AVJennings

Everything built like they don’t take pride in there work all out of square now cracks appear you spoils think a company this old would be realisable

Worst experience over 8 years and still no fix or resolution. Jennings built the house in Maitland NSW and we complained about cracks in cornices growing larger each month.

Ah yeh, we will plaster them over was Jennings response. After cornices started falling off, External gutter separated at join, roof tile opened up and rain water entered into ceiling plaster leaking onto floor. External brick walls falling away, internal walls now cracked from ceiling to floor. Sekisui then bought the Jennings brand and things got worse.

No one wanted to even acknowledge there was a building warranty issue, we asked for an engineer to look at why! We finally got one ourselves and paid for them. The result was that the house slab had sunk on one corner by 72mm (yes, 3 inches) then they tell us it is a mine subsidence board problem. NO it is not, so now we are looking for same minded people who put their faith in Jennings or Sekisui.

we will email photos if someone want to see. Enough Sekisui because now we have to deal with you.

Purchased a block of land at the Arlington rise estate in portarlington 18 months ago. Told the block would be titled in march 2012.

They still haven't started and it doesn't looked like doing so in the near future. The only time I get updates from av Jennings is when I chase them up. *** poor customer service. And when I do get an updated it is quite obviously they are feeding me the *** line " waiting for p,ans to come back from council", tender is out", "should see movement next month"......

No wonder av Jennings is $24 million in the red.

Who would wait to buy from them when customer service is non existent!!!!! They even tried to bribe me with a $500 Coles voucher to sign up for another 18 months.

Have been in our home for 2.5 years and apart from a couple of minor jobs done we are still waiting on most to be completed from our 3 month warranty list. Is this normal.

I see plenty of our neighbours getting repairs done??

We have never been happy with the mortar, run your fingers along it and it flakes off, we have been told by AVJennings this is all above board. The cold water tap heats up that much in warn weather it is impossible to hold your hand underneath, worried that our kids are going to scauld themselves, this was actually checked and they said they were happy with it.

The painting job is atrocious. I will never build withem again and could not recommend them

jennings does not pay there workers. i have worked for them and one month later still no money.

they are the worst building company i have ever worked for, they cut corners everywhere they use cheap craft wood even in wet areas. they state they build 5 star energy ratings and they dont. i am dealing with fair trading and consumer affars at the moment and i have photos to prove this.

i will also go to the media so that the public will know to be aware of there dodgy buildings. beware of clinton kirkhill he is a supervisor that calls himself a carpenter, and there is nothing further from the truth.

Building with AV Jennings Adelaide has been a huge dissapointment. Poor quality, scheduling and communication.

We had our pre-handover meeting today and they did not turn up. This is just the latest in a series of problems. E.g. they put th front door in the wrong place.

I pointed it out, they investigated and responded that it was according to plan. I had to go and do the measurements myself to prove to them it was not according to plan. They just unilaterrally added 1 month to the build period, because of their poor scheduling.

After a very sour letter from me to the MD, they brought it back. I will not mention all the other incidents.

Do not use AVJ Adelaide - they will spoil your home building experience.

the last 6 months has been rather annoyiong for my partner and I. We have been living next door to a house being built by AV Jennings and have felt a rather lack of customer service and respect for our property which is only 12 months old.

I was awoken one morning by the concreter who basically told me my fence would need to be taken down in order to pour the concrete slab as it is on the border line. There was no previous notice of this. I was reassured that it would only be 3 weeks without a fence. I was rather concerned about this as our house had no privacy around it.

We waited as the slab was poured then the brick laying commenced. The bricklayers left mud all over our pavers and splatters on our window. ( the pavers have been cleaned but the window has not been) After the bricklaying was complete I decided to call av Jennings to find out when our fence would be put back up. My name was taken and i was to recieve a phone call from the Area Manager.

This did not happen. I then called again 2 months later when the house was almost complete. No response. I sent an email, no response.

I then decided to call our home builders and they found a number on the area manager for ACT and we called and were reassured that the fence would be put back up within a week. And yes it is still down. We then call him again after the week and the story had changed, they said it was not in their contract to put it back up, it was the home owners responsibility. We spoke to the home owner who has not yet moved in and AV Jennings has told him that it is in his contract to pay for the fence to be put back up, he is not planning to put one up on his side so now i have to arrange for a fencer and send the bill to the neighbor.

