Skip to main content

Construction issues resolution in Sydney - Part 8


With the New Year resolutions came new wave of communication with the vendor and builder regarding unresolved defects from last year.

Vendor has been contacted by the owner, because:

- In the contract of sale there is a clause which states that all defects should be reported within 3 months after settlement and should be repaired by the vendor (and at the vendor's expense) within 6 months after settlement

- The vendor and their relevant contacts were notified numerous times about those defects and their response has been always "all issues will be resolved" which changed to "the building came with 12 months warranty and the responsibility passed on to all owners"

- The owner didn't have any direct agreements or contracts with the builder. Therefore it has been decided to work with the vendor.

An email correspondence with the vendor looked like this:

Owner (O): Hi, it's been two years since the defects were reported, but not fixed yet. What's your opinion?

Vendor (V): Building came with warranty - owners are responsible.

O: But how about the contractual obligation? I am looking at the legal options to resolve the problem.

V: Your legal options are up to yourself.

O: Ok then, I am lodging a complaint with the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal

V: Please appreciate that I need to discuss with the builder. Can I see the defects myself? I remember the one with waterproofing - isn't it fixed? Could you send me the defects description and the date of notice please?

So the magic words worked. In addition to that the owner is determined to go to court if necessary, because spending two years doing nothing, but pretending something is happening is not funny at all.

The vendor came to see the defects again. Then they sent an email: one defect will be partially resolved and another defect they have to investigate! Two years wasn't enough for sure.

Other posts from this story to see where the issues started and how painful it is to make people do what they should.

Also just have a look at my post regarding strata living and what to look at before and when you buy a strata unit.

To be continued...
  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Wine - 2011 Brown Brothers Crouchen Riesling

Very nice wine with fruity taste - peach and pear: Consumed with Hungarian salami. Tasting notes .

Scrum - Team Culture and Wall Manifesto

In the Scrum framework one of the key components is the wall and daily stand-up. In some organisations I worked with the whole concept of the wall is not accepted by many developers, because of the stand-up necessity and "time waste". Very often all that methodology is used for the sake of methodology and not to achieve what we actually do - adding or creating value to our customer (usually called "The Business"). I can understand frustration that is caused by the wall and stand-up process. From the software developer perspective it is really a waste of time for the following reasons: 1. In 95% of cases developers are head down working like hell delivering valuable outcomes that they are accountable for. Extra effort to go to the wall, staying there for 15-30 minutes and listening or not listening to what others were doing yesterday and will be doing tomorrow is annoying for them; 2. The mere fact of having to do something mandatory to do that looks like

Mastering The Multitasking

There is usually two distinct perspectives on multi-tasking: 1. Multitasking is counterproductive. We get distracted by multiple tasks that all get our way and fight for our scarce attention, time and resources. This leads to a common fallacy that if you do multiple activities “at a time” you are not doing good work in any of those. 2. Multitasking is a way of getting many things done in a short period of time or in a long run. Indeed it can be either a disaster or a great helper depending on how it is used and practiced. Most recent research shows that we don’t do multiple tasks purely in parallel or simultaneously. That means we don’t purely multi-task, but switch between tasks and execute them one at a time, but by spending very small timeframes on each task. A good example from the history is a story about Julius Caesar capabilities in that area. Plutarch writes, “Caesar disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directi