Avoid (General Building Works) at all cost

[minh]

Hello All,

Please avoid this building compamy. We had bought a house back in Jan 14 and wanted to get the whole house refurbished with a kitchen extension.

We found this building company and have agreed the payment and the time frame of the work. So the work started around April.

Up until now the full work has not been completed he stopped sending in people for about 2 months which delayed the work and they wanted more money from us without justifying why the final payment more then what we actually calculated.

As we havent agreed to his final payment he has left and have not given us the certificates we need for the electrical, gas, or plumbing.

So please avoid

GENERAL BUILDING WORKS

251 STANFORD RD

LONDON

SW16 4QH

[stevie23b]

Did he speak with an east european accent?

[peristalsis]

The company name is Martin General Building Works Ltd. They've recently started the process of closing the company down. http://companycheck.co.uk/company/08320950

[minh]

Yea they were Polish. The times they was here i must say they did a good job but a shame of not finishing the job and take over a year and the job has not completed

[stevie23b]

nmmm. could be two sides to this story.

[minh]

Depends on how you look at it. But i would not recommend them. We had stopped the payment due to the lack of progress they were making. Each week we would have paid them according to what work has been done. Everysaturday we would come in and discuss what the next work would been done for the next week. 2-3 weeks nothing was done and still expected money. Obviously seeing that there was no progression and only sending in 1 person and not sure what he was doing we stopped the payment. Initially stated that the job would have completed by august. As there was delayes we accounted 2 months extra so thinking the job would have completed by Oct which was not. Then promised the job will be completed by Nov did not happend. So basically he was leading us on thinking the job would be completed. we had notap installed for a few weeks in the kitchen , i had to install the taps myself.

Each time he sends only 1 or 2 people. To protect ourselves we had to stop payment as there was still quite alot of work to do and the payments we have made does not match up to what works has been done. If the work was completed as stated we would not have stopped the payment.

Nevermind we have got someone else to come in and finished the work now, but just wanted all to be aware.

[citylover]

Do you have the names of any of the guys? I had an absolute nightmare with some Eastern European builders recommended on here, alarmingly when I re-looked up the review it had disappeared. I contacted the guy (I'd copied & pasted it) who wrote the review and he told me he'd taken it off because the guy had since disappeared for a few weeks, he thought he'd be back at some point but didn't know when. That was just one if the many problems I experienced. I'd be interested to see if it was the same lot.