Off-plan not built to advertised plan

Leo2020

@ lord tyrannus - Well I did tweet them first. Keepmoat have responded to my husband's Facebook message via Facebook but they have not contacted us via email since last Thursday.

Go for the website, you never know it might get your problems with Taylor Whimpey sorted. Or at the least you might feel better for getting it off your chest.

@terrierlady - We were not shown the full plans until early September (we reserved in May). We only saw artists impressions and a generic layout (but we didn't know it was generic at the time). It wasn't, for us any way, that the plans changed its that they didn't show us the plans. In hindsight we should have asked but we did know we needed to, we thought we had been shown everything we needed to see.

We did go to see the sales office regularly/see the house from a distance. It's only later on when they opened up the road did we see the house fully - and then noticed the difference with the house we had reserved versus the others.

We didn't assume the show home would be the same, the sales person said it would be. She even said something along the lines of "it's even the same way round and everything". The thing is I don't think she was trying to mislead us, I think she didn't know that the plot was different to all the others of the same type. But as the sales person she should have known.

You have made some very good points though, unfortunately too late for us but hopefully others will know what they should be asking when buying a new house.

[Deleted User]

I'd love to know exactly what happened. Did they always plan to build it that odd way, or was it just some kind of !!!!-up?

Leo2020

The house was always meant to be that way round.

Keepmoat solicitors have sent our solicitor a fax. They have agreed to reimburse our costs as they admit breaking the Code for Home Builders but have accused of being liars in regards to the website. They have suggested that we have lied to ruin Keepmoat's reputation and we have 7 days (that's from yesterday, as we were only told today by our solicitor) to take the site down. They haven't told us what lies we have told just that our site contains "untruths". The fax says that Keepmoat may pursue us through the courts if we don't take the site down.

Keepmoat could have tried an apology, reimbursing our costs, plus a bit for goodwill and then requested the site be taken down. They have chosen to play hard ball.

We are not rich people and it's looking like unless we want to get our !!! sued off we are going to have to take down the site. We know we are telling the truth, Keepmoat know we are telling the truth, the large amount of emails and recordings on the site back up our story. But we know if we have made one mistake on the site then Keepmoat's solicitors will make mincemeat of us.

Our own solicitor actually liked the website and said that in his opinion that what we have wrote is not defamatory but advised of what we already knew - that they have more money than us if they want to pursue it through the courts they will. He also told us, that all Estate Agents and House Builders "pee in the same pot" and if we want to ever sell our house again then we might want to take the site down because EAs might refuse to sell it for us.

chris_m

I would be inclined to reply, advising that as soon as your costs reimbursement has actually cleared into your bank account then you will take the site down.

You could also offer to transfer the domain name to them, thereby they can be sure that you (or someone else) won't reinstate the site.

Leo2020

I'm not transferring the domain. When it comes back on the market after it expires in 2 years time they can buy it if they want or not. Don't really care.

Even if someone else was to buy the domain name it wouldn't have the same content anyway.

Their solicitor sent a fax to our solicitor saying they would reimburse and asking for our account details. They can't really deny saying it.

Taking the website down goes against everything I believe in. But we can't afford to take the big boys on. Money brings you so much power.

[Deleted User]

It's okay, I archived the whole thing and Google's cache is still there. You can't really remove anything from the internet.

The internet never forgets and Keepmoat will never be allowed to live this one down. It will be preserved somewhere safe, well beyond Keepmoat's ability to censor it, but still easy to find via Google.

Leo2020

Even though we have removed the content people still know what happened. As you say [DELETED USER] it doesn't just disappear.

I don't have any sympathy if the content was copied and recreated on another 100 sites. They shouldn't have done what they did in the first place.

We need to move on now as obviously Keepmoat are never going to admit how badly they treated us, the only thing they admit was wrong was not refunding the reservation fee. In their eyes it seems they think everything they did was the epitome of good customer service. But if it was so good why did they want the website removed? I think anyone who wants to buy from Keepmoat should ask themselves that question.

RIP https://www.mykeepmoathell.co.uk

Leo2020

UPDATE

After receiving the fax from Keepmoat's solicitor stating we told “untruths”, with a suggestion of court proceedings because of this, and the statement that their staff may want to contact the police, which implies we committed a criminal act, we removed our website. But after having chance to re-read the fax it seemed a bit wishy-washy so we decided that we wanted to know what untruths we told and what crime we had committed.

We also gave them a right of reply to put their version of events across. After receiving their reply (this is easy than it sounds) we decided to republish our site as their reply contained mainly a certain type of animal's poo.

The Regional Managing Director, Mark Knight responded letter.

A few highlights of the reply include:

- The guy did not even know the basics of our complaint as he only thought one window was missing not four.

- The two week completion deadline we were given has turned into five – well it's a shame that Keepmoat didn't tell their solicitor that as we have a fax from them stating we had two weeks.

- Apparently when we found out we had been mis-sold the property we were offered another house of the same type – that contradicts both emails from their staff and recordings as no other Loxley's houses were available.

- They blame our solicitor for their lack of communication which is ironic considering that the letter we received was sent to the wrong postal address. We only received a copy because they also choose to email us it, if it hadn't been for that we would have never seen their letter. The address on the letter has both the first line and postcode wrong. So far two faxes allegedly sent to our solicitor never arrived, Keepmoat sent an email to someone else with important information about the sale (even when we notified them of this they did not believe us and were adamant they had sent the email to us) and now they send a letter to a made up address.

- No mention of the criminal act we have committed but at the same time no retraction of this statement or apology.

Anyway, I hope our website stays around a bit longer this time as a warning to anyone else who is thinking of buying a home through Keepmoat Homes.

[Deleted User]

I'm getting a database error at the moment. Any chance you could fix it? Thanks.

spikeachu

Fixed the issue.