We signed our draft contracts and paid our deposits, however, we then added a variations, in which we were happy to pay for as an extra.
These variations was what caused us all the hassles. The overall draft invoice we signed included variation cost (including GST). When the final contracts were created and invoiced for our review, what Damco did was they removed all the variation components out of the original invoice, and recreated a new separate variation invoice. Which we were happy about as it offered clarity, however, their accounting during the process of separation was not accurate.
The main issues I found that required rectification was:
- The original variation which total $7900 was discount to $6000 (not including GST) and agree upon to secure my business. Then this was added to the overall invoice and GST applied, which equated to a total variation cost of $6600 including GST.
- When this invoice was separated out of the original contract, the GST was not appropriated accounted for, and as a result when we made amendments to this variation, effectively a doubling of the GST was applied.
- The confusion was worsened when we removed the costing for a bath (cost of tiling, carpentry, wet proofing etc) as it was too big to fit in our ensuite, and replaced it/substituted it for a walk in shower.
- When Damco account the substitution for the bath/shower, the removed the credit us the amount post GST and the charged us the amount of the shower with full GST cost. In other words the double dipped.
I will be posting at the end of the build the full listing of cost incurred during the renovation.
At Damco we are now primarily dealing with Nikhol (Designer/ Final contracts person) and Szabi (Project Manager). At this stage I am impressed with both Nik and Szabi, and they have been to this day very responsive to all my concerns and needs. Szabi who is managing the build seems to be very experienced, having a background in carpentry. In a nutshell they are great guys to deal with and very professional.
We had a pathetic experience we had with Damco during the free consultation period with Damco’s designer Rick Galla Riva who asked us to pay $ 1000 on the free consultation session to calm his insecurity levels for his impractical designs.
ReplyDeleteThe most impolite designer Rick, who had his mind set that I was there to take his designs for free in the free consultation session as my spouse hadn’t showed up on time and also cause he was threatened by Masters being his competition for designing our home.
He had the audacity to ask me and my partner to come back when both of would be present together or leave as he had too much work on his plate to entertain us for his self-held meeting. When we didn’t budge he bombarded us with questions relating to why we were present there when we had also consulted Masters to design our home as his competition.
His levels of insecurity dint come down till I raised my tone for indirectly distrusting us and creating a disruption to our meeting. He finally showed us his impractical kitchen design which took us 2 hours to re do by giving him ideas rather than he giving us.
Once the whole design was finalized and an average quote was given he asked for commitment from us by paying $1000 upfront on the “free consultation session”. We refused to do so as we needed to think over his ideas and get back to him with our research.
He dint believe us and refused to discuss the bathroom design and go ahead with the meeting. He also mentioned he dint care if we were upset with his behaviour as he would get 99 other customers against losing 1.
We wouldn’t recommend Rick Galla Riva, a designer of Damco, to anyone as he wouldn’t work for you unless you satisfy his insecurity levels for his impractical design that is rather is below average and nothing extraordinary.
We weren't impressed with Nikool's attitude either who ended up blaming us rather than pulling his CCTV and checking his designer's attitude with us on that day.