almost there, although the gyprock still isn't covering the fireplace walls.

We were told over a week ago that the tiling would commence earlier this week.  The only thing completed was the underfloor heating as far as we're aware, so hopefully tiling will be done before the end of next week, which signals the start of a 5 week shutdown.  Still cannot get over the fact that the industry takes 5 weeks off.  Most companies only provide for 4 weeks leave and that's for the entire year.

We received a letter from the owner of Alkira Homes last week.  Our blog was brought to Alkira's attention by a (prospective?) customer.  They noted that the posts could be damaging and harmful to their reputation and also in some instances defamatory.  We're pretty sure that defamation involves false statements... we absolutely believe we haven't made any false statements in this blog and have asked us to note what they believe to be factually inaccurate.

They asked that we remove an email we copied in to one of the posts.  The email did not contain any names (they were all removed), but we have now removed the email in good faith.

It's worth us noting for the record that everything we post we reasonably believe to be true, and everything written either reflects our opinion or a factual representation of things that have occurred.  We responded to Alkira and noted that if they feel like anything does not reflect their view of the facts, we're happy to correct the blog. 

We didn't go in to this process with any intent of giving people a hard time... we obviously want a smooth process and a good quality home.  We've been very deliberate in posting good things along with the bad to ensure we're balancing the posts whilst also recording all events.

It's our opinion that if Alkira doesn't want a damaged reputation, they should focus on lifting their quality of customer service.  They should also discontinue the practice of not righting their wrongs.  As previously posted, after we paid thousands of dollars to draft various plans, we learned that their sales staff who had confirmed in writing that the build time would be 36 weeks had made a mistake as the actual build time would be 45 weeks.  The cost to us in additional rent is substantial but Alkira refused to compensate us.  There have been a few other smaller things which have frustrated us including an absence of an apology after they tried to claim thousands of dollars from us which they were not legally entitled to claim under our contract.

Anyway, we're hopeful everything will be smooth sailing from hereon in, and if it is we have every intention of noting so in our future posts.  We really hope that we'll be in a position to write about a fantastic finished product which was completed way ahead of schedule!