Anyone Had Bad Experiences with Carlisle Homes? Very Disappointed

LOneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 13:54
Last edited 05/11/2018 - 12:06 by 2 other users

We’re building a House with Carlisle at the moment but we’re having awful experience ….Especially the site manager is so bad, horrible… we probably got he worse one… He’s so arrogant, we’re always try to be nice and polite to him… But he’s so rude and look down on us. Give us so much headaches. We chose Carlisle because we thought they had good reviews and professional… but We’re having so many bad experiences

We hired independent Audit and found they made so many mistakes… Still trying to push them fix those stuffs dont meet Australian standards..
They're rushing to covered them up… is there anything we can do about it?

Mod: OP has resolved issue.

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  • cypher67 on 01/11/2018 - 14:01
    +3

    Thanks for sharing

    • poboy on 01/11/2018 - 15:07
      +1

      It's also worthwhile noting that this is the poster's first post. Sure their story may be true. But it could also be someone trying to damage the brand. The use of capital letters and poor grammar is more akin to a $5 fiverr.com anti-review.

      • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 15:27
        +1

        Apologies for the grammar… my English not very good. I'm sure others building house may have bad experiences too but never raise it or like us don't know what to do… We are even scare they may do something bad we don't know. We trusted them and didn't hire independent audit at the beginning. Maybe we're just unlucky 😥

      • GaryQ on 02/11/2018 - 10:56
        +1

        Native Chinese speaker's grammar. How's your Mandarin?

  • slknv on 01/11/2018 - 14:13
    +2

    Right, so like every single other project home building experience then? One site "manager" to 8-10 home builds, they'll change site managers every 3-4 months, they'll tell you everything's sweet when they've f#ck&d everything up and plastered over it etc etc?

    Trust me this is normal for all volume builders - been there done that with m&tricon, some stories from all our friends who have also done volume builds. My uncle is a custom home builder - wanted him to do our house but would've cost double even with a family discount.

    Consider hiring a GOOD home inspector for checking building stages. Good luck.

    • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 14:31

      We did hire independent inspector… but Carlisle rushed.. and trying to covered those mistakes… say they're reviewing them and fix later…. 😂

      Got the worse site manager… so arrogant.

    • magic8ballgag on 02/11/2018 - 09:44

      Trust me this is normal for all volume builders

      It most certainly is not normal for all volume builders, the site manager involved in our build was very polite and professional during the entire build process.

  • altomic on 01/11/2018 - 14:14
    +6

    My friend (retired) told me his new neighbours are horrible. they are building a new house with carlisle. the site manager is there everyday. nothing pleases the owners. they are giving the site manager a headache.

  • geech on 01/11/2018 - 14:34
    +1

    Thanks for signing up and sharing this bargain with us

    • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 15:14

      Has been following Ozbargain for sometime… thought i would like to share it with everyone if they had similar experiences… i did heard some people did have some issues but Carlisle is giving us nightmares at the moment 😥

      • tomsco on 01/11/2018 - 15:35

        Why not go on a more appropriate site? Like Product Review or Home One forums.

        • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 15:51

          Just look into product review…it's asking for permit number… so can't do it now but maybe later.

      • HighAndDry on 01/11/2018 - 15:57

        Actual genuinely - thanks for sharing. I don't think Carlisle Builders are that bad, unless you ran into a particularly grumpy site manager, but this is a good reminder to anyone else looking to build to temper your expectations. Volume builders make money, somewhat unsurprisingly, on volume.

        Don't expect your site manager to be on-site everyday. Certainly don't expect everything to be perfect on the first pass - even custom builders will have issues with this because a house is just too many interconnecting parts. As long as any major issues are rectified once they're pointed out, and minor issues dealt with eventually, that's already a fairly good result in terms of dealing with these volume builders.

  • HighAndDry on 01/11/2018 - 14:38
    +1

    You get what you pay for. You can't expect to pay bargain basement prices, and get a top-notch product. I feel for you, but at the level of builders you looked at, this is basically an average level of quality and service.

    • 0FoxGiven on 01/11/2018 - 15:37

      Err Carlisle is one of the more expensive volume builders. very few charge more than them.

      • HighAndDry on 01/11/2018 - 15:41
        +1

        Sorry - I was more seconding another comment that basically all "volume" builders are cheap for a reason. They make money on volume, not necessarily quality.

        Though it actually might just be that OP has utterly unrealistic and unreasonable expectations and area nit-picky.

        • 0FoxGiven on 01/11/2018 - 15:50
          +1

          At 300-400k for an average house I don't think they are cheap. I'm building with a volume builder too because I have no other option unless I want to drown myself in debt for the next 2 decades. The cost of labor in Australia is insane and a custom build would probably end up costing close a million dollars (house & land) for an average home built in the relatively cheaper western suburbs of Victoria.

          • HighAndDry on 01/11/2018 - 15:53

            @0FoxGiven:

            At 300-400k for an average house I don't think they are cheap.

