G'day,

I am writing this letter after several weeks of thinking and reflecting on the frustrating events my parents have had to endure since  building their house with Porter Davis back in 2013.

I am  going to be neutral as possible in this piece of writing. Hence, be fair and honest. For those who cannot wait til my conclusion of my honest opinion regarding Porter Davis. It's this. Porter Davis is a Multi-million company with annual revenues  of  $550  Million (AUD) per year. They  want to make profit. Ideally, they probably want every one of their customers to be happy with their service. However, given the size of the company, the huge dependence of sub-contractors for building and lack of  effective building and property legislation, this creates holes in their service. The problem is that Porter Davis do not want to take responsibility of the problems they cause with their houses and will do anything to avoid paying compensation or delivering a fair solution. I am  utterly embarrassed  that a company can treat their customers like this  and show no remorse, responsibility  or accountability. For those who are planning to develop their home with Porter Davis , I would state - Caveat emptor. IF the stars align and your home is built well - great. However, any building defects, delays with repairs will not be prioritised and the only party who loses both financially and emotionally is you. They are a company driven on profit hence they do not want to invest time or money into customers who have already invested and will not bring further revenue to their company. I should mention that such a large company does not want their image to be tarnished hence  they invest time and money promoting their image which in turn recruits  customers. Porter Davis has been in strife by offering customers  financial incentives  if they provide positive reviews on their experience. This has caused ongoing controversies and they have investigated for such practices.

I'll start from the beginning. It was 2012, my  semi-retired parents decided to build a new  property on land they owned in the inner-suburbs of Melbourne. They chose Porter Davis to build  4-bedroom Double Garage House. As always , there were the usual expected delays  as there  are so many factors that  are uncontrollable . Annoying as this was, we accepted these flaws. The house was built and my parents moved in to the house in late 2013.

Early on upon transitioning to this new home, we noticed issues with the house in the first few months regarding warping of the decking in the kitchen. My parents contacted Porter-Davis and they half-fixed the problem where they did not accept  full responsibility and blamed water leakage.

Over the following months and years - we noticed continual warping of the kitchen decking specifically under the sink. Furthermore, there were subtle problems with the toilets not flushing effectively, dishwasher not cleaning properly or the showers not draining efficiently. These issues were  subtle and my parents didn't take much notice of them given there was only two people in the house. At times, my siblings and I realised there was foul odours coming from the drains inside the house intermittently and informed our parents to escalate these issues with Porter Davis. As the years passed by we noted these small issues getting bigger. Eventually,  when all the family was presents at the house for Christmas in 2020, the drainage system went completely berserk. It couldn't handle the heavy use of water.  The showers and toilets wouldn't drain appropriately and  the house was essentially flooded. We rang up Porter Davis numerous times and left voice messages however  they did not contact us back. Given concerns about the significant damage, we had to call in an emergency plumber who over several days rectified the situation temporarily and provided us with a formal report of the problems. They stated that when the house was built by Porter Davis, they had accidentally left  some discarded plastic and debri  in one of the main draining pipes underneath the house which result in partial  dynamic outflow blockage. With time this partial  blockage  has resulted in severe drainage problems and when the plumbing system was under significant stress i.e. multiple showers, dishwashing loads. This resulted in pooling of drainage water that seeped into the infrastructure of the house - i.e. Foundation, Floorboards, Carpet. It was an utter disaster.  The external plumbing used their high-tech camera scopes to provide us with sufficient evidence to state that this was a fault of the builder and we should be entitled to  Porter Davis fixing this problem.

However, this is when the real problem with Porter Davis started. Firstly, they have always been difficult to communicate with. On top of the poor communication and accountability to fixing repairs over the years , Porter Davis did not accept responsibility for this problem. I was shocked. Even with all the proof from an external service, they did not want a bar of it. My  parents' house was in a complete mess and required urgent repair to permanently fix the plumbing problem. The solution required my parents needing to move out of the house for ~3.5 months, stripping and replacement of all the water-damaged carpet and floorboards, replacement of the underground drainage piping system and industrial continuous air-drying of  the entire house (where the kitchen and bedrooms had to be completely dismantled) to allow for all the water damage to be identified and dried.Porter Davis  did not want a bar and did not accept responsibility despite our evidence. They planned to have a meeting with us however they kept on delaying this.

Luckily, my parents had invested in premium house insurance annually for the last 30 years and they covered the majority of the costs.  They covered the cost of a premium serviced apartment for 3.5 months  for my parents to live in whilst all the repairs were conducted. The insurance covered the majority of the repairs. My parents were still out of pocket approximately $10,000 (from the emergency plumbers) however they were expecting Port Davis to cover these costs.  The funny thing that Porter Davis didn't and did not accept any responsibility. This was ridiculous.

Eventually, my parents set up a conciliation with Porter Davis. Again the siblings and I repeatedly asked my mum for us to be present as we knew that they would get pushed over by this  massive co-operation. Mum refused as she didn't want us to be there as she didn't want to cause us stress or interference with our daily lives.

I actually had positive  thoughts regarding a reasonable outcome. I thought that Porter Davis would  provide appropriate compensation for a defective house since being built and the financial and psychological stress my parents have had to deal with for the last 8 months  - i.e. moving out and not being able to live in their home. However, was I wrong. I was shocked.

