Communication is not their strong point...

I mentioned in the previous post that Peter and I checked all the power/data points to make sure they were all in the right places and it turned out one of them wasn't (in the right place, that is) and one was missing all together. In the Home Theatre, the electricians had managed to get one of the power points and one of the conduits for surround sound swapped around. The missing one (in the study) was quickly rectified and does not form part of the epic to follow.

Now, we noticed this on Sunday when the offices are, of course, closed. So first thing Monday morning, I rang head office to let them know so they could fix it before it was rendered and plastered. Peter drove out to the house specifically to catch up with the plasterers and to let them know not to render that wall.
The plasterers' response?

"No-one's told us anything so we're just going to keep going."

Fair enough I thought. Besides, they weren't anywhere near doing those two walls at that point, so I figured it would be okay.

Head office's response?

"No, they're in the right spots. You're just reading the plan wrong."

Um, hello? Isn't this my house that we have placed items where 'we' wanted them? And I have written evidence in the form of an email addressing the query we raised immediately after we received the final plans. As well as the fact that two different people at your firm, one in pre-start and one in sales, have looked at the plan and confirmed that it would be done the way we requested even though they wouldn't be changing the plans just to make the arrows clearer. Well obviously they should have changed the plan as the two points were installed incorrectly.

So, after a bit of discussion, phone calls over several days and my adamant refusal to accept a draw-wire run down the cavity wall as a solution (we paid for a conduit for my Peter's surround sound and dammit all, we're getting a conduit in the internal wall; not in the north-facing external wall!), they agreed that it would be fixed.

Fast forward to Friday: I popped past the house on my way back from stealing borrowing some parts from another plant, to find that the plasterers were doing the final plaster float in the home theatre. I noticed that the wires still hadn't been corrected so I asked them to not float that particular wall until it was fixed. Their response was, once again, that no-one had told them anything so they were going to finish it all. If it needed fixing after that, the builders would have to get the plasterers to come back and re-float the little section involved (which is exactly what I was trying to avoid).

After attempting to kill them all via telepathy/telekinesis and failing miserably, I hightailed it back to my office and phoned the 'customer liaison officer'. Told her that it still hadn't been fixed and that the plasterers were preparing, probably at that very moment, to plaster over the whole area (wah, wah, wah etc.)

She made some phone calls and got back to me to let me know that the electricians had been very busy and were in fact on their way there 'right now' to fix the problem. Okay, I thought. Hopefully they'll make it in time so I don't have a stupid little section of uneven plaster that will drive me nuts every time I walk into the room for the next 15 years.

Buh-booowww!

This is what greeted me when I went to check over the weekend: Not.Happy.Jan! It's too shallow, meaning that the render/plaster has nothing but PVC pipe to stick to, has been gouged out of the freshly floated plaster and is going to annoy the daylights out of me forevermore!

Monday morning: back on the phone to head office to complain nicely request a meeting with the site supervisor to 'discuss' this issue (as well as others that we found: power points completed covered by render/plaster, tops of other conduits filled in with render/plaster, conduits not accessible from ceiling space due to be placed behind ceiling beams).

After being told that she 'found it very difficult to believe that the plasterers would have done that' and that the new site supervisor was unavailable for the rest of the week, I asked to go further up the management chain and miracle of miracles, the site supervisor was suddenly available that afternoon.

I went out to the house to meet with him and this is what we found:I started focusing my mental powers on ensuring that the smarmy little plasterers would never be able to father children or enjoy sex ever again, but I don't think my ball-shrivelling powers extend beyond my line of sight ... bugger!

The site supervisor, Ken, agreed with me that it was totally unacceptable and assured me that it would be fixed properly this time so I left it a few days and checked again. This is the third version:

Slightly better but apparently they won't be re-floating that whole section; just the channel. Hmmm, we'll see about that ...