OF BANKS AND BUILDERS!

The past week has been one of great frustration, started on Wednesday with a Progress Payment request from the Builder. The Invoice was dated 1/2/08 arrived 6/2/08 and required payment by 8/2/08 with a rider at the bottom saying late payments may incur penalties!

Rang Bank's Mortgage Progress Payment (call centre) hotline (6/2/08) and requested that the first progress payment be made to builder. No problems it will be done straight away although it may take 48 hrs to actually arrive in the builders account.

On 7/2/08 checked our account online and there was no evidence of our construction loan being drawn down. This caused another call to the banks hotline this time we got another customer service person(CSP) who checked file and said that there were a couple of problems;-

1. Bank requires a progress inspection for this stage (Slab) before loan can be drawn down! Inspection due on 8/2/08.
2. We will also need to pay our contribution at this time.

Fine I said I will pay ours now via Internet, no need for that says CSP just nominate your account and we will do it from here.

Come Friday no movement in our accounts so rang again, yet another CSP! this time the progress inspection will now take place on 11/2/08! and all being well payment will be made sometime after that. Patience wearing thin by this time!

Tuesday rolls around and we get a call from the builder asking where's the payment and are you aware that penalties may be applied? I then pointed out that the short time frame they had given to pay (5 working days) and the fact that we did not get invoice until 2 days before deadline had made it impossible to arrange payment by the 8/2/08. I also pointed out how long it had taken them to provide us with all our variation costings (nearly 2 months) yet when it came down to us coughing up some cash they were very quick of the mark. I must admit that I was none to friendly about it. Began to cool down and went on to explain that the bank says that payment will be made after progress inspection.

13/2/08 and still no news from the bank so rang again (another long wait on hold) and yet another CSP, went through the whole story yet again and CPS checked file. Yes progress inspection was on Monday and money will be paid today.

Checked accounts yesterday and no sign off any drawdown on loan and no payments made from our designated account to builder!

Checked accounts again today and still nothing!!! Rang builder to see if they had actually been paid. Yes they were paid on Wednesday!!!

We can only hope that we do not have to go through all this crap everytime a payment is due. When all is finished I will be writing a carefully worded letter to the Bank telling them just what I think of their customer service! Nuff said!!!