Thursday, April 30, 2009

RWD refusing to pay the default amount

In 2006 when RWD started the Palm project, there weren't many takers due to the high pricing of the houses. For the same price, other developers were providing facilities like modular kitchen, interiors etc, where as RWD promised only the bare boned house. Also this was the first residential project for them, so there is no proof of how they would execute this. Despite this, what attracted me to the project was

(*) The finishing quality of the model house was really good
(*) Very less number of houses for the given area (170 houses in 9 acres)
(*) Gated community with all the amenities
(*) If the project is delayed, we will be getting a 12% interest for the number of days delayed.

Now at the end, it looks like I made the wrong choice.  

(*) The model house finishing is not the same as what we get. For example, the model house ceiling had a wonderful putty finish. But the actual houses don't get that. There are numerous examples like this
(*) They introduced RWD Fern apartments inside the project which will increase the number of households by another 120
(*) Now RWD says that they own the amenities like Gym & Swimming Pool and not the Owners Association. Also the rest of the amenities like children park & jogging track are owned by the municipality. Its no point in calling a gated community
(*) The last point sucks. Even though the project is delayed by 2 years, no one has got the penalty amount as promised in the agreement. They play it differently, even for the small changes that we request in the houses are billed with enormous amount and it comes to a total of Rs 75,000/- and they will say they will waive the amount in lieu of the penalty amount (which is several times of that 75k). For people who demanded the penalty amount, they simply refused to give and they insisted that they have to pay the 75k first. On seeing this, many people preferred to do that as they don't want to pay the 75k. So they do not honor what is there in the agreement.

I was told that they have become more experienced now. So for the new houses they are selling in RWD Palm and the flats in RWD Fern, they mention that the deadline thats much more relaxed. If they complete on the deadline no worries. If there is a delay, then RWD will pay the penalty (this time its not 12%, rather some per sq ft calculation) and if they complete earlier, the client has to pay the "bonus" to RWD (same per sq ft calculation). I have never seen a builder saying that if I complete before the time, you pay me extra! These guys...

Monday, April 27, 2009

Power crisis in RWD Palm & RWD Fern

When the project was initially planned, it was promised to all the buyers that the number of houses will be less. But then since they couldn't sell many of the houses, RWD changed their plans and decided to go ahead with apartments instead of Villas in Phase 3. This is creating a lot of problems and the latest one is electricity. For the whole colony only one 250KVA Transformer is installed. This is just adequate for the residents needs. With more number of houses being occupied and summer is heating up, the transformer fuse blows out when many people switch on the ACs. There has been incidents where there is no power for the whole night and sometime whole day on the weekends when the power consumption reaches its height. Residents have contacted RWD for installing another transformer but there is no positive reply from them yet.