I have entrusted my first and newly BTO flat with Absolook and would like to conclude my journey with them was an unpleasant and disappointed experience. Below are the positive and negative qualities based on my renovation process.
Positive
They do have a handful of skilled and passionate sub-contractors in hand. All their sub-contractors are very knowledgeable in the area of their focus and will give honest and valuable suggestions. These guys are really helpful and trying their best to extend their help to us as and when required.
Absolook does have an inspector in place to check on the whole renovation process. The inspector played a very important role as he has the power to spot on defects and fine their respective contractors who did sloppy work. The inspector has very sharp eyesight in spotting defects and was more customer-orientated than my id and the manager. He was the one who speed up the whole touch-up process within 3 days as promised as it was dragging too long in the hands of our ID. Besides that, he listens to our issue with id and manager without been defensive and always set the right tone throughout our communication. Just for information, our whole renovation process took us about 3 months to finish off.
Negative
Lack of idea. Before signing the contract, we did show our id as to what we want through images but after confirmation, the 3D design turned out to be a rather simple one and was nothing near to what we had showed him. Rather than leaving him alone to draft out the 2nd 3D, we provided him as to what we want to do but with a cost to pay for which was charge to us for every single item that we want to do.
ID was lacking in experience and inattentive. Before the start of renovation, we have emphasized again and again on our expectations in certain areas. However, when renovation started, there will some areas that the id missed out or due to lack in experience was not able to detect earlier before the start of the renovation so add-on was required whenever the contractors came site survey. In addition, whenever problem surfaces, it was resolved either by the contractors or ourselves through argument.
ID was not helpful and irresponsible for instance, DO for home appliances was not in his job scope as he does not want to be responsible for the delivery thus suggest us to deliver and lock it up in a room. Then my question to him was what if the item delivered gone missing, his reply to me was report police.
ID and manager were trying all ways to charge us. For example (just one out of the many incidents), the paint used to paint the bomb shelter’s door and the door frames of the rooms can be used interchangeably but they claimed it can’t be done so.
ID will only come onsite when serious matter happens or if called upon. Absolook do have many projects in our BTO area but often we saw our neighbour’s ID more than ours.
ID and manager were not customer-orientated as they will lose their patient and raise their voices and more importantly, whenever there are arguments they do not know how to manage us. For instances, it was our first time telling them that we will comment on Facebook about their work and their reply to us was using lawyers to threaten us if we do such posting.
Electrician charges was way too high by Absolook where nearly $5k without GST was quoted leaving us with no choice to outsource it. When such decision was made, my ID started to push responsibility by saying “if should there be any damages on their carpentry that was caused by electrician works, they will charge to the electrician company”. He also makes it clear that he will not be involve in the electrician works since we are not using theirs. Hence, we have to oversee the electrician works on our own.
With that, before starting renovation, we do have high expectations with Absolook as we believe that do have a good team who are meticulous in ensuring a smooth-sailing renovation process through their fabulous Facebook reviews and websites. However, after engaging them, it was not like how it was mentioned in their website that “making the whole process hassle-free and a pleasure experience”. We felt that our renovation journey was a hair-pulling and teeth-gritting experiences whenever we shared with anyone.
(PS: We do know of neigbours who engage Absolook but by different ID were not facing such problems like us so choosing the right ID is very IMPORTANT.)
