Using cheap materials, charge you extra, poor quality and after you sing a contract and paid you will be ignored
I joined the CPO project managed by Heutink for an apartment complex, and everything seemed OK. Except that, I was constantly pressured to make certain decisions "on the spot": I was told I had to accept several partners as I could not bring my own supplier for things like the bathroom, for example.
I briefly met with their partner about tiles, sanitary installation, electricity, and doors.
There was no option with either of those partners to see catalogues upfront prepared in a way: you come to the showroom and have to pick and sign on the spot. Later on, I found out that everything was significantly overpriced. But that is not the worst: for tiles, they have contracted way more(50% extra) tiles than was required. My contract condition is that they take the leftovers, and it's up to them to decide on tile positioning, so they have to use all the small cutovers and do ugly mosaics from big tiles to save the material. During the first visit day, I noticed that the tiles they put on the walls in the bathroom were not the ones I ordered. It took me some time to argue, but finally, they admitted that the tiles differed from the ones I'd picked. That was the point in time when I went through the contract and found out about the conditions where they made me order ~50% more tiles, making a profit from the air. After a long argument, we agreed that they would remove the wrong ones and make the walls ready to place new tiles, which I would handle later, outside of the construction project. They also told me that with that, they would take away the water insulation warranty on my bathroom since the tiles are not there. Since, as usual, I was pressured, I had no time to find a consult and agreed to those terms. When the contractor I hired came, he concluded that they put an extra layer of gips on the walls, which caused extra problems since the door frame became thinner than the wall and looked stupid and connecting the shower became a problem since the connection went too deep in the wall to use the original standard connection and not deep enough to use special extenders. Also, my contractor said that tiles are not part of the water insulation of the bathroom: insulation is another layer under tiles, and he assumed that Heutink was just in a hurry and did not want to do a proper job there, thinking it was easier to trick me there.
Electricity: I do not know how they managed to achieve that, but I have two sets of power sockets on the same wall over the kitchen worktop: one is connected to the 'kitchen' relay, and the other one is for some mysterious reason to 'corridor' relay on the electricity meter. That was not documented and discovered by surprise.
In the bathroom, another 'smart' implementation: a power socket inside the cabinet, over the think, works only when the ceiling light is on in the bathroom. Would you expect your toothbrush to charge overnight in the cabinet? LEAVE THE CEILING LIGHT ON!
In the corridor on the floor, there was something like a hole that was covered later with something so weak that the vacuum cleaner sucked a 3cm deep hole in the floor. It was sandy and like melting under your feet when you stepped on it.
After delivery, due to the new kitchen design, I had to get a contract to re-work the pipes in the kitchen. The contractors I hired were surprised by the type of pipes they used: they were not of the standard sizing, and it was very challenging to find proper fittings to extend those and move. I've checked in a few stores myself, and I failed to find even where it was possible to buy such pipe and accessories for that.
The rain drains from the roof was installed just over my balkon and kitchen window, so rainwater will bring all the dirt from the roof to balkon furniture and, if there is wind, through the window into the kitchen. There was plenty of space outside of the balkon to position those drains, but why?
It is just six months since the delivery, and many people have not moved in, but some neighbours have leaking windows. Recently, multiple people discovered that the roof is leaking, and we have wet stains on the ceilings in multiple flats.
The paint used on the exterior was of a very weird avocado-greed colour, not matching with anything in the neighbourhood, and was so cheap that it faded in the areas exposed to the sun in less than a year.
The doors to the apartment were not planned well, and the door closer hit the wall and destroyed it. And they used the one with no stopper to prevent such damage.
Overall, I feel that they were using some of the cheapest, oldest leftovers everywhere it was possible.
And very poor communication after you've signed the contract.
