Anyone taken their newbuild builders to small claims over snags

[stompdino]

Hi, we've been in our new build for 2 years. A week before our 2 year builders guarantee was up I emailed in our final snags. I have been chasing these via email, phone messages and speaking to various customer service advisors and they just tell me they are working on it. ( well originally they said that all my snags were done/ no record of my email despite them replying to it etc) They are a joke.

I started phoning every other day and they just fob me off. I'm getting annoyed as I just want it finished off now. It's been months since our 2 years were up plus we had some things done when we first moved in.

So my question is what do I do next? Do I need to go to NHBC first or do I just write to my builder and say I'm intending to take them to small claims for £xxxx as they have not furfilled their contract to correct snags and their work is of poor quality.

Snags are things like my shower is leaking and has been previously repaired by them but it's not worked. Broken taps, large cracks in garage ( not cosmetic cracking)

Anyone any experience on this ?

We have the exact issue. I have emailed numerous times. My housebuilder begins with P. My garden get so flooded it us completely unusable. As well as i cant shut any of the doors upstairs, i cant change the toilet seat (long story...), cracks in celing and cracks on stair wall, my bottom kitchen cupboards dont match the top, my garage door is wont lock, the list goes on. I have made a formal complaint to head office. I live in an area with a lot of new builds currently being built and will go to the paper if it gets the work done!

Ring the NHBC people, they are really helpful. They have a dispute resolution guide online.
I have to admit, my builders were good at resolving snags but Persimmon have the absolute worst reputation. My friend bought from them and they damaged her carpet when re-painting a wall. They refused to replace it and then fobbed her off with a small cash offer.

@notagain2018
Great thank you will try them. I had thought they were maybe more build than interior but worth asking

@FunSizedNinja It's painful isn't it. When we first moved in they were reasonably responsive if I phoned them daily, but it's so draining. Now they are off site, they don't seem to care. Our builders are TW

We are about to offer on a TW house, we live in a 16 yo TW house (bought 6 years ago) and have really loved it so thought the new builds would be similar but I'm getting a little apprehensive at reading a few threads on here saying they're notoriously difficult to get to correct snags, did you get a professional snagger before completion?

@icantfindanotherusername Are you buying off plan ? It really just depends how fussy you are. And whether you are home fulltime to accommodate snagging. I'm on a big site, being going on years and so TW can't be bothered. Some people say they have no snags at all I expect TW customer services are trained to make you wait so long that you give up asking and they save money!

It's in the process of being built, about 3/4 of the way through the development. And I'm incredibly fussy, I read they don't let you get a professional snagger on site before you sign for the keys so I was going to talk to the site manager before we make an offer, it's one of the last to be sold so hoping to get a few extras like stamp duty and flooring thrown in as well as a part exchange they said they'd do but if they're going to leave us fighting for years for snags I'm not sure it'll be worth the hassle!

@icantfindanotherusername well our house is lovely and the snagging is part of why you pay a premium for a newbuild.

Getting a pro snagger is fine but lots of things happen after you've lived there a while. However I think it's worth it. We didn't but I was very thorough.

You can buy any house and have lots of problems it's buyer beware.

icantfindanotherusername just wanted to say that we bought a new TW home and didn't have any major complaints and they were quick to resolve the ones we did have - it isn't all horror stories!