Not once had AV Jennings helped us on this matter nor helped the new home owner who has not yet moved in. We have been inconveinced by a small part of our fence for way to long. AV Jennings could have arranged for it to be put back up and added it to the bill for the home owner.......... Now that it is close to Christmas we will find it hard to do this.

We have been waiting 6 months to continue landscaping this area and are unable to due to the lack of tidyness by the builders, we have had to remove bricks, tiles and rubbish from our yard.

AV Jennings has in this matter not given us respect or tried to help the situation. It will be resolved, however i will never reccomend them to anyone as their whole attitude to their new home owner and ourselves being the neighbour has been disgusting, no help or resolutions given.

I am having the worst experience of my life by dealing with AV Jennings. Sales rep was nice and all good - saying how good AVJ is and will be cause Japanese #1 builder - Sekisui House bought out AVJ Contract homes etc. As soon as you sign contract, no one cares. They got many big budget projects in Docklands to think about than your little $200k-$300k house! Worst part is the phone number given to contact customer representative is not even answered. In last 5 months, I already got 4 different customer service reps. I got only 2 weekly progress updates after asking for it several times. Tried to contact their managers but never received reply or could get to them by phone. But as I said - they don't care just like the customer reps. Never got any stage completion confirmation and invitation to inspect but only invoices which needs to be paid within 10 days.

If bad communication and customer service was not enough, they got incompetent workers and site supervisor (who is also rude and arrogant) to complement it. From the beginning, there are bad workmanship and awful quality of work. So many errors throughout. When showed the bad mortar work to supervisor, he said it would be fixed when washed. Never did. Bought expensive light colour brick. Supervisor used "God knows what" chemical to clean the bricks and white bricks first turned into GREEN and then rusty RED. We contacted the builder within a week and advised that this probably happened due to the use of wrong/strong chemical during brick clean up and also advised to contact brick provider to take some immediate action. Site supervisor completely ignored us and blamed it on bad weather, mould etc. and said another wash before handover would clean it up and definitely it's not ACID BURN. 2nd wash after couple of months was a failure and finally AVJ decided to contact brick supplier. Supplier confirmed that it was acid burn (strong chemical used during brick wash) and now that the handover is delayed a further 2 months - AVJ trying to get a chemist who is going to test his magical chemicals (again) to clean up the rust from the brick.

There are also cracks (already!) in several places in the house and the boards they used to build.

They put wrong sized Ceaserstone benchtop in en-suite and when asked the site supervisor about it, he said - he was very sure that was exactly what we ordered. Came home, checked contract and contacted the colour selection lady at AVJ (who is better than the rest in AVJ) - who confirmed that it was a mistake. Thats also taking months to replace and fix.

As per contract, builder is to pay for the water usage. One customer rep confirmed that I will be receiving a check for that (that was 3 months ago) and then she left AVJ and new rep go no clue and even us sending him all the emails about previous conversation with other rep, he just doesn't care to do anything about it.

Customer rep and site supervisor doesn't seem to talk to each other! when site supervisor is telling me that the handover will be delayed indefinitely, customer rep is telling me to go for pre-handover inspection.

Their bagged and painted job looks so ugly and made my house the ugliest in the street.

AV Jennings/Sekisui House is the other name of disaster. If you do not want to go through periods of stress in your life, waste your money on a bad quality house, do not go with this builder. They are rude, don't communicate, don't answer phone, doesn't care to call back even if you leave voice message, bad quality work, delays - there is no problem that I did not have with this builder. They are BAD in every single department. And guess what, my house is still not ready and I dont know when this will be completed.

If anyone is interested to see the photos of disaster, I will be more than happy to share. Some are so silly that it will make you wonder how AVJ are in construction business.

I read this http://av-jenning.pissedconsumer.com/av-jennings-don-t-expect-any-after-sales-service-200912****3336.html last year when I was looking for a complaints process for AVJennings. I posted this same message on that page but as yet have not heard or seen a response.

