T
timearnshaw
Guest
I bought a property from Countryside Properties at their Vistas Wychwood Park development in Cheshire. My experiences since moving in have not been positive and I want to share them with as many people as possible and would love to see as many fellow aggrieved and long-suffering Countrysiders do so here as well - maybe in that way we will be able to exert some more influence upon them to live up to their salespeoples portrayal of what to expect from their, ahem, 'customer care'....
Now admittedly none of my issues are of a major, structural nature but nonetheless there are a lot of niggles and more than your to-be-expected snagging items as a result of drying out shrinkage.So here's my tale of woe so far:
-I had to report damage to any sanitaryware within 7 days of moving in. 6 months later the issues I reported still have not been resolved.
- the shower in the ensuite bathroom did not work upon moving in. It took weeks for them to come and get it to work.
- when said shower was finally fixed, leaks to the shower enclosure itself resulted in water damage to the lounge ceiling below which I then had to wait weeks to get fixed....
- when the shower leak was 'fixed' it lasted only a week before the repair job itself disintegrated, resulting in an emergency fix being applied (think plastic bag and duck tape...). The fix was due to be fixed this week after a 4 week wait but the team who came to do it didn't have the tiles they needed as nobody had thought to order them.
- the central heating to 2 of the 4 bedrooms did not work upon moving in! Where is the quality control?
- almost anything I report to Countryside is simply passed onto the relevant subcontractor who then contacts you to arrange a time to come and resolve. Invariably they work 9am-4pm Monday to Friday, are not able to provide you with a specific time during the day that they will attend, and generally you have to wait weeks before they are able to. On more than one occasion a subcontractor has turned up onsite claiming to know nothing about what the problem is and therefore not having the correct materials to fix it, which then puts you back into the infinite loop of waiting weeks for another appointment with them....
- on several occasions when the subcontractors have finally attended the property they have claimed that the problem is not theirs to resolve. They claim that it was signed off by Countryside and must therefore have been damaged by subsequent tradespeople, that things are within specification etc etc. It then takes Countryside to have words with them to get them out again to resolve properly....
- customer service work very customer unfriendly hours, something like 930am until 430pm. Not exactly making themselves reachable at the customers convenience. Same goes for visits to resolve as I have already mentioned - in 6 months I have had to take time off work more than 10(!) times to be at home for somebody to visit....to tell me they can't fix it cos they don't have the right parts or that it isnt their responsibility....
- I had to wait 3 weeks for my inaugural meeting with the customer service manager to go through the initial snagging list. I gave him a list of around 25 items as we walked through the house. At the first maintenance team visit in early January, they only had a list of c.10 items. When I asked what had happened to the other items customer service said they must have been mislaid or something. They then told me I would have to arrange another maintenance visit to address the overlooked items, but that it would be another month before there was an available slot....
- this has now happened a further 2 times. I send them a spreadsheet with all my issues on it and a status of when it was reported, when/if it is resolved or not, and progress to date. They send me back an 'abridged' version which misses out half the stuff I have reported.
- the Countryside maintenance team lads are all very nice and professional and do a good job at putting right what they can, but they aren't putting in long hours to get through your issues. Having waited 4 weeks on average to get a visit, and having a long list of items to resolve, it is annoying to see them pitch up at 830, have a teabreak, do a couple of hours, have lunch for an hour, put in a couple of hours after lunch then leave around 3pm to get back to the depot before clocking off time. Clearly they are working in accordance with their contractual arrangements so it is a management issue - they don't allocate enough time for the jobs to be done that you have outstanding and so your jobs stay unfinished and you then have to arrange another visit which wont happen for a month or so. You would think they could arrange two visits at once, a week or so apart but no....
So please share your experiences with Countryside and be sure to mention the development. If we get enough momentum here, maybe we can set up separate threads for each development. Come on all you folks at Didsbury Point get on here - I know several people on there who are having a far more torrid time of it than me, so get posting. I'm going to flyer my road this week and get as many neighbours as possible to post on here.
