What a bad experience we’ve had with Plunkett recently. A $26K price increase, out of the blue. Here’s the story:
We signed a Preliminary Agreement with them in December. We did that because they gave us a quote that included a base price for the house. Variations were extra – fair enough. Next step for them was to issue a full contract. We were told the base price would stay the same, but there might be some tweaks to the variations and site works. Again, fair enough.
Our Sales Consultant looked us in the eye and said the quoted price would not change.
We waited. We had nothing to do but wait because we had no actions to complete – land was titled, settled and finance was ticked off.
We waited.
Then, out of the blue – an email saying the base price of the house had gone up 26K. That’s not the variations, just their standard base price. The email contained the company line about rising costs of supply, but what’s that got to do with us? We’d already agreed a price.
Clever Plunkett invoked a clause saying that because it was more than 45 days between us signing our Preliminary Agreement, and Plunkett issuing the contract, they were entitled to put the price up. But it was Plunkett that took more than 45 days, there was no hold-up from our side. It appears that it’s OK for Plunkett to penalise us for their inefficiency. Well, it might be OK in the small print, but that doesn’t make it right.
At the time of writing, we’re still waiting for a valid contract to be issued. We did get one last week, over 11 weeks after we signed the Preliminary Agreement. How does it take 11 weeks to issue a standard contract? Who knows. And even after 11 weeks it was wrong and had to be sent back.
So, we’ve started looking around at other builders. We’re fine with walking away from our deposit of $3.5K. Even though we’d be out of pocket, there’s no point throwing good money after bad.
It would be easy to think that we’re only thinking of switching because we’re miffed and we’re cutting our noses off to spite our faces. But there’s another question that keeps forming in my suspicious mind: “What other surprises are there in store?” “What further price rises will we be hit with?” What schedule promises will they make and not keep?” We need to work with a company we can trust.
Dave and Katy who we know have just been hit with the same hike from Plunkett. And they’re at a much later stage. Looks like Plunkett has a cashflow problem, and that doesn’t bode well for their future or our future. Having said that, it might still be easier to stay with Plunkett – switching might cost more, or take longer. Judith is still keen on giving them a chance. I’m not though.
There are some interesting stats on the web thing about customer service. The graph is from a 2022 survey, annually conducted by Finances Online and can be found here. The source of these data originate from the likes of American Express and Microsoft. I’m definitely in that 91% band, at the very least in that 33% band. In fact I’m in all the bands.
Last weekend we started visiting display homes and talking to other builders. It seems they too are seeing a steady flow of people disenchanted with Plunkett. We’ve seen some nice houses, we’re starting to look at alternative plans – and we’re liking so far what we’re hearing and seeing from Plunkett’s competition. We’re a bit hook-shy right now though, so unfortunately for the sales people out there we’re being a lot choosier and more cautious than we were last time. I’m sure someone out there will win a sale from us but they’ll have to do a lot more convincing than last time.