Bewley Homes

[fred_scuttle1]

When I bought my house from Bewley Homes naively I believed their sales patter that the customer service was second to none. This was backed up by their website which mentioned numerous awards they won for good customer service.

Guess what? It was a lie. The awards were given by Zurich who provide the 10 year cover on the new builds. You scratch my back, I scratch yours!

After 2 years and numerous phone calls and letters to them very few of the snagging problems were fixed. In short there is no Customer Service. It wasn't just me who has suffered. EVERYONE else on the development has suffered too. Overflowing toilets, leaking central heating systems, doors that won't shut, doors that won't open, collapsed ceilings, dodgy roofs ..... I could go on. It's been a nightmare. To cap it all they were supposed to have the road resurfaced so that it was in a fit enough state to be adopted. Now we're told they're not going to do it and they're trying to get the residents to take care of it.

Never again. Be warned......avoid these cowboys at all costs!!!!

:evil:

[Justice4all]

Originally Posted by fred_scuttle1

When I bought my house from Bewley Homes naively I believed their sales patter that the customer service was second to none. This was backed up by their website which mentioned numerous awards they won for good customer service.

Guess what? It was a lie. The awards were given by Zurich who provide the 10 year cover on the new builds. You scratch my back, I scratch yours!

After 2 years and numerous phone calls and letters to them very few of the snagging problems were fixed. In short there is no Customer Service. It wasn't just me who has suffered. EVERYONE else on the development has suffered too. Overflowing toilets, leaking central heating systems, doors that won't shut, doors that won't open, collapsed ceilings, dodgy roofs ..... I could go on. It's been a nightmare. To cap it all they were supposed to have the road resurfaced so that it was in a fit enough state to be adopted. Now we're told they're not going to do it and they're trying to get the residents to take care of it.

Never again. Be warned......avoid these cowboys at all costs!!!!

:evil:

Hi fellow Bewley Houseowner, I have had a catalogue of defects with Bewley since I bought my house in 2006 in Berkshire. This included a leaking roof fixed a couple of years ago. Recently we've spotted problems to our fitted kitchen including our glass Oven door built by Servis that shattered, a Servis built dishwasher that does not wash our dishes and our patio door which does not close properly. Also I'm sure our insulation does not meet environmentally efficient standards as the ground floor of our house is always extremely cold in the winter despite our central heating being turned to the max leading to high electricity bills. I am creating a Blog and will find out how many other people have experienced the same problems with a view to setting up a group to take legal action against Bewley known as a class action suit. Bewley were taken to court in 2006 by Orkney Capital for breach of contract, negligence, and breach of statutory duty claiming £300,000 damages against them. Would you be interested in joining this group?

[Fred_Scuttle]

Since posting this message in June 2008 very little has changed with Bewley Homes. Of course, the 2 year snagging period has run out and the road still isn't adopted. No surprises there.

I haven't monitired this website for ages hence the delay in replying. Maybe you can post details of your blog. There are a number of us who are affected and it's time to stop handling Bewley Homes with kid gloves. Quite frankly we've had enough and it's time to start getting serious!!!!!

[claral]

Hi,

Without going in to detail i must urge all buyers of Bewley homes to pay for a profesional Snagging survey before you move in. I beleive this costs about £500 and i would imagine this is money well spent as they document and chase Bewley to get the issues resolved. In hindsight i would have paid double this to save myself the issues i have had over the last 2 years.

I am nearly coming to the end of my two year snagging period with Bewley. I have several times had to consider legal action against Bewley to get issues resolved. My initial snagging list was several pages long, i urge everyone to get on their hands and knees or on a step ladder - search and document every issue, no matter how small. I spent a day documenting the issues in my house. Trust me, anything you miss and spot at a later date will only get on your nerves later when you see it.

My major issue with Bewley is that most issues would be have been quite minor or acceptable, except that most of the tradesmen sent to resolve issues are doing it out of their own pocket as they probably fix these issues as part of their delivery contract with bewley. Therefore all repairs are done hastily and often very poorly, often making the origional issues worse!

Also - Keep a diary of repairs, this is a must! Everytime i have had to resort to threatening legal action i am able to provide a diary of the issues i have had. Without this i would have had considerably less clout to get my issues resolved.

Good luck! i wouldn't buy a Bewley home again unless it was cheap and profesionally snagged!

[Fred_Scuttle]

I had to threaten them with legal action many times in order to get things done. Shouting down the phone helps! There was one item they managed to get out of doing that I had to pay out of my own pocket.

They're very unprofessional and once they've got your money they don't care. Also check your deeds for things like road adoption, etc. Just out of interest claral, is your property located on a new road? Ours still hasn't been adopted and the worrying thing is that they almost went into administration in 2008!

[RTPeat]

We've just pulled out of purchasing a Bewley Home on the Milford Grange site after a row over parking allocations. What they sold us was a house with a garage and a parking space directly in front of the garage, however when the papers came through our solicitor spotted that the space directly in front of the garage was designated as a first come, first served space for residents and visitors, i.e. anybody could park there.

He obviously queried this as it was ludicrous, Bewley came back offering us exclusive use of the space, but with the caveat that the management company could reallocate it as required. Again we said no, and their final offer was exclusive use for us, but rather unclear as to whether we could sell this use with the house.

At this point I had a look at the planning applications for the estate. The sales plans showed 53 parking spaces but all allocated to individual houses, but the planning application stated that 11 of the 53 spaces were visitors spaces. The plans accompanying the application didn't show any space allocations at all. Asking a couple of friends with experience which took precedence they all said that the written statement and the plans should agree and that I should talk to the local planning department. Spent half an hour on the phone with them, they agreed that the two should agree but that I needed to formally complain for them to do any more, went back to Bewley who just kept sending me plans challenging "where have we violated planning permission" whilst ignoring any questions about the paragraph in the application over visitors spaces.

Seemed to us that they were trying to sell the visitors spaces along with the houses for the properties that weren't entitled to two (local council regulations for our area are that 2 and 3 bed semi-detached properties only get 1.5 spaces, on this estate they all have 2) so if at some point somebody complained and the council enforced the planning approval we'd be left with a house with only one space, so we withdrew the offer.

It wasn't the only place they were trying to get around the planning restrictions - the planning approval required all the roads and parking to be completed before anybody moves in, whilst they tried to get us to sign a contract that allowed them to complete before we even had parking, they also wanted us to agree to complete before the buildings certificate had been issued.

Needless to say they're not refunding anything like as much as we've paid out, great chunks being withheld for admin fees. Indeed they've not actually refunded anything as yet.

Don't believe the sales patter, they really are just as bad as all the rest.