There's also two postings on this website from TV Production companies looking to speak to people about their new-build experiences, one for BBC and one for C4(to be fronted by Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs fame)so give them a call too - I spoke to them today and they were very interested in what I had to say so fingers crossed I might get my 15 seconds of airtime to express my discontent to the nation!
Now admittedly none of my issues are of a major, structural nature but nonetheless there are a lot of niggles and more than your to-be-expected snagging items as a result of drying out shrinkage.So here's my tale of woe so far:
-I had to report damage to any sanitaryware within 7 days of moving in. 6 months later the issues I reported still have not been resolved.
- the shower in the ensuite bathroom did not work upon moving in. It took weeks for them to come and get it to work.
- when said shower was finally fixed, leaks to the shower enclosure itself resulted in water damage to the lounge ceiling below which I then had to wait weeks to get fixed....
- when the shower leak was 'fixed' it lasted only a week before the repair job itself disintegrated, resulting in an emergency fix being applied (think plastic bag and duck tape...). The fix was due to be fixed this week after a 4 week wait but the team who came to do it didn't have the tiles they needed as nobody had thought to order them.
- the central heating to 2 of the 4 bedrooms did not work upon moving in! Where is the quality control?
- almost anything I report to Countryside is simply passed onto the relevant subcontractor who then contacts you to arrange a time to come and resolve. Invariably they work 9am-4pm Monday to Friday, are not able to provide you with a specific time during the day that they will attend, and generally you have to wait weeks before they are able to. On more than one occasion a subcontractor has turned up onsite claiming to know nothing about what the problem is and therefore not having the correct materials to fix it, which then puts you back into the infinite loop of waiting weeks for another appointment with them....
- on several occasions when the subcontractors have finally attended the property they have claimed that the problem is not theirs to resolve. They claim that it was signed off by Countryside and must therefore have been damaged by subsequent tradespeople, that things are within specification etc etc. It then takes Countryside to have words with them to get them out again to resolve properly....
- customer service work very customer unfriendly hours, something like 930am until 430pm. Not exactly making themselves reachable at the customers convenience. Same goes for visits to resolve as I have already mentioned - in 6 months I have had to take time off work more than 10(!) times to be at home for somebody to visit....to tell me they can't fix it cos they don't have the right parts or that it isnt their responsibility....
- I had to wait 3 weeks for my inaugural meeting with the customer service manager to go through the initial snagging list. I gave him a list of around 25 items as we walked through the house. At the first maintenance team visit in early January, they only had a list of c.10 items. When I asked what had happened to the other items customer service said they must have been mislaid or something. They then told me I would have to arrange another maintenance visit to address the overlooked items, but that it would be another month before there was an available slot....
- this has now happened a further 2 times. I send them a spreadsheet with all my issues on it and a status of when it was reported, when/if it is resolved or not, and progress to date. They send me back an 'abridged' version which misses out half the stuff I have reported.
- the Countryside maintenance team lads are all very nice and professional and do a good job at putting right what they can, but they aren't putting in long hours to get through your issues. Having waited 4 weeks on average to get a visit, and having a long list of items to resolve, it is annoying to see them pitch up at 830, have a teabreak, do a couple of hours, have lunch for an hour, put in a couple of hours after lunch then leave around 3pm to get back to the depot before clocking off time. Clearly they are working in accordance with their contractual arrangements so it is a management issue - they don't allocate enough time for the jobs to be done that you have outstanding and so your jobs stay unfinished and you then have to arrange another visit which wont happen for a month or so. You would think they could arrange two visits at once, a week or so apart but no....
So please share your experiences with Countryside and be sure to mention the development. If we get enough momentum here, maybe we can set up separate threads for each development. Come on all you folks at Didsbury Point get on here - I know several people on there who are having a far more torrid time of it than me, so get posting. I'm going to flyer my road this week and get as many neighbours as possible to post on here.
There's also two postings on this website from TV Production companies looking to speak to people about their new-build experiences, one for BBC and one for C4(to be fronted by Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs fame)so give them a call too - I spoke to them today and they were very interested in what I had to say so fingers crossed I might get my 15 seconds of airtime to express my discontent to the nation!