Search the Community

I would like to share my bad experience with S Illusion Interior also known as S Illusion Design & Build. We had engaged S Illusion Interior to carry out renovation works for our house back in June 2014. Tiffanie Ko and Alvin Kow from S Illusion Interior are the two contractors handling my renovation works. It's a business run by the husband & wife and they claimed that they have a boss and we had just found out there isn't any! This Tiffanie Ko had introduced me a banker who is actually her friend. Once the loan was approved she smartly headed down to the bank before notifying us to collect the cheque from the banker prior to even starting the renovation work. I had asked the banker to separate the loan amt into 2 diff cheques so that I can pass it to the contractor based on the reno schedule. But both the banker and Tiffanie had made separate arrangements and issued the cheque to her even before starting work at my place. As this is our first home and we had no idea how all this bank loan works, we were deceived by them saying this is the usual practice when you take reno bank loan. As she was putting on a very trustable professional image during the early stage, we consoled ourselves that she will do a good job. To our horror, renovation works done were all sub-standard. Incorrect finalized 3D drawings were furnished for carpentry works. This resulted in wrong design, colors and size for carpentry works which involves shoe rack, TV feature wall in living area and TV console. All this caused delay in the renovation schedule leading to another long wait to redo the carpentry works. All appointments set to discuss and finalize on the renovation items after she received the full payment were delayed and most of the times Tiffanie and Alvin did not even turn up for appointments. Upon rectifying the carpentry works, the TV console fixed came down crashing to the floor on 20th August 2014, which is less than 5 days after fixing it up. Because of this my TV also dropped together with the TV Console and its not even working properly now. All the HDMI ports were damaged and the visuals as well. When the crash happened, my 8 month old nephew was just inches away from the TV console! Thank god for that. We had informed them to rectify this on the next day itself as we could see it was giving way.They did not even bother to come down and have a look at the work until the day it fell to the floor. Here are some of the images. Following all the unsatisfactory service received from this company, we asked them to stop their renovation works on that very day itself and to refund the balance amount for all the uncompleted works. The refund amount was supposed to be returned to us on 1st October 2014. Even to get the signature from us, they dragged their own time saying today & tomorrows. After much pressure to settle this matter, Alvin handed me the cheque on 3rd October 2014. We were notified by the bank that the cheque got bounced back after banking in and it was due to insufficient fund in the account. Upon enquiring with S Illusion Interior, they informed me to bank in the cheque again once I get the letter from the bank. The second attempt of banking in the cheque was also unsuccessful and cheque was bounced back the second time. Tiffanie Ko had also failed to pay 3 of the respective vendors whom we engaged for part of the renovation works. I was not aware that the payment to them has not been settled until the vendors started calling me up and demanding for all the overdue payments after being unable to withstand Tiffanie Ko’s excuses. We had to pressure Tiffanie to settle the payment as the vendors were threatening to go up till small claims. They even forwarded us all the smses that were sent by her telling them today and tomorrow and never turned up to pass them the balance payment. Here are some of the msges sent when the works were ongoing and her rude reply when we asked for the refund after the cheque got bounced back. Till today, S Illusion Interior has not refunded us the unused balance loan amount and has challenged us to go to court to claim the amount. Msg replies sent were all rude and she did not even bother to apologize for all that she has caused us. We have made a police report as well as lodged a claim against them under the Small Claims Tribunal. They even failed to attend the first consultation held at the state court. We just want to create awareness to all those who are about to engage any ID / Contractors for your renovation to be very strict and do extensive research before you engage anyone. At all cost, NEVER NEVER PAY THEM IN FULL, even when you have taken a bank loan. They go around creating a very professional image before you engage them and only after starting work, you get to see how unprofessional things could get. What you see is not you get as the end product. This is our first experience handling renovation matters for our new home and it has been a very good lesson to us. We are under so much of stress and inconvenience caused by this company and we do not want anyone else to go through what we have been thru . We do not know if we can recover the loss from them but we hope no one else falls into the trap like us.