Stuart Bruce, self proclaimed PR Guru, says that this is “One of the best examples of a small business blogging I’ve seen.”

Which is nice.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on the phone with Jane Hughes. She’s writing a piece for the Mail on Sunday, about blogging and the benefits it brings.

In Crest Nicholson news, still no sign of a statement of work for the work that they’re supposed to be carrying out tomorrow…

Kisby, Jeanette wrote:

I am writing to advise that a cheque for the sum of £120 will be sent out today in the first class post to your address at X Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxx.

I’ve just confirmed that those funds have cleared my account, and I have called the Court to arrange for matters to be concluded.

I will of course be updating the pages at

http://www.newhomeblogs.co.uk/weblog1/

with the latest developments. And hello to your other colleagues who appear to have been reading that site over the last few months.

While I have your attention, I wonder if you could give John Lewsley a bit of a kick — he’s been promising to send me a statement of work for work that Crest have booked for next Tuesday, but he’s not returning my phone calls, and so far, hasn’t provided that statement.

Read on for more.

Court

As described in an earlier entry, kicking off the process of taking Crest Nicholson to court has got them to move a little faster.

I received a letter from them dated the 6th September¹ that says:

Please find enclosed a cheque for the sum of 3,000 as refund of retainer with regard to the above property.

and then on the 15th September (after more prompting from myself)

Please find enclosed a cheque to the value of 120 as refund for the County Court fee incurred.

They’ve now been deposited, and when the funds clear I’ll do whatever’s necessary at the MoneyClaim site to cancel the proceedings.

You’ll note that neither of these letters contain any hint of an apology, or explanation as to why Crest Nicholson breached the contract.

¹ They didn’t even have the wit to date the cheque earlier, and claim that the delay was down to the post.

Snagging

Snagging’s been an ongoing process.

John Lewsley, Crest Nicholson’s HomeCare Manager came over on the 6th, and we spent some time going around the house.

This included pointing out that some of our windows still don’t have insulation seals fitted. Incredibly, this is work that Crest Nicholson’s own worksheet (which they left for us to find when we moved in) showed as being complete.

John’s visit also served to highlight the duplicitous behaviour of some of Crest Nicholson’s other representatives. If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that I wrote about getting a list of work that was required written down, agreed to, and signed by Steve Driscoll. This included:

Decoration around sockets in the study is poor — bare plaster is visible. Remove sockets, repaint, re-fix sockets.

I showed this to John (as, not to my complete lack of amazement, that work’s not been done) and he tells me that he can’t understand why Steve would sign this, as there’s no way that Crest Nicholson’s decorators ould remove sockets once they’ve been wired up.

At this point I don’t especially care whether Steve was lying when he agreed to sign the document, or John’s lying when he tells me Crest won’t do this. I just know that dealing with the mendacity is getting tiresome.

One of the other things John was supposed to do when he was here was locate and read the meters. Electric and gas meters were read with no problems. But despite searching high and low John failed to find the water meter.

I find it absolutely staggering that Crest Nicholson would send out someone to read the meters without first making absolutely sure that the person they send out knows how to find the meters. It speaks volumes about their competence.

I’m waiting for the first water bill with interest.

We walked around the house pointing out things that still weren’t
right.

These include:

• Missing equipment from the oven (it’s taken two attempts, as they sent the wrong size bits the first time, but Crest have now partially rectified this; we’re still waiting for the final items though).
• A faulty extractor fan in the downstairs WC
• Loose fittings in the shower on the top floor
• The aforementioned missing window seals
• Light fittings that don’t work
• Replacing the handles on the kitchen units, many of which are loose after light use, and some have detached completely

When he left John promised me that he’d send me a full statement of the work that Crest Nicholson are due to carry out when they visit on the 27th. That was almost two weeks ago. Despite repeated chasing, it’s not been forthcoming. Just another commitment that Crest Nicholson have, so far, failed to honour.

Stop Press

We had Crest Nicholson’s electricians, Riley McLaren, in the other week, to comission the telephone extension sockets after BT had enabled the master socket.

This took some chasing from Crest Nicholson, who eventually decided it was something they’d do. The letter said:

I have spoken with your Homecare Manager John Lewsley and
he advised that Crest Nicholson only hard wire extention(sic) sockets which is something that should have been explained to you by our Sales Department. However, on this occasion as a gesture of goodwill we will instruct our Electricians Riley & Mc CLaren (sic) to contact you to make arrangements.

There are four extension sockets on the ground floor, and one on the first floor.

At the moment, only one of them works…

From: Jeanette Kisby

Please be advised that we will make arrangements to process your retention fee of £3000 back to you as soon as possible without delay.

I’ve replied, reminding them that this needs to include the £120 I incurred in starting the legal action. John Lewsley from Crest Nicholson is coming round tomorrow to do the proper handover. I did suggest they give him a cheque to give to me…

Of course, I found this out because I was researching how to make a claim against Crest Nicholson. Pictons had no luck getting a response from Crest Nicholson, and said that the best way to proceed is via the Small Claims Court. I’ve done that now. The text of the claim is below the fold.

