Our original targetted completion date to have the house ready for moving-in within 2months went up in smoke, along with the empty promises that our Titan designer made. All in all, our whole house (a hdb flat) took more than 3 months to finish, 1 month more than what was originally discussed before we signed our contract. This does not include the time needed to rectify defects. Back then, other ID firms quoted us 4-6 weeks to complete our reno.
We learnt several lessons from our painful experience and we wanna share our thoughts:
1 If your designer criticises other customers in front of you, it's a warning sign.. firstly he does not respect his clients' privacy, secondly you may experience the same issues that the client is facing with him. Our designer did this on our first few visits.. that he purposely put one of his client's house in 'cold storage', reno took more than 6 months, because they are demanding. We thought it was the client's fault because our designer appeared so genuine in the beginning. How very wrong we were.
2 Have everything written down somewhere. This is age old advice, but sometimes you might think that you can trust it when all these designers / contractors tell you it's a small job, no problem kinda talk. People forget things.. and that's something our bad temper designer always does.
3 Do not think that if a designer/vendor is really good at what he does, he has the right to give lousy attitude. Nobody should be in a situation where they pay good money but end up at the brunt of the vendor's moods and wimps just because our house or other things are in their control.
4 Include a non-completion clause in the contract. If the vendor fails to deliver the house for possession on a particular date, then you have the right to deduct a defined amount for every day of delay for such failure.
5 Always discuss the brand and material to be used and have them listed in the initial contract. You do not want to be caught in a situation where you are given an interior grade of product when you were initially shown or promised something else in the beginning.
6 Always clarify if an added service is chargeable. Our designer has the knack of telling us things can be done and not telling us if there are extra charges or not, and/or how much it will cost to do so. Do not accept it if the designer is vague with how much something will cost or it might really cost you in the end.
7 Again, get everything down on paper. Our designer was extremely nice before he closed us. Nothing is impossible at the time. He claimed to have his own factory for carpentary.. he packaged his words, saying that he combines design with 'physics'.. yet when our house was handed over, and his designs did not function, he turned around and blamed us for doing the design. Saying that we accused him of things that are not his fault??!!
We also found out that unlike other renovators, who would have a whole chunk of workers in the property working at any one time. Our designer would have 1-3 workers up at our unit at any one time.. and there would be no work done on the house every other day.
We were bullied into a corner at times.. when our house is in his hands and we're afraid he will further delay with the reno work.. so we put up with his bad temper and attitude problem. He has hung up his phone on us before, saying that he don't work on sundays! And disappeared for holiday trips without somebody else we could contact during this time. It is really, really sad knowing that we have spent so much money to be treated in this manner.
