This is the letter that I sent to Ben Baileys Customer Service Team and the response that was given, I am apsolutely disgusted with their reply and wish to take this further were do I go now, im tempted to take this all the way to the papers if I have to I havent even been living here a year yet.
Please find attached the snagging list for ..... I expect this to be seen to as a matter for urgency especially as we have young children and the winter is now setting in. It seems ever since we moved into this property and its not even been lived in for a year yet we have had nothing but problems we didn’t expect this from a new build property and isn’t giving Ben Bailey a very good name.
Snagging List
· Gaps in front door, back door and Fire door between garage and kitchen.
· Front and Back door blow open
· Doorsteps varnish pealed both Front and Back
· Downstairs Light Socket for upstairs hall light buzzing
· Cloakroom toilet light switching itself on and off when at on position
· Light in kitchen between cloakroom and garage has too much flex making it impossible to open doors without catching it.
· Gap in sealant on kitchen work surface was supposed to be done just after move in.
· Various holes in plasterboard even though proper plasterboard fixings have been used; hollow curtain pole has pulled away from wall.
· Damage to Kitchen cupboards, ceiling in kitchen, kitchen tiles, bathroom tiles due to installation problem with bathroom sink seal.
· Door locks been installed upside down.
· Shower door not installed properly, thus causing issues when shutting it due to protective covers coming off.
· All boiler nuts had to be tightened by engineer due to dripping water coming from under boiler, this isn’t safe.
· Doesn’t appear to be any sealant under sink therefore water laying underneath
· Doors pealing
The following has had to be paid for by us in order to restore the house to new at a huge expense to us, which we didn’t expect to have to pay for a new build house. £100 for repair to the wall due to plasterboard not strong enough and no supporting beam been installed for use of a stair gate at the top of the stairs, this is for my children’s safety and these are supposed to be child friendly homes the non use of a stair gate is not a option for a 1 year old. I didn’t expect a push wall-to-wall stair gate to give way and put a hole in the wall, this could have been more serious had one of my children been near the gate. No force was used on the gate, so it wasn’t from negligence. When looked at by the site office, they confirmed that they would come and repair the hole in which they put a wooden plank in the hole but instead of securing it from beam to beam they merely attached it to the plaster and skimmed over the top, 24 hours later and I would like to stress no stair gate had been used, the block of wood fell through and created an even bigger hole now the size of a letter box, it was then the site office refused to do anything else about it, which meant we had a hole in our wall and had to get a external builder to come in and make it safe, to which it cost us £100 which we couldn’t afford at the time. The same thing has happened in the bathroom in which we used proper plaster board screws to secure a non heavy unit to make sure it didn’t topple over, has left us with 4 holes and crumbling plaster and again with the curtain pole. It seems that even using the correct fittings nothing can be put up anywhere in the house.
We have had to pay for all plaster materials to make good the problems that we have had, plus the fact that we have then had to paint to make the house look respectable.
The damage caused by the failure to correctly install the waste sink seal has caused extensive damaged to our own property, i.e tiles that we laid in the kitchen and bathroom have now lifted due to the amount of water that has been leaking over time since installation. It was confirmed by ROK what the cause of it was and that they confirmed it was a installation problem which I find had to believe passed the NHBC inspection and could have been a lot worse, as we were currently away on holiday and had just returned when we had noticed the water damaged in the kitchen all the way up to the lighting in the ceiling. We have also had to pay for a garage door seal to be put on the garage due to mice getting under the massive gap between the garage floor and the garage door; surely these should have been fitted with seals, if anything to stop draft. We expect that all damaged caused be paid for and we are reimbursed for the damaged caused to our property and compensation for the £100 builder call out and have had to incur and all snags fixed.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
This was there reply
Thank you for your recent email and your comments have been noted for future reference.
I have passed on your details to our site manager who will arrange to inspect the reported items as soon as possible.
I refer to your request for compensation and confirm that it would not be our intention to pay out any form of compensation. Our contractual obligation to our customers is to ensure that any identified defects which are reported to us are rectified within normal working hours. I am satisfied that we have met this obligation to you as a valued customer since the legal completion date of 11th December 2009.
In conclusion we will inspect the reported issues below, however we will not be paying out any form of compensation as per company policy. I respectfully advise you to Page 4 Living in your new Gladedale Home booklet re: “Heavy items may damage your walls and will need additional support”
Regards
I have responded with the following
Many thanks for your reply, I would like to inform you that neither any of the items that were place on the wall were heavy items and were installed as per your guide, and that its a stand thing is it not to have a curtain pole in your house?? Are you suggesting that no house puts up curtain poles ?? I would also like to mention that your site office was notified of the problem and said that they would rectifiy only to make the problem worse and an external builder having to be called in, if they hadnt made the whole bigger then the job might not have been so expensive. I would also like to inform you that the water leak was due to an installation problem by your builders which has been confirmed by ROK and are quite happy to provide a report to that effect, therefore this was your installation problem which damaged our property i.e floor tiles and you need to pay for such damage due to your inadequate due care and attention on building the property. I would also like to point out since move in we have had dodgy electrics too which blew one night and caught alight, it seems that your builders seem to like taking no care over their build of their houses and I think this is quite disgusting.
I will be notifying NHBC and will take this further if required.