On August 15th 2005 I completed purchase of a property from Crest Nicholson. The purchase included the part exchange of my previous property. Per the contract, Crest retained

As part of the part exchange contract, Crest Nicholson retained

… yes, I was a bit shocked too. Anyway, we’ve agreed to meet at the house next Tuesday morning to run through the post move snags, get the meters read, and so on.

He did say that the earliest Crest Nicholson will be able to rectify any of these matters is the 27th September though. I wonder how many times that date is going to slip?

Unfortunately, I was on a conference call at the time and couldn’t take his call. But the message he left said that he’d try again tomorrow.

However, the poor quality of some of Crest’s work has manifested itself yet again…

One of the pre-existing aerial points, wired and fitted by Crest Nicholson, doesn’t work. At all. Which means there’s a fault in the cable somewhere. I’ll be interested to see how they fix this without having to dig it out of the wall.

So I gave them a call at 14.55 today. This was also a good opportunity to chase up the other snags I’d reported to them a week ago, as they hadn’t had the courtesy to follow up.

This time I spoke to Sue in Customer Care, and explained that I’d called a week previously, and had had nothing back from Crest Nicholson. Then I explained that the TV point in the master bedroom does not work.

She said this will be passed to John Lewsley, the Home Care Manager, but she couldn’t tell me when I would hear from him. I left landline and mobile phone numbers to reach me, so there’s no excuse for them not getting back to me.

Pretty much all of yesterday was spent moving. I had hoped that Crest Nicholson might not manage to get anything wrong on the day, but they even managed to make something as simple as handing the keys over unnecessarily complicated.

But first…

Credit where it’s due. First Ever Ready Removals were great. They turned up on time, had cleared the house within three hours, made it to the new house OK (with only a minor hitch because it’s not on any maps yet), and managed the whole thing in less than nine hours. And what’s more, nothing got broken in the process. I’ve got no hesitation in recommending them to anyone that needs to move.

Anyway, back to Crest Nicholson.

It took sometime in the week leading up to the move to get any information from Crest Nicholson about exactly how the property handover would take place. Crest Nicholson’s sales office isn’t on the site any more, and they wouldn’t tell me whether I would be met at the house, or whether I would have to go to the estate agents and pick up the keys from them.

I sent an e-mail about this to Crest Nicholson last Friday, who eventually got back to me that day, saying:

1. Completion has been arranged for Monday 15 August next. However, please be advised that it can happen during any part of the day. Provided your instructions are with the bank fairly early on the day, we can then arrange the handover of the property to you, ideally by a member of Crest staff. Alternatively, Connells can hand over the keys (with our authorisation)and a formal handover by a Crest member of staff to follow a couple of days later.

3. The property has been subject to a prior to “move in” clean.

4. Jeanette has forwarded a copy of your email and the subsequent items to Steve Driscoll today for his information plus left a phone message for him on his mobile a short time ago – awaiting his return call. However this will not affect completion on Monday 15 August.

A couple of things there.

First, notice that it doesn’t actually say how or where the key handover will take place. It doesn’t talk about where I should be handing over the keys to my house either.

Moving home is supposed to be one of the most stressful things you can do. You’d think that Crest Nicholson might have some interest in providing some basic information to help make the actual moving day go a little more smoothly.

But no — at the eleventh hour they can’t commit to when the keys will be available or who I should pick them up from.

Second, notice that there’s no point 2. That’s a bit odd.

Thirdly (and as I write this it’s the 23rd, well over a week after moving) and I’ve still not heard from Steve Driscoll.

Anyway, back to moving day.

Crest Nicholson eventually spoke to me on Monday, telling me to drop my keys off with one of the local estate agents who’d been selling my house (fair enough), and that they’d have a rep at the new house at 2.30 in order to hand the keys over.

Great. Moving out of my place finished by 1pm (and I’d had a call from my solicitors to say that we’d completed at 11.55am), so by the time I’d dropped my keys off and headed on to the new place it would be about 2.30, or 2.45-ish. So I arranged with my girlfriend that she’d be at the house before 2.30 to wait for the Crest Nicholson rep.

Traffic on the M1 was a little more hectic than I’d expected, and I got to the new house at about 2.40 to discover my girlfriend sitting outside, and no sign of a Crest Nicholson rep. She’d been waiting since 2.25, and there’d been no one from Crest Nicholson Nicholson turn up.

As you can imagine, this did not leave me in the best frame of mind.

So I get on the phone to Crest, and am told by them that Jackie Yarwood is supposed to be on site handing over the keys. I explain (through gritted teeth) that she’s not there, and would they please pull their finger out, find her, and get me the keys ASAP.

About 15 minutes later I get phoned back by Crest Nicholson. This time they tell me that actually Jackie’s not on site, but that if I make my way to plot 7 (which is the house they’re still trying to sell) the keys are with a Crest rep there.

No problem there — except that the plot numbers don’t bear any resemblance to the house numbers of the houses that are already occupied; all of which now have their house numbers up.

I eventually find the show home and am handed a large brown envelope containing assorted bunches of keys by an (admittedly fairly apologetic) Crest Nicholson rep (who’s definitely not Jackie), along with a warning that some of they keys may stick a bit.

That’s it.

No welcome to the house. No “Thank you for your purchase”. No “We hope you’ll be happy”.

Sadly, I’m not very surprised by that.