I never really contemplated putting my grievances on a public forum generally because I don't like to whinge and more importantly I feel it's better to let the company know directly how you feel so they have an opportunity to rectify the problem. Unfortunately AVJeninngs don't seem to have a complaints handling process. I have corresponded with the State Sales Manager briefly in regards to certain part of my complaint but I am still in the same position. I do appreciate the time he did take to handle my issue though.

So what brings me to the point of posting today? Well it's a long winded story and I will try not to bore everyone. Here goes.

My partner and I have been looking at getting in to the property market for the last 2 years. After looking at established houses and not finding what we wanted we looked at building. In hindsight, this is an option I probably won't do again and if issues persist will definitely not be with AVJennings.

We went out and found what we thought was the right land (AVJennings Land Release) and the right builder. After all, my parents built their first house with AVJennings and we have only heard good things about this builder plus they aren't the cheapest builder, surely the extra $$ means better service, right? All in all we were happy with our decision and excited with the prospect of building our new home. We settled the land and signed all the relevant documents. We were told that our house will be ready at the latest on the 17th of May 2010 with construction commencing on the 19th of October 2009 (signed contract stipulating this). Bear in mind that we were always told that house construction is 4 – 5 months and council approval is about 3 months, therefore they anticipated a handover of around March.

After hearing nothing from AVJennings in September I thought it would be prudent to make sure everything was going to schedule, after all I'm paying in excess of $300,000 some communication on what is happening would be nice. I was told on the 16th of September that the application has gone to the private certifier's. I was also told this process usually takes 3 weeks. Fantastic news, we are on schedule. 3 weeks later I email to make sure private certification has come back. At that point, I was told that the private certifiers wanted more information on truss information and that building approval should be coming soon……………………….23rd of November 2009, 2months 7 days later (3.19x longer than what I was told, hope they didn't get my house cost wrong?), Building Approval done.

Well, what caused the delay you may ask? Very simple, someone had 2 weeks break, for some reason if someone doesn't show up to work for 2 weeks nothing will get done. Great! So what else happened in that time well somehow they managed to send the wrong information not once but multiple times back to the private certifiers. Of course they didn't tell me this I had to call the private certifiers for this information as AVJennings were blaming them for the delays.

14th December 09, finally my slab is in the ground. Mind you I had to talk to the State Sales Manager to get this to happen. At this point I will say the following. Nobody has ever treated me or my fiancé badly and everyone has been courteous and professional. However, it's the lies and inability to follow through on the simple thing that makes me regret building my house with AVJennings. Either way with what I hope is the worst behind us we move in to the year hoping to get our house ASAP.

I emailed today asking when my frame will be up and if they received my money for the slab, unfortunately person handling my file is on leave and only they can look at my file. I hope this person doesn't get hit by a bus else I fear I won't ever get my house.

To add insult to injury I received a letter from AVJennings stating the following.

"Unfortunately, as you are aware some of the conditions under clause 3 & 4 of the Home Building Agreement had not been satisfied by the due dates, which meant that construction did not progress at the times originally expected. Therefore in accordance with the Home Building Agreement we propose to amend the dates for construction. "

The revised date is the 13th of July 2010. So what they basically told me is that they can delay the construction of my home for whatever reason they seem fit and we need to deal with it. Why make us sign a contract in the first place, seems counterproductive doesn't it?

I have not touched on the fact that we also made some post contract variations that took 3 months to get to me. It was promised to me that this wouldn't hold up the building process as it was early on and was purely internal changes. I stressed the importance of making sure this wouldn't interfere with the building process as we wanted our house as early as possible.

It became apparent that something was wrong after not receiving the post contract variations in October. At that point I asked our sales consultant what was going on. He had told me the forms had been posted and I should receive them shortly. After not receiving the documents I called again and reiterated and stressed the point that our address had changed and that all documents should be sent to new address (Bear in mind I had changed the address with our Land, House and Bank consultant at the same time). He assured me the address was updated but he would check again.

November still no contract, contacted our customer service representative who was away for 2 weeks and they said that post contract variations would be in the mail by the next day at the latest 9th of November 09. Surprisingly I didn't receive the post contract variations again, apparently they weren't posted. The post contract variations were NOW in the mail for the 10th of November.

