L.er

Please check carefully and make sure HDB has rectified the defects for your flat. Let me share my experience with you and learn from it. We bought a new flat left over for one year, it was one of the replacement flat from SERS. Just one round around the house and you can find a lot of defects. Storeroom's door has problem closing fully, rusty taps, cement in the toilet bowls, very loose window handles....... the list goes on. The most ridiculours is they used the toilets' door as my masterbed room's door. We tried to do whatever we can by ourselves and shorten the list to only 5, keys handed over for about 1 month but no news and can't reach the officer even though we left him at least 3 voice mails a day. 1.5 mths later, I finally got him and was told I can collect my keys. Happily we took a leave and travel from the other far corner of the island to pick up the keys and went to check our house, but to my disappointement NONE of the defects had been rectified...... and the officer insisted they were done. I can't be that colour-blind for unable to see there's no difference between the master bedroom and toilet's door since they're right next to each other, thus I called the officer to visit my house and see it himself. At first he told us they look different until I told him even the old lady staying on the same floor can see the same colour from just a sight. In the end he suggested to teach us how to get the defects rectify ourselves else the contractors will take long to get them done again and it will definitely badly affect our renovation. Sillily I believed his words, but before we selected a renovator. my in-laws invited us to stay in their newly bought landed property and my too use to stay in big house husband immediately agreed to it. After a year which is last year, we felt the expensive small flat should not be left empty for too long so we decided to get the house renovated and looking forward to celebrate our new year there. Unfortunately the painter told us the base colour on my master room is so different from its original colour, most probably they'll have problem turning it to the same colour as it supposed to be, true enough it can't be done....... not to mention none of the methods the officer taught us to rectify the defects can be used. What is a a substituition bomb shelter when our storeroom's door can never be closed? Even my contractor thinks the dried cement in the toilet bowls look yucky....... Knowing that we've far passed the given grace period for rectifying defects, hence not putting much hope, I called the officer again to tell him what he taught us with full confident is unworkable hoping he can try giving us some helps since it was him who made us to believe it's best to settle the defects ourselves and like he said "sure no problem", guess what he told us this time? Put aside the overdue timing, he wanted us to understand HDB wants to keep their cost to the lowest, they've to pay the contractors for each rectifying job and the officers have been told to keep the cost low by not to give too much jobs to the contractors...... he just sounded like he hopes to work in peace until he retires (he's in his 50s). Argue with him for 30 mins but up to no avail....... overall I can only remember he said it's our fault for not renovate our new house right after getting it, so that we'll realise his solutions are not workable and at least we could make it within the time given. And, it's naturally for the taps to turn rusty, just try some stronger polish chemical but most house owners will change new ones so save the trouble. Why must we renovate and stay in another house leaving a newly renovated one empty to collect dust? And, we pay for everything in the flat, not as if the taps are given to house owners for free right? When I mentioned the first batch of residents there told us some of the defects we have are same as theirs last time, obviously these are common defects in this estate...... he insisted "WHO TOLD YOU THAT? IT'S RUBBISH!"