My parents has a stressful and tortuous video-meeting with a Porter Davis Individual  and their legal representative. I was not at the meeting as Porter Davis only allowed two individuals to present at this so called 'Conciliation'. Long story short - the meeting took about three hours. This is where we saw the extremely poor customer service. the company is really is.  Firstly, they tried to state we should've contact Porter Davis immediately when the drainage system became severely blocked at Christmas 2020.  My parents explain they did on multiple occasions. They tried but after hours of waiting on hold and leaving numerous voice messages, Porter Davis failed to contact them in an appropriate time. They had no choice to seek an external plumbing service for urgent repair given the house was flooding and we were concerned about the structure of the house! Secondly, Porter Davis did not  take any blame for what has happened over the several years that lead up to the disaster at Christmas. They were cold and calculated. 

Prior to the meeting, my mother only wanted to bare minimum. She wanted if to have a fair outcome for both parties. This meant that Porter Davis covered all the out of pocket expenses. This did not include all the repair works, accomodation and logistics that was covered  the comprehensive RACV insurance they had. Mum and Dad have been RACV comprehensive  members for 35+ years hence as a result they were appropriately serviced. We do not have the official figures however we were thinking the total cost to RACV would minimum of $50,000-$60,000. I was impressed that our insurance covered all this. Despite this entire problem being fault of Porter Davis , my hard-working parents would have been literally up. My parents would have been homeless and no way  could handle this problem financially and emotionally especially when the state was in the middle of a Pandemic. My parents explicitly explained this to Porter Davis however they did not want a bar of it. They denied any fault on their behalf despite an external report from an authorised plumbing service stating the complete opposite and the entire damage and root of the problem was the fault of Porter Davis. Furthermore, this external plumbing service stated this problem had began when Porter Davis failed to identify a blockage due to one of their workers placing debris and rubbish in the outflow drainage system initiating this blockage. If this did not occur , the whole entire problem would have not occurred.

My parents were very keen to take Porter Davis to VCAT if they did not achieve a fair and reasonable outcome. However, after gruelling meeting, my elderly parents were burnt out. Porter Davis remarked that escalating to VCAT will not guarantee a reasonable outcome for my parents and the only way to seek appropriate compensation if applicable would be to go to trial which would result in numerous legal fees. Given my parent's age, function and vulnerable health issues they believed it wasn't in their best interest mentally and financially to commit against a multi-million dollar company hence they were essentially forced to a mere $6000 reimbursement. The emergency plumber fees and assessment of the problem cost my parents $10,000 hence were several thousand dollar out of pocket. Again, if we didn't have comprehensive insurance my parents would have been out. of pocket approximately $60,000 and have a new house that was rotting from the inside. Mum and Dad caved in accepted the lousy offer of $6000 and had to sign an agreement that they would not discuss about this issue again to the public or relevant authorities. Porter Davis were cold, calculated and hostile.

After the meeting, my mother was in tears and could not go to sleep that night. She was furious. My mother is the sweetest of people hence I was shocked to hear this. She was so angry that a company could not provide a fair solution and outcome in the setting of having a problematic house that Porter Davis clearly stuffed up and used their authority and power to create a solution that maximises their profits. Also, they have invested several hundreds of thousands of their money with Porter Davis and was frustrated by such poor customer service.

I do mention that I have no association or affiliation with RACV or any other relevant party to this situation. I was not paid to write this story. To be honest, Porter Davis is probably a good company and will build good houses (most of the time). What infuriates me the most, is that they do not care about their customer once the house is built and even when they make a mistake they do not want to be held responsibility. I feel that this occurs in the building industry on a regular basis given the lack of proper laws and regulatory bodies - builders can do whatever they want. I don't mind that Porter Davis made a mistake with my parent's home however what frustrates me is Porter Davis' complete ignorance and intended attitude towards such issues is not good.

If you google Porter Davis, you might notice the strangely high amount of great reviews on relevant websites. However, be aware that Porter Davis provides customers with financial incentives to those who give positive results. It is quite obvious that their personal relation teams are reviewing any negative press online and attempt to negate its affect.

The reason for this submission, is to identify that Porter Davis is aimed at Profits. I find it funny that on their website, they are all about the customer and so focused on what the customer wants. I want to warn people that if Porter Davis does cause issues in your house, they will do absolutely anything to prevent themselves accepting responsibility and not providing fair and reasonable compensation and solutions to problems that they caused.

Porter Davis, if you're reading this - please don't reply with some generic message saying how you're upset that my parents were disappointed with your company. If you really want to make a difference - be accountable. We all make mistakes - myself included. Be human and provide a suitable solution. As I said you probably do build good houses however when you make a mistake you do everything possible to avoid responsibility. You should be embarrassed.

References:

https://www.smh.com.au/business/home-builders-battle-misleading-customer-reviews-20140812-1031ly.html

https://claxon.agency/how-this-550m-per-year-home-builder-is-changing-the-game-porter-davis-homes-anthony-roberts-with-brett-campbell/

https://www.smh.com.au/business/home-builders-battle-misleading-customer-reviews-20140812-1031ly.html