Why won't Bovis take our money from us! (Bovis Homes)

Member Name: Trist

Product:	Bovis Homes
Date:	16/04/08 (1000 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Don't do a home exchange with Bovis

This is the problems we have had with Bovis homes so far, and a letter we have sent to BBC Watchdog.

For some time now we have been trying to buy a new Bovis home in Swindon and have had nothing but problems. We decided to do a home part-exchange with Bovis and agreed a price for our old house and for the new one.

The first problem came when we did not tell the lender the list price of the new home, we told them the purchase price, however, this was picked up and we had to change lenders and start again. This put us back by 2 weeks. We feel that Bovis should have told informed us that it was the list price that we needed to inform the Mortgage Company of at the beginning.

Next Bovis sent a surveyor to our home who picked up on four things that needed doing, one of which was the bathroom floor, which we admit was damaged, one was some cleaning, which we did and the other two items were the tiles in the bathroom, which they said were incomplete and needed to be finished, this could not be done as the tiles had been there for 20 years and so there is no way of matching them up and the final item was the drain in our back garden that the surveyor said was partly blocked. This drain was backed up about a year before due to the drain in the street outside the property boundary being block. We unblocked this, and we have had not problems since. Also as good as the surveyor maybe we would really like to know how he could tell if the drain was partly blocked if no water was poured down the drain to check the flow?

In the meantime Bovis found a buyer for our house (which we showed around) and they were happy with the tiles in the bathroom since they were going to redo everything to let the property out.

We were still waiting for our mortgage offer at this time but Bovis were still insisting that we redo the bathroom and pay to have the drain looked at, a drain that is Thames Waters responsibility. We contacted the water company and they said they would look into it; this did not seem good enough for Bovis.

Bovis also wanted us to pay £150 Land Registry fee on the property we were selling to them, and also a £250 redemption fee in case we left the property in a mess when we left. Bovis backed down on the Land Registry fee on 9th March but not the redemption fee.

On the 10th March we received a phone call about the mortgage offer saying that the surveyor had down valued our new property by nearly £29000 off the list price. This worked out that we would be paying £9000 more that what the surveyor said it was worth. Bovis' reaction to this was that it is only one mans opinion, but this is a professional who is paid to value properties for a living and as far as we can see and to everyone else that we have spoken to, what he says goes.

On 13th March we contacted Bovis to ask them what was going on. They said the original deal stood, to which we responded that it was not acceptable and we would think about what we would do.

On 14th March we put in a new offer of £5000 below the surveyors valuation, which we knew, would be turned down, and it was, so we offered the valuation price. We then had to wait the whole weekend and were promised an answer by the close of play on 16th March. We got no answer until the 17th March. They had turned down our offer.

On 20th March our mortgage offer came in so we went back to Bovis and said we had the money you either accept the offer or we walk away, to which Bovis went into a panic and the regional Sales Manager went to find the Managing Director who was unavailable. So we had to wait over the Easter Holiday not knowing if we were getting the house or not. We also informed our Solicitor, who told them the same.

After Easter we were expecting a call on 25th March but heard nothing. We contacted our Solicitor on 26th March and he had not heard anything. On 28th March we contacted Bovis to find out what was happening and at 12:45pm they told us we could have the house at the new offer price. Great we thought, however they wanted us to complete by March 31st giving us 2 days to do this in. We said no way, our Solicitor said not possible and that was the last we heard, although we did inform Bovis that we would try and exchange contracts on the 31st March.

Also we were promised a path by Bovis to run from our back gate to our patio so that we would not walk mud all over our new carpets when we moved in. They have taken this away from us just so they can save £300.

Our Solicitor was unable to see us on the March 31st so we went in on April 1st and signed all the paper work. Bovis could not do the exchange on April 1st so we thought they would exchange on April 2nd with a completion of April 10th.

On April 2nd we had a phone call saying that Bovis would not exchange until the buyer for our property was ready to exchange, as they wanted to tie everything in together but not to worry, as we would still be completing on April 10th as we were told the buyer was waiting for a couple of documents and would be ready to go.

This was a home part-exchange with Bovis and the buyer is nothing to do with us.

Bovis then claimed that because we did not exchange on 31st March it was there end of quarter so now everything had to be tied to the buyer. We were told we would exchange on 4th April so we could complete on the Thursday 10th.

On Tuesday 8th, the buyer sent into his Solicitors a personal cheque and was told that this was not good enough as it would take 5 working days to clear. His reply was that he could not get to a Bank until Friday 11th and so was told to take into his Solicitor a bankers draft on this day.

On 11th April we contacted our Solicitor to see if the exchange had happened and was told that now the buyer needed a new Mortgage offer, which should come through 14th/15th April.

On 15th April we contacted our Solicitor again to see if the exchange had finally happened and was told that the buyer was still waiting for his amended Mortgage Offer and that this would possibly not come through until the end of that week, Bovis would still not exchange contracts without the buyer being ready and if we walked away at the end of the week, if the exchange had still not taken place, that was up to us. Therefore - we are still waiting to exchange.

When we spoke to the Solicitor they said that Bovis told us from the start that we were in a chain and we would not exchange until the buyer was ready. This is a complete lie; we were never in a chain and can prove it. If we were in a chain why were Bovis more than happy to exchange with us on the 31st March when the buyer was not an issue, however on the 1st April we are in a chain? This does not make any sense to us at all.

We have now asked for a completion date of the 1st May which is only 2 weeks away and as yet we still have no idea if we are moving or not. All of our belongings are packed, our house is a mess because of all the boxes and we are both close to having a breakdown with all the stress.

Bovis do not care about the customers they have and that is not many. All we want to do is hand over our money and move in to our new home but we cannot even give them our money. They are lying about us being in a chain. Why would we enter into a home part-exchange if we were going to be in a chain, we would have sold the house ourselves!!

With the current climate the way it is you would think Bovis would be trying to get us into our new home ASAP but they seem to think that people will walk in of the street and put a deposit down on a new home. With mortgages drying up, they are in for a big shock over the coming months.

If there is anything that you can do to help we would be most grateful and also warn others of the pitfall of buying a home from Bovis.

On a final note Bovis do build the best looking houses on the market at the moment but there customer care is a long way behind. We have found that they are not willing to accept any responsibility for the sale of the house. If anything is wrong then it is the customers fault and that is final. There attitude is that we are only a customer and are not that important so go away and stop bothering us. We thought that going through Bovis we would have an easy time of buying our new home, instead it has turned into a complete nightmare from start to nearly finish.

Summary: Stay well away from this campany