12th of November comes and goes no post contract variation.

13th of November speak to State Sales Manager he organises to have post contract variation forms couriered to my work as I still haven't received them at my home address .

I finally get my post contract variations at 4:30pm on Friday 14th of Nov. To my absolute surprise the address in title shows old address furthermore I needed to have it signed and returned by the 14th of Nov (i.e. the same day). I contact State Sales Manager on the Monday to update details on file as they are the wrong address and to give us more than 30mins for my partner and me to sign.

New contract is sent with correct address to our home for us to sign and return. Except now they managed to update the street address but not the suburb, luckily I stayed in the same post code and there aren't 2 streets with the same name in my post code. To make matters worse the $5000 promotional bonus I was meant to receive was reworked and I was short changed to $4993. In the grand scheme of things $7 isn't anything, however, if they can't get my address and simple arithmetic right, what chance do they have on building my home?

Furthermore, someone could at least acknowledge the mistake when it's brought to their attention. As little as $7 is, I do find it rude to not acknowledge that the mistake exists and at least make mention of that and ask me if I would want that credited to the account. Either way I am not interested in the $7 it would probably cause more delays and be more hassle than what it is worth.

The overwhelming feeling I am left with is that no one really cares at AVJennings in delivering anything on time or accurately. As I have mentioned earlier I have appreciated the courteous approach everyone has given at AVJennings especially my sales consultant who has always answered his phone and did in fact call me back when he was on holiday. However, we when are expecting our second child with the promise of our house being ready 2 months before our baby is due. To now being told that at the latest we will have it July 2010 but will try for May (same month our baby is due). Leaves me and my partner feeling that perhaps AVJennings wasn't the best choice we ever made.

These are the Facts:

"¢ I was told that handover should be up around March (8 months from signing contract 29th June)

o 3 months with council

o 5 months build time (inc Christmas break)

"¢ New dates blown out by 2 ½ months, delays caused by AVJennings themselves due to sending wrong information to private certifiers and someone being out of the office for 2 weeks.

If things changes I will be sure to re post and leave my comments as I did want to make this complaint internally. I also think that both the good and bad should be posted on sites like this. I applaud Carolyn Pigot for coming on here and seeing if she can resolve the original OP issues. I do not know if anything can be done in my situation or what my options are, but to say I am frustrated with the current situation is a huge understatement.

If anyone has any advice on what else can be done it would be a great help.

- Andy

AV Jennings Norwood SA , terrible customer service if you expect some sort of hearing forget about it . I was given the buildings supervisors number and told to contact him directly as customer care could not help.

When I couldn't get hold of him I was told now you know what we have to put up with ! Little or no supervision of tradespersons on site leading to longer finishing times and poor workmanship despite saying that a supervisor will be on site every 3 days . Complete disregard for external building inspector's reports even when dangerous shortcuts are made by tradespersons. Unless you escalate to the General Manager and go to the department of consumer affairs then do not expect to be listened to.

Never again will I purchase or build with AV Jennings, a disaster. I am only sorry I didn't come across this site sooner as I was unaware how bad a company they were.

If you are thinking of purchasing a home ask them for references and also check with consumer affairs the amount of complaints that they have against them. Do not believe anything they say.

After Paying AV Jennings $240,000 to build my house, after hand-over(and final payment) they were no longer interested.

Although the contract stipulates a "3 month maintenance period", once they've got your money you're no longer of any interest to them.

Admittedly they sent an odd-job man around to tidy up a few minor issues on my list which took him about 2 hours (1/2 hr. to do the work and 1 1/2 hrs telling me all the AVJ gossip and intrigue) other significant maintenance issued have remained unaddressed.

Countless telephone calls to them, each receiving placatory promises to attend to the outstanding work, usually blaming other people in the organisation for the non-action, still leaves me waiting for the outstanding work to be done.

One person told me that the Maintenance Manager had been "let go" and that he is now doing maintenance work for AVJ on the side!

How do I get action?

Letting people know with what apathy (contempt?) AV Jennings view their customers once the final payment has been made and advising would-be home-owners to steer clear of them and find a builder with a good after sales service record is all I can do at the moment.

Any advice?