Friday evening had me receiving a phone call that left me furious. Over 10 days earlier, I'd been in for a contract signing, but had made it clear three weeks before that even that I wouldn't be signing anything neither myself nor my solicitor had had ample time to read over.
Of course they left it until the day before to send me even the basics, which consisted on of prices, colour selections and structural diagrams, with no specifics on payment dates, penalties, build times etc.
Those contracts went straight from Metricon in Notting Hill to my solicitor in Blackburn, so that process was started basically straight away.
In the meantime, they were to get me updated copies of the certificate of currency for their insurance and something in writing stating the variations we were making. The latter is important not because of the small changes, but because their variation fee is $2000! It would mean that should they turn around and say "no, we're building what's in the contract", and "forget" about these changes, they couldn't turn around and say "okay, that's a $1 variation... plus a $2000 variation fee".
So the purpose of the call to me seemed to be to question why I hadn't yet returned the contract(s), but then - get this - to be accused of delaying "over $70".
I couldn't seem to get it through - no, it's not about the $70; it's about the $2000. It's about me making sure that what I want is written in the contract, so noone down the track can say "oh, we didn't agree to that". Because you can be damned sure when it goes the other way, that's what they're going to try to pull. Much of the weekend has been spent contemplating writing an angry letter to the GM, and making a phone call to the nearest Burbank sales rep.
Monday just now, they've only just called me back to say "Oh, I'm writing up that variation now... uhm, what were those changes you wanted again?"
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