            Everything is relative. That's certainly not cheap compared to other volume builders, but as I think you found out yourself, that's still bargain basement prices compared to a custom builder. And again - to a volume builder, houses are basically mass-produced commodities. You don't get basically perfect workmanship or quality or attention to detail unless you go with a custom builder (and pay a gazillion dollars). OP could bake the site manager cookies everyday and they still shouldn't be expecting replies to emails daily (and honestly probably not even every week - they send out template construction updates and that's basically it).

            I mean - OP is complaining that the site manager isn't there everyday. That makes me think it's OP who's being unreasonable here.

            • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 16:10

              @HighAndDry: 😀 you made me laugh… No i don't expect site manager be there every day. To me once a week or even twice a week is fine as long as he's following the works… one time he even told me he hasn't been there for 3 weeks n don't what they're up to… We actually paid close to 600k for it. Its our family dream home. I know it's not his house so he doesn't care… Come to the point we lost faith in them.

              • HighAndDry on 01/11/2018 - 16:13

                @OneWorld: Oh whoa okay. $600k, just for the build?!

                You may have actually just run into a bad site manager, but again - there's a lot of things that go into a build that owners don't know about, and I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong though) that with how much you paid and it being your dream home, that you may have been micro-managing the process a bit.

                As an example - because you need certain things done before other things are done - if even one subcontractor isn't available, it could be that just nothing was done in the build for a few weeks and that's why the site manager didn't attend.

  • 87percent on 01/11/2018 - 14:48
    +4

    What's… With… All… The…

  • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2018 - 15:00
    +1

    We’re building a House with Carlisle at the moment but we’re having awful experience ….Especially the site manager is so so bad, horrible… we probably got he worse one… He’s so arrogant, we’re always try to be nice and polite to him… But he’s so rude and look down on us. Give us so much headaches. We chose Carlisle because we thought they had good reviews and professional… but We’re having so many bad experiences… Our neighbour (retired) told us Carlisle site manager never on site……

    Manager is never on site

    We hired independent Audit and found they made so many mistakes… Still trying to push them fix those stuffs dont meet Australian standards..
    They're rushing to covered them up… is there anything we can do about it?

    It’s been almost a week we have been trying to call/email him but he didn’t bother to return our call/email… We must be unlucky but I swear WE WILL NEVER BUILD WITH CARLISLE AGAIN EVER… They’re giving us nighmare .

    Has made mistakes but is trying to cover it up

    Sorry about the long essay.

    You're forgiven. The issue isn't the length of the essay, it's amount of fluff.

    • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 15:19

      We're building with Carlisle..seriously why would i want to bluff? Get nothing out of it. Our hasn't been smooth with them at all.

      • payton on 01/11/2018 - 15:28
        +1

        because your post lacks the crucial details and sounded like they're being made up as you typed.

        • OneWorld on 01/11/2018 - 15:33
          -1

          Sorry at the moment i cant point out the stupid mistakes they made… maybe later.

      • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2018 - 15:56
        +3

        Not bluff… Fluff.

  • l005e on 01/11/2018 - 15:32

    You get what you pay for.

    • 0FoxGiven on 01/11/2018 - 15:38

      And they paid a premium price if they built with Carlisle.

  • 0FoxGiven on 01/11/2018 - 15:43
    +2

    Hey OP,

    I get that English is probably not your first language and i'm sorry to see so many people here trying to pick on you for that reason. But the truth is, volume builders are all pretty much the same. The tradies who actually build your home build for various builders and they are not directly employed by only one builder. The build quality of your house would depend on the quality of work of these tradies and how well your site supervisor does his job. If you are lucky, things go well (and ignorance is bliss).

  • GaryQ on 02/11/2018 - 11:01
    +1

    Put a stop on the next stage payment and request a round-table discussion at their Head Office with your Site Manager and their Sales Manager. Bring a detailed list of defects / missing inclusions with photographs and measurements where possible. Bring your contract with highlighted areas that have not been satisfied. When they are halfway through a build they have two choices - deal with your issues, or abandon the site.

  • [Deactivated] on 02/11/2018 - 14:55

    You want to move up the ladder and complain to the next person up.

    Site managers are probably only on site for 5 - 10 mins each day checking the work that has been done.

    • OneWorld on 02/11/2018 - 21:36

      We be lucky if he's there once a week…sometimes he wouldn't have clues what has been done.. just unlucky got a bad site manager…

  • HeWhoKnows on 02/11/2018 - 16:31

    Could it be that OP is giving the builder a hard time and so the builder is avoiding them?

    Certainly sounds like it to me.

    Point is that OP should not even be on the construction site without a representative from Carlisle Homes being present.

    So who is really in the wrong here?

    • OneWorld on 02/11/2018 - 21:27

      We need to make appointments to be on sites… so it's not that easy… We can't just go anytime. If we can go there every day we'll better off on owner builder… it's just that we paid a lot but treated us like sh

  • Ken1977 on 03/11/2018 - 19:40

    A good site manager leads to a well built house, when I built with Metricon the site manager meet with me regularly and answered any questions, he was always going around with pink spray paint marking things he wanted the contractors to fix, he also always had a detailed list and items were always rectified. We actually changed a few things during the build and it was always no problem. Maybe speak to head office and request a new site manager, at least they may question why and put him on notice. At the end of the day you are paying and you want to get what you pay for, it's very hard to get any builder to fix problems after the build.

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