Anyone else think that this is a complete outrage for them to just turn a blind eye at these defects.
Thanks
Tigi
Please find attached the snagging list for ..... I expect this to be seen to as a matter for urgency especially as we have young children and the winter is now setting in. It seems ever since we moved into this property and its not even been lived in for a year yet we have had nothing but problems we didn’t expect this from a new build property and isn’t giving Ben Bailey a very good name.
Snagging List
· Gaps in front door, back door and Fire door between garage and kitchen.
· Front and Back door blow open
· Doorsteps varnish pealed both Front and Back
· Downstairs Light Socket for upstairs hall light buzzing
· Cloakroom toilet light switching itself on and off when at on position
· Light in kitchen between cloakroom and garage has too much flex making it impossible to open doors without catching it.
· Gap in sealant on kitchen work surface was supposed to be done just after move in.
· Various holes in plasterboard even though proper plasterboard fixings have been used; hollow curtain pole has pulled away from wall.
· Damage to Kitchen cupboards, ceiling in kitchen, kitchen tiles, bathroom tiles due to installation problem with bathroom sink seal.
· Door locks been installed upside down.
· Shower door not installed properly, thus causing issues when shutting it due to protective covers coming off.
· All boiler nuts had to be tightened by engineer due to dripping water coming from under boiler, this isn’t safe.
· Doesn’t appear to be any sealant under sink therefore water laying underneath
· Doors pealing
The following has had to be paid for by us in order to restore the house to new at a huge expense to us, which we didn’t expect to have to pay for a new build house. £100 for repair to the wall due to plasterboard not strong enough and no supporting beam been installed for use of a stair gate at the top of the stairs, this is for my children’s safety and these are supposed to be child friendly homes the non use of a stair gate is not a option for a 1 year old. I didn’t expect a push wall-to-wall stair gate to give way and put a hole in the wall, this could have been more serious had one of my children been near the gate. No force was used on the gate, so it wasn’t from negligence. When looked at by the site office, they confirmed that they would come and repair the hole in which they put a wooden plank in the hole but instead of securing it from beam to beam they merely attached it to the plaster and skimmed over the top, 24 hours later and I would like to stress no stair gate had been used, the block of wood fell through and created an even bigger hole now the size of a letter box, it was then the site office refused to do anything else about it, which meant we had a hole in our wall and had to get a external builder to come in and make it safe, to which it cost us £100 which we couldn’t afford at the time. The same thing has happened in the bathroom in which we used proper plaster board screws to secure a non heavy unit to make sure it didn’t topple over, has left us with 4 holes and crumbling plaster and again with the curtain pole. It seems that even using the correct fittings nothing can be put up anywhere in the house.
We have had to pay for all plaster materials to make good the problems that we have had, plus the fact that we have then had to paint to make the house look respectable.
The damage caused by the failure to correctly install the waste sink seal has caused extensive damaged to our own property, i.e tiles that we laid in the kitchen and bathroom have now lifted due to the amount of water that has been leaking over time since installation. It was confirmed by ROK what the cause of it was and that they confirmed it was a installation problem which I find had to believe passed the NHBC inspection and could have been a lot worse, as we were currently away on holiday and had just returned when we had noticed the water damaged in the kitchen all the way up to the lighting in the ceiling. We have also had to pay for a garage door seal to be put on the garage due to mice getting under the massive gap between the garage floor and the garage door; surely these should have been fitted with seals, if anything to stop draft. We expect that all damaged caused be paid for and we are reimbursed for the damaged caused to our property and compensation for the £100 builder call out and have had to incur and all snags fixed.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
This was there reply
Thank you for your recent email and your comments have been noted for future reference.
I have passed on your details to our site manager who will arrange to inspect the reported items as soon as possible.
I refer to your request for compensation and confirm that it would not be our intention to pay out any form of compensation. Our contractual obligation to our customers is to ensure that any identified defects which are reported to us are rectified within normal working hours. I am satisfied that we have met this obligation to you as a valued customer since the legal completion date of 11th December 2009.
In conclusion we will inspect the reported issues below, however we will not be paying out any form of compensation as per company policy. I respectfully advise you to Page 4 Living in your new Gladedale Home booklet re: “Heavy items may damage your walls and will need additional support”
Regards
I have responded with the following
Many thanks for your reply, I would like to inform you that neither any of the items that were place on the wall were heavy items and were installed as per your guide, and that its a stand thing is it not to have a curtain pole in your house?? Are you suggesting that no house puts up curtain poles ?? I would also like to mention that your site office was notified of the problem and said that they would rectifiy only to make the problem worse and an external builder having to be called in, if they hadnt made the whole bigger then the job might not have been so expensive. I would also like to inform you that the water leak was due to an installation problem by your builders which has been confirmed by ROK and are quite happy to provide a report to that effect, therefore this was your installation problem which damaged our property i.e floor tiles and you need to pay for such damage due to your inadequate due care and attention on building the property. I would also like to point out since move in we have had dodgy electrics too which blew one night and caught alight, it seems that your builders seem to like taking no care over their build of their houses and I think this is quite disgusting.
I will be notifying NHBC and will take this further if required.
Anyone else think that this is a complete outrage for them to just turn a blind eye at these defects.
Thanks
Tigi