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hi greg, thanks for starting up this t blog. dropped you a pm initially but i think your mailbox is full 1. may i ask how much sharifah charged for your hairpin table & how long did u have to wait? 2. reading through your posts it seems like the taobao purchases ended up with some dents on arrival. are these dents easily fixed, or gotta close one eye and make do? we saw a few pieces we like and the pricing is attractive (needless to say), but we're hoping not to receive few pieces of slightly damaged goods.. thanks in advance for helping us.

Hi jayque, May I ask if all areas needing rectifications were attended to? Or only some were fixed hence you have to live with the rest that he did not touch up or rectify after the whole process? For my case, he fixed the easy pieces and left us the bigger problems which are expensive to rectify. So yes he did do some work but I can't give him credit for the way he admit to simple issues and conveniently ignore the big ones.

Hi kstoh, Your point 1 may be valid but for my case Alan was the more expensive quote. We went with him anyway seeing that he did a good job for some lucky people. Too bad these experiences don't resonate with mine, and I give reviews based on what shoddy work and lousy attitude he gave us.

Seems to me that defences come up quite promptly when negative reviews are given. In some instances the praise or defence posts can be quite lengthy too.. Shall leave it to readers of this page to judge the credibility of it all. Those who got lousy work from Alan are angry with him not without rhyme or reason. So much effort was made to communicate the problematic areas, and then no rectification was done. Then there were no updates / reason / apology for the mess up. While people are left in the unfortunate state, he already deposited the monies as though he delivered everything in good order. Of course he managed to do it from the goodwill that homeowners gave to make advanced payment thinking that he would renovate the house properly. Since he continues to keep the money despite issues being brought up and shown in his face, thick skin and shunning away seems to be his forte. I guess he is good at some things. If any of you have an ongoing project with him, I advise you to pay him bit by bit. Be a micromanager, check everything and clarify your doubts without letting his black face or bad moods intimidate you. When treated rudely, like being shouted at, shout back because now you know he seems to shout quite a lot.

Dear meeko it seems like we are the people Alan hates as he decided to mess up our beloved homes and do a good job for you. In all honesty, I am happy for you. You are lucky not to get our experiences, of not being able to foresee when it is possible to move and settle for my case. By the way we are putting up at temporary accommodation so every day of delay costs us money. Much appreciated if you be careful not to categorize those who gave a negative review just as a bunch of people who love to hate Alan. If majority say the same, then clearly you (and some privileged few) happen to be the rarer cases. So perhaps your views may not be reflective of the general work that he gives others? He messed up big time. And this review is here to let others know that one risks taking up such nonsense when engaging this irresponsible person.

From my interactions with Alan, black face and complaints associate quite well with him.

Poor or slow service can be tolerated but I found that this guy keeps serving up tau suan with other ingredients like hair, or red bed soup. In other words, just doesn't give us what we want. When he does give tau suan it tastes fair only. I also disagree with OceanEleven that he knows his stuff or does things according to SOP because if he did then we would not need to deal with those "it's too late to change at this stage", especially since these were the details that he failed to supervise. We check his work almost everyday. Our requests to fix things to the way we want are hardly met, even when we told him quite soon after these were spotted. Contractor forcefully proceeded on to next step without rectifying earlier mistakes.

We engaged XTR's contractor after reading the positive reviews (I enquired for his contact on 2 Aug above on this same page). But we got an entirely different experience. You can see some feedback from a few homeowners who hired Alan here. It will be useful for those considering to engage his services. http://www.renotalk.com/forum/topic/58479-loft-iklektic/page-27

From my own experience I dare say that this contractor is VERY difficult to work with. Even then we don't get what we want which means that he is very poor value for money and pretty much a waste of time. We found the experience unpleasant as we didn't know what was happening when and very often decisions were made for us without first asking. When we asked to have it fixed, he would say that we are picky and have high standards, but all we asked for is to do it properly rather than designer standard. He even shouted at us a few times at our new home which we found highly disrespectful. This is especially so when we are not out to fight with him. It is impossible to have a proper conversation to even communicate what we want as before we manage to talk anything we are already being shouted at. We are still in the process of working with him to finish up the renovation. Meantime it seems like he gets to pick and choose what he wants to fix. If this is not the case and he eventually does up everything properly I will remove this post. Meantime this still serves as a word of caution to all out there who is considering to engage his subpar services.

Hi guys We are another one who engaged Alan as our contractor. We did not get our house by Xmas and now it does not look like we can get it completed before CNY too.

Guys any of you have the contact of tiler Ah Meng? Would be really grateful if you could share the contact via PM. Thanks in advance!

congrats on having such a comfy home done up ) i am in the process of looking for an ID & contractor, grateful if you may share your contacts please? thanks a lot for posting on this thread too as it is really informative.