"Negligent and uncaring company culture. AVOID"

Home owner at Augustus Park - Fordingbridge. Northerbury house design. Purchase date: December 2020

I cannot in good conscience recommend this builder and would advise others to stay away from their further developments in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

Dealing directly with their Construction, Sales, and Customer service Directors it is very clear they want rid of us and have failed to upkeep any promises made, we have been lied to and eventually they no longer respond to our emails. Unfortunately this has been the experience all of our neighbours have received as well, leaving us as a community frustrated and angry.

At least every month or few weeks our manhole outside the house has blocked stopping the two bathrooms mentioned from draining. Unfortunately PF did not initially take the issues seriously and we were told:
- Flush twice when using the toilet.
- Use different toilet paper.
- That the house was designed for more than two people living in it and that we were using the toilets too infrequently, making it our problem not theirs.
- The other toilets in the house were meant to help with flow and to use them more instead.
- Clearing our blocked manhole regularly is a part of normal household maintenance.
Now two years later, they have told us to go to the buildings warranty provider and stop emailing them as its household maintenance.

I attempted to have hard wood flooring laid in the carpeted half of the downstairs (the rest is large tiled). It was found that the subfloor of the downstairs had been improperly laid and that it had totally failed.

After a discussion with PF it was agreed that my contractors would rip up and relay the defective floor for hardwood fitting later, PF agreed to pay for this extra work.

After the work was completed and the invoice was sent to PF they refused to pay the amount as they deemed it “unreasonable” and that my £3000 bill would not be reimbursed. Their directors visited the property whilst it was an unliveable concrete mess and said that they had had retrospective quotes from contractors that never visited the property for £450 and that it was immoral for them to pay. (Job size: two men, 4 days of work, equipment hire and materials.)

To get the money from them I had to take them through the legal system at small claims court, which took over 8 months. The judge awarded the full sum to me and gave PF a good scolding. All documents/transcripts/evidence are, of course, public domain and I urge you to read them to understand the attitudes of PF should you ever be in the same position after buying a house from them.

Salisbury Claim/Court reference: 365MC626

Further to this, the large format tiles in the rest of the downstairs have faults. The downstairs bathroom and the utility room have every tile loose and eventually cracking, along with some of the tiles in the kitchen. When lifting the tiles, you can clearly see they never bonded to the defective subfloor, that hasn’t yet been replaced.

PF agree that the subfloor for the whole of the downstairs would have been laid at the same time, they agree that the subfloor would have the same defect (obviously) as the replaced area, but they do not classify the tiles coming up as a defect with the subfloor. This means that they will not be making good. Instead they wish to spot replace the tiles that have come up, with a wildly different batch colouration, but as it’s the same part number they do not care. (Its practically a different tile and looks ridiculous, I don’t want a floor that looks like a chessboard).

Not only this but PF are trying to wheedle out of it by saying that we loosened the tiles by having hardwood flooring laid. Luckily we have video evidence of the subfloor being taken up in the areas near the tiles, showing it soft and coming up almost with your fingernails.

Now we are over the two-year mark we have engaged the housing guarantee who will ensure PF put it right. To note, if you go this route, if you are not extremely lucky/careful ALL of the investigation costs to resolve a problem with your house must be paid by you, they are not reimbursed, this might include surveyors etc who are expensive, the guarantee provider will foot the bill for the repairs after that.

I can only despair and urge any potential buyer to steer clear. Mistakes and bad workmanship are all very well, but this company is negligent, uncaring, and immoral, they have often resorted to bully tactics to get their issues left alone. I am not able to go blow by blow in a review but a lot of this is within the publicly available court case documents. Many of our neighbours have given up with their problems as the effort required to get anything resolved is too much.

These are aside from the appx 200 snags when we first moved in, some major, some small, some requiring lots of pushing for resolution.

"Potters wood - Pennyfarthing Homes"

We have thoroughly enjoyed moving to a Pennyfarthing home. Sina has been a fantastic asset to our moving experience, and has made our move to a new home beautifully easy. She has kept us up to date at every opportunity and been friendly with a smile on her face as she has done so.

