Good Evening,
Some of you previously assisted me in September last year with some advice with regards to a dispute with a builder/tiler.
In short, we had appointed a building company (FMB/Trust Mark registered) to put in a new floor for our kitchen from ground up (due to problems with it from another builder in the past), put in new pipe work including wet under floor heating, re-do all plumbing/electrics for our large kitchen/diner, redecorate, put in some new rads, install Sash windows and few other bits and bobs.
The work was carried out without due care and subsequently we have issues with our floor (tiles chipped, uneven floor, grout lines inconsistent in size, a few raised tiles), 3cm step into the kitchen (they had full control of the floor as it was new from ground up and not ideal as we have an immediate family member who uses a wheel chair), Sash windows were only partially ordered due to a mix up of comms between their surveyor and firm owner and they missed out some other jobs that were noted in the contract.
The builder offered some refunds but were unrealistic when compared to the cost of carrying out the repair and outstanding work.
We tried going through insurance but they only covered us up to 15k of the whole contract value, so that fell flat.
Some of you suggested at the time for me to not install our new german kitchen, which was arriving in October and delay it until we sorted out all the issues.
As my wife had a baby in October and we have two other young children, we chose not to delay the kitchen (it had been 3 months without one).
We felt even though there would be far more disruption we could carefully remove our kitchen in the future and redo the floor or possibly, raise the floor of our hall way that leads to the kitchen to the same level (We have two levels of our hall way as it is but this option would also impact a bathroom floor that is connected off the same hall way).
Due to the contract stipulating we had to go down the FMB route through any dispute at first stage, we did this but found the FMB a complete waste of time!
They did not discuss any of the points of contention throughout the process, simply forwarded our emails and the builders emails from one another and at the end said they could not do anything further.
Literally at no time did they discuss anything specific about our issues nor specifics about refunds, it was such a poor service and we do not know why they call it 'mediation'!
The whole process from FMB took around 2.5 months and in the end we are left in a worse off position.
The builder in the new proposal via FMB has had the cheek to retract some refunds he initially offered, advise some areas of the issues no longer existed (evidence of email in the first proposal offered refunds for the same issues that no longer apparently exist) and even add some extra jobs he thought he had carried out as an extra even though they were clearly noted in the contract!
As we had some building companies come out to quote us for the repair/outstanding work, we knew a rough figure that was realistic, which we advised the builder through FMB again but again FMB never discussed this or the builders response.
The dispute is now closed from FMB as they feel the company was fair/reasonable as they had offered refunds and had met me. Literally no other reasons provided!
I challenged this and asked how can they call it fair and reasonable when no independent handyman would carry out the tasks at the refunds value, let alone a building company, which they responded as they could not discuss specifics of figures and they are impartial!
Clearly they had their customers best interest at heart and had no intention from the outset to really try and 'mediate'.
Are any of you aware if TrustMark is any better or should I go straight to Small Claims now?
Thank you