taneemit T
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taneemit T
Melbourne, Victoria
Devine Landscaping- Beaware of Dodgy Guys- very poor quality and left without completing the job
I employed Devine landscaping company (from serviceseeking.com.au) to do my landscaping few months ago. They did not finish the job completely and asked for full payment saying remaining work is very little and they really needed to pay their labourer. And they would come back and finish the job the next day. Been waiting for almost 3 months now and they never came back. I tried making contacts using phone, email and sms. They kept saying they would come and fix it next week and they didn't. They asked me or my wife to stay home many times saying they would come but never did. I was pretty *** trusting and paying them the full amount without them finishing the job. Now they do not even reply phone calls or emails. There are two guys behind this dodgy company. One is responsible to traps the customer with his nice words and once they get paid, he disappears from the scene. Other one, rude and least skilled in communication - mainly does the job (or should I say bad job?). Work quality wise, they did not put Tuscan topping around my house as required to be enough to cover the base of the house. Slope is also not right so the water goes down and affect the slab and my builder already warned me about this. They did not excavate and level my backyard. It is pretty uneven (which they were supposed to fix). They put some natural grass at my backyard but there are so much gap in between the grasses and even after 3 months of completion of grass, we can see gaps between grass square carpets. At the front, they put some merbau wood border which were not aligned and part of wood already came off. They put different plants and grass than what I asked for. Pavers are not aligned and on diffent levels (due to ground not being levelled). This is really a very terrible company to go with. Stay away from them. I initially had doubts about their competence as they said they had overseas qualification. But I still go ahead and lost the money. What they left unfinished are going to cost me about $2000 extra. Lesson learnt - better pay a bit more for to someone qualified who will get your job done nicely and hassle free. I did contact serviceseeking.com.au about this landscapers as I booked them from that website. serviceseeking.com.au confirmed that they got so many complaints about this landscaper that they already blocked them from the website. Note that these guys are now using other service websites like servicecentral. How do I know they are dodgy: 1. They never provided me any official receipt. After asking them for a while, they sent me a word document just typed saying the amount received. Receipt missing their business address and contact details. They never disclosed their business details. Thus once you paid them and face any issue afterwards, you cannot find them. 2. They got multiple phone numbers. I got phone calls from them from 5 different phone numbers. I think they use different sets to trap different customers. Once they are done with them, they change to different sets. I've been chasing them up for long enough to find about all these other numbers. 3. They are not professional at all. I received very strange personal SMS from their number during the work which they said was sent by one of their teenage kids by mistake! 4. When asked for other works they had completed, they took me to a house in Point Cook and they just took me straight to the back yard without even asking the owner/tenant. I think it was all setup. 5. Work quality clearly tells how bad they are! 6. Finally, they are banned in serviceseeking.com.au due to customer complaints - which signifies that I am not the only one having issue with them. 7. They never turned up in time. Even to start, they delayed it by 4 days. When worked, they turned up in the afternoon. No respect for customers' time. Keeps lying and telling you they would come but they do not turn up. I have decided to complaint to ACCC on this matter. Businesses like this should not be allowed to operate in Australia. I am also seeking for refund for work they have not completed and a compensation on delay and not turning up. Would not hesitate to take a company (or team of 2 guys) to court if I needed to. It is clearly a robbery when they tell customer to pay the full amount with the promise to finish the job and never come back! Good luck staying away from Devine Landscaping. Their website is: http://www.devinelandscaping.com.au/.
Loss:
$5000
4 comments
taneemit T
Melbourne, Victoria
AVJennings - AV Jennings/Sekisui House - Awful customer service, very incompetent builder
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.
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Hi, great your letting people know about this company. I also had a huge problem with another landscaping company called "Discovery ", they do a lot of work on the Mornington Peninsula.
We were burnt badly by their terrible lack of management over their own time and costs. We were left with a huge bill and only a quarter of the job done.
They became very nasty and went down a legal path. I was actually quite intimidated by them and would recommend to never use this company.
Hi There,I just sent you a SMS. My email is taneemit@***.com.
I complained to Consumers Affairs Victoria first and after a month of trying to get a response from Devine, they gave up and today they called to advise me to go to court. They also said that they thought Devine got no building license and are illegal to work. Now they are investigating further against them for serious action.
Definitely that is probably not going to help us and to get any compensation or to get Devine to complete our job, we need to go to the court. Happy to assist you on this.Hope to talk soon.Cheers!
Hi Taneemit,
I had a similar experience and have decided to take them to the court.
Can i get your number so that I have 1 more person's backing.
I can speak to you in detail.
My number is 042198****.
Thanks
Hi Taneemit,
I had a similar experience and have decided to take them to the court.
Can i get your number so that I have 1 more person's backing.
I can speak to you in detail.