Monday 22 December 2014

A simple case of forgery......

December 11, 2014 was our long awaited colour and electrical appointment.

We'd spent weeks and weeks researching ideas on our colour schemes, even taking a long trip over to Geelong just to check out a floor.  I'd marked out on a plan where I'd like down lights, batten lights, power points and light switches.  I wanted to make this day as easy as possible.

It turned out to be anything but........

It was less than 2 weeks before our appointment and we still hadn't received a copy of our drawings to view.  I emailed our pre-start consultant for a copy and thankfully she was prompt in sending them through.

The first thing I notice on our plans is that an internal wall which we had specifically asked to be no more than 350 x 350mm was in fact 360 x 470mm. We took this around to our Sales Consultant who immediately remembered our wall request and said to bring it up at the colours meeting and if they have any issues to call him about it.  He has been absolutely fantastic throughout the whole experience.



We brought it up alright, it was one of the very first things we discussed at the meeting.  When I asked the consultant about it, she grabbed out a copy of our Preliminary Works Contract (PWC) and flicked to the page with the note about the wall.  As she was doing this, I grabbed out my own copy of the PWC (a photocopy of the original document) and immediately noticed something was different.  On our copy, the note about the wall was item # 14, on her copy it was item #13....."That's weird I thought".  Reading the note on their copy, I noticed it was also worded differently.

Our copy read:
LIVING - Provide 350mm gap between Dining Elevation D Stacker Door and Living Elevation C Sliding Door.
Note: Position pending drafting approval.

Their copy read:
Note: Sliding door to be installed 350mm approx. from internal corner between Living and Outdoor Living

After I read this, I turned both copies around to face the consultant and asked her to compare the signatures at the bottom of the page.  Her face immediately dropped........

She noticed the same thing I did; the signatures were different.  It was obvious that someone had changed the note and then forged our signatures on the bottom of the page.

After that it turned out to be a weird, uncomfortable day.  The only time my husband and I had to discuss the situation was whilst the consultant had run away to 'deal' with the issue.  This had all occurred within the first 15mins of the meeting, so we decided to press on; after all, we had already taken the day off work for this, we might as well do what we came here to do.

As we were fairly organised, the day went by rather quickly after that.

Needless to say it was a very interesting conversation in the car on the way home.

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