Sydney Morning Herald
April 22, 2004 Thursday
Sympathy For The Devils
by Keith Austin
Builders often get a bad rap. Here’s their side of the story.
It’s time to confess. That was YOU who gave your builder carte
blanche to finish off the bathroom while you went on holiday (“just
keep it white and simple”) and then sued him when you didn’t like the
white and simple result, wasn’t it?
And it was YOU who fell out so badly with a builder that you banned
him from the house, wasn’t it? “I had to stand in the alleyway at the
back and shout instructions over the fence to the blokes. It was
ridiculous.”
As a builder once observed on the Channel Seven program Hot Property:
“Our biggest enemy in this work, apart from the weather, is the
client.”
Stories abound of the so-called shonky builder – not surprising,
given there are 160,000 licensed builders and contractors in NSW –
but does anyone take the time to get the other side of the story; the
one in which YOU are the villain?
Harry Hogan (not his real name) is a 44-year-old, fair-skinned (trust
me, it matters) plumber who has been in the job for 28 years. His
horror story happened when he was called to the home of couple who
were doing their own renovations.
“They were typical owner-builders in that they had no idea what was
involved in a job like that.
“When I went there at the end of the job to finish off the bathroom I
noticed there was a crack on a tile near the tap. I drew the wife’s
attention to it before I started putting the new taps on, but then I
heard her say to her husband, in Armenian, that the bloody plumber
had cracked a tile and she was going to deduct $200 from the bill.
“The thing is,” he laughs now, “I’m Armenian. But because I’m fair
and most Armenians are dark they didn’t know I could understand every
word. I thought ‘f– this, I’m off’, and started to pack my tools up.
Anyway, she freaked out when I called her an ‘effing bitch’ in
Armenian. It didn’t go down too well with the husband either. I just
walked away from it and didn’t hear from them again … They were
customers from hell.”
Then he quickly adds, “I’ve got to go now because I’m being paid by
the hour and if I’m not careful this customer will turn out like
those.”
The incident mentioned in the first paragraph of this story happened
in the eastern suburbs and cost the builder involved thousands of
dollars. “They took me to court and I lost. I had to rip it all out
and replace it; it cost me $10,000. Now I’m very careful about what I
do. I make sure everything is covered in the contract.”
Another story, from Crows Nest, involves a woman who went to a
bathroom showroom, chose a suite and got a local builder to install
it. “She was horrified when she saw it,” explains the builder’s
secretary, “because she could see the pipes! She wanted it to look
exactly as it had in the showroom where, obviously, there weren’t
pipes showing because they don’t need them.”
If the clients from hell aren’t enough, there is always the nightmare
neighbour to consider. Several builders recounted stories of
neighbours who don’t like the noise or the dirt emanating from next
door. “Yeah, I’ve had neighbours turn the hose on me a few times,”
said one. “A lot of them call the police, too.”
Another told how one set of neighbours, already angry at losing a
council battle to stop an extension going up next door, refused to
let the workers step onto their land: “We had to get a cantilevered
scaffold in and every time we set one foot on their land they called
the police.”
By far the most common complaint, though, is of clients who refuse to
pay the final bill. Elizabeth Crouch, NSW executive director of the
Housing Industry Association (HIA), says they deal with cases like
this every day.
“There’s also the issue of people who go for betterment on their
property, which means they go into a dispute with a builder in order
to effect more value out of the contract,” she says.
“I can think of one case where a couple of lawyers engaged in this
and effectively got their home finished by three successive builders
as a result of going in to dispute with each of them, and each time
they got a little bit more and each time they didn’t pay.
“That was possible under the old insurance regime because you could
go automatically to an insurer and get a claim made against someone
without that builder or contractor having the opportunity to come
back and fix it.
“That’s changed now but there’s still not a lot of protection for a
builder in tribunals. The best you ever get out of a tribunal is a
50-50 sort of thing. You very rarely hear of a builder winning.