We have appreciated everything that Sina has done for us over the past few weeks/months, and are grateful for her always being cheery and pleasant. She is a delight to work with!

"Reserved a home in Verwood"

We are in the process of purchasing a home on the potters wood development in Verwood. I asked to deal with Sina from the beginning and I have not regretted it. She is a really good fit and no question and query is too small. My partner is a very detailed person and Sina has met all his expectations. She also understands our humour and directness which is not for everyone. Looking forward to continue the journey with Sina and the team. Hopefully the move will go smoothly!.

"Matt & Chris from the Customer Care…"

Matt & Chris from the Customer Care team carried out a shower installation to a very high standard in a timely and efficient manner - keeping the work site tidy, minimising disruption and leaving the site clean after each days work

"Good aftercare team, shame about head office!"

Bought a 4 bed detached house in April. Generally happy with it, build quality etc seems fairly good, but with some irritating exceptions, such as poor tiling here and there, kitchen worktops not properly fitted/sealed, double glazing needing alignment, varnishing and painting all a bit slapdash etc.
That said, Malcolm the on site manager, and the rest of the customer care team have been impressively responsive so far and most things have been quickly resolved with a succession of trades people in and out over the last few weeks with a refit of the kitchen, hopefully last item, due this week.
It's a shame therefore that the head office people caused us so much problem and extra cost on the day of our move, and have yet to respond to my reimbursement request, (sent via email to the local sales office team)
Their refusal to allow hand over of keys in a timely manner, despite all funds for purchase having been transferred to their solicitors early in the day, made our move very stressful, running late into the evening and cost me extra "late key" charges from the removal company. I don't think it unreasonable to ask for these charges to be met by those who caused the delay!

"Chris and Matt amazing!"

We had an issue with our bathroom meaning it needed to be ripped out and retiled. Matt and Chris were amazing, they were so caring towards our home and cleaned up thoroughly every day. They could not do enough for us. Chris and Matt were very good with our girls to the point the girls miss them now they have gone! Chris and Matt are lovely and were very grateful for them for all they did. Thank you!

"Extremely helpful and friendly ."

Extremely helpful and friendly .
Especially Jackie in the office , Malcolm and Rafal in customer care in potters wood
Very well built house and no complaints…. So far !!!!

"Thanks to Malcolm and the customer care…"

Thanks to Malcolm and the customer care team. Replaced a roof ridge flashing in a prompt and professional manner. Great service. Thanks.

"Well done the Customer Care team!"

There are often teething problems and niggles with a new build property, but Matt, Chris, Clare and Sue in the Customer Care team are friendly, efficient and easy to deal with. On site, Matt and Chris are perfectionists and always willing to "go the extra mile" to ensure they leave behind a happy customer!

"Perverse sense of Transparency & Integrity"

Evaded responding to questions about their contract, crucially one concerning the absence of indemnities, and revoked the sale without notice following a 6+ week wait for a reply. Our chain collapsed from lack of progress between times and although restored shortly after, the developer seemingly had advertised, sourced & authenticated a replacement buyer in the interim all whilst maintaining the "Reserved" tag on their website and without any notification to us as the Reservee! An incredible feat given the somewhat sluggish market but more astounding as we were in correspondence with their MD at the time about their delays !!! Our request for timing details of that ‘resale’ not too surprisingly failed to elicit a reply. The net result was that we lost out on the purchase and left with abortive legal costs as a result of failures on their part. The implication being, whatever the "weaknesses" of the contract, the prospective purchaser must accept it unconditionally under threat of unilateral withdrawal of sale without warning.

We do wonder whether the ‘irregularities’ in the contract would have come to light if we had appointed the developer’s recommended solicitor to act on our behalf (billed as giving surety of completion but at twice the cost of high street equivalent). Certainly personalising finishes by non-refundable payments in advance of seeing the contract which we felt pressured to do, would have placed us in a more submissive role in relation to accepting the contract ... thankfully we repelled such overtures.

BEWARE