Gareth L.
1/5
We engaged Mr Gammon, director of Oxton Property Consultants to complete a full building survey on a property we had made an offer on. The surveyor we used for our previous property purchase was unavailable, so we shopped around. Oxton Property Consultants has been around for many years and Mr Gammon's credential's and experience are excellent. Mr Gammon's quote was the least expensive, so we believed we were getting great value. The report was long and comprehensive and we found Mr Gammon to be professional...we even referred Mr Gammon to a friend...
When we moved into the property we were shocked to find that only 2 out of 19 internal doors could be closed, with many being severely warped. Our building survey stated that the doors were in good condition, require little maintenance, should give good long lasting performance and all doors fit well into their frames. Our baby daughter had just started to walk so we had to replace the internal doors straightaway. We obtained three quotes from joiners who were all very shocked that the state of the doors were not mentioned by the surveyor. We raised the issue with our solicitor and with Oxton Property Consultants at the time. Mr Gammon offered to come out to check the doors again, but when we replied asking him when would be suitable, he never responded.
We decided to go ahead and replace the doors thinking that this was our only option. It cost us over ÂŖ5k, which for a young family is a lot of money, especially when it's an unexpected expense.
We found out over a year later that we could have raised a formal complaint at the time. This was disclosed to us in writing, but I guess we were ignorant. We have since raised a formal complaint against Mr Gammon's negligence.
In our report Mr Gammon included just one photo of the internal doors. It was the bathroom door and it was open. We provided two photos of the same door taken by our joiner showing that it could not be closed. Mr Gammon then provided us with just 6 photos of the internal doors, one of which was closed and happened to be one of the two doors that did close. These photos do not show the doors functioning correctly. When we asked for all photos of the doors taken, he refused to provide them. Mr Gammon has said "the original doors were not particularly aged â it is peculiar to have so many fail all at once and it and this would certainly have been picked up as part of our survey". We totally agree with this statement and hence have submitted a formal complaint. The doors were new in 2012 and they may have looked in good condition, but were not functional.
We are at stage three of the complaints process and Mr and Mrs Gammon have been very professional throughout. I believe that we will have to go to the ombudsman for any chance that Mr Gammon will be held accountable. I only wish that we had paid for another surveyor to produce an independent report on the internal doors prior to replacing them.
The fact remains, if the state of the doors was presented to us in our full building survey, we could have adjusted our offer accordingly.