“There’s definitely been [an increase] in the level of litigation and
so on. I think that’s just a symptom of us being a far more litigious
society. And I think consumers are a bit more savvy about how they
might get around these things.”
One of the examples the HIA gave as typical involves a builder who
had almost finished a job when the clients, who had been changing
their minds constantly, presented him with a list of more than 60
items that they said had to be attended to. Then, before he could
complete them, they threw him off the site and went to the Office of
Fair Trading. In the meantime, the builder is owed $20,000.
An HIA spokesperson said: “Even if they do go back, fix the defects,
[the client will] come up with another list. We have had several
examples of this, keep coming back and coming back, getting another
list, not getting paid.”
Many years ago, one builder even had an offer from late standover man
Tim Bristow to “sort out” a couple of lawyers who were refusing to
pay the final $15,000 instalment on their renovation work. “I got to
the point where I was tempted,” he laughs now.
Michael Pyers, an executive director with HIA who wrote some of its
dispute resolution courses, says he’s lost count of the number of
times builders have come to him and said, “I’ve built this lovely
house, there’s nothing wrong with it, but the people won’t pay me.”
Very often the problem is that people have borrowed $300,000 to build
a house, a few things happen along the way, and they run out of
money.
“The building of a home is an emotional process for both builder and
client. For the client, it’s the single biggest investment they’ll
ever make. Good builders pride themselves on their work and if you
accuse them of not doing good quality work, they do take it
personally. That’s why there’s a lot of emotion. Proper mediation can
get behind that and get to the real issues.”
In the 2002-2003 financial year there were 61,697 applications lodged
with the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT), of which 5685
related to home building work.
In an effort to increase mediation in building disputes, the NSW
Government introduced the Home Building Service in July last year.
Operated under the umbrella of the Office of Fair Trading it was
created to license, regulate and investigate builders.
“In the first six months, 840 dispute resolutions have been carried
out by inspectors and the results have been outstanding, with 80 per
cent of the cases resolved by agreement,” says Reba Meagher, the NSW
Minister for Fair Trading.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Alfred Kittel, 50, a builder
based in Forest Lodge, once had a client who changed his mind on a
kitchen at the last moment. This is a common area of conflict: when
customers are unable to visualise what the plans will look like in
reality.
“The thing is, everything can be done, it just comes down to money,”
Kittel says. “It cost a few thousand dollars but [the client] was
prepared to pay for it. If he’d decided he didn’t want to pay for it,
we’d have had a sh–fight on our hands.”
See? It can be done. It’s down to you.
How to take the cuss out of customer
* Take time before the job to develop a good working relationship
with the client.
* Keep up to date with paperwork.
* Take notes and always record meetings by sending a letter
afterwards saying, “These were the issues discussed and the outcomes
agreed”.
* Don’t take it personally.
* Try to find out whether they have had building work done before and
what their experience was.
As of March 1 this year, builders and subcontractors in NSW have had
to take part in a “continuing professional development program” under
the auspices of the Office of Fair Trading. To renew their licence in
the future, they will have to certify that they’ve completed various
training courses and seminars each year. For more information check
the HIA website ().
Keith Austin’s tips on being nice to your builders
1. Make tea For some reason, all workmen thrive on tea, even before
they’ve done a skerrick of work. I suspect it’s psychological; they
might be working for you, but who’s making the tea, hmmm?
2. Move stuff before they get there There will be dirt, there will be
dust, so it’s best to relocate the silk Persian rug to save problems
later.
3. Put your spirit level away and do not hover – it makes them
nervous A watched kettle never boils, does it? At this stage in the
process, it’s time to trust them to do the job.
4. Which bring us to: time is money The longer you hang around asking
idiot questions, the longer the job takes.
5. Which brings us to: time is limited Every big building job is a
logistical puzzle, with each specialist an integral part of the
jigsaw. Slow the electrician down and you slow the plasterer who, in
turn, slows the tiler, who in turn …
6. Make more tea
Sympathy For The Devils
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