Landmark lofts - would you use them? Post Reply

[moo moo]

Just wondering if anyone has experience of using Landmark Lofts? Thinking of using them as we had a great sales pitch from the owner, but i've heard of a mum at school having a terrible time with them - trying to establish if this is an isolated case or something that other's have experienced too.

Many thanks
Moo moo

[mumsw16]

From what I've heard, the sales pitch is what reels you in with them. Friends of ours are having a pretty chaotic time at the moment.

So my advice would be to go elsewhere!!

[Nightingale]

We are having a terrible time with them. PM me if you want to discuss properly.

[Reflexologymum]

We had a good experience with them, I think it depends on which team you get. We had a great project manager called Lenard. 2 other houses on our street then went on to use them,one had a positive experience whilst the other didn't. Again they had different project managers and teams of builders.

[mamabel]

NO NO NO AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!

ok so they did do the project on time and kept to quoted costs but we had a leaky roof...
they came out to fix it initially but pain to sort out and then when the roof blew off in a storm less than 2 years after it was built they were not interested in helping us at all. (no one else in the surrounding streets lost their roof...) and we approached them suggesting they might want to fix it and they basically told us to **** off! and to go via insurance so we had to pay large xs to get it fixed.

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THEM
from what I hear there are better companies out there...

[supermummy]

I know you didn't specifically ask for other recommendations but our loft has just been done by Premier Lofts. Very happy with them. The few issues that did arise were dealt with swiftly and professionally. Very decent and straight forward to deal with - especially compared to the local builders who did our side return!

[LandmarkGroup]

One of our clients bought this thread to our attention and we would like to respond.

mamabel unfortunately following a once in a hundred year storm there was some damage reported to your roof and we did advise you to contact TopSeal who provide a 30-year guarantee for the roofs on our projects and also your home insurers as acts of God are not always covered under the warranty. To be clear this is the only one of our projects to have suffered any roofing damage during the storm and we did offer to provide assistance to you in the meantime, which you did not accept.

Regarding some other comments, we value our clients feedback but unfortunately it isn't possible to verify actual clients on this forum against competitors who regularly post here. You can visit our Google reviews page here https://plus.google.com/+Landmarkloftslondon/about to see genuine reviews from clients. If any reviewer on the forum is a genuine client and has a grievance or concern then they can contact us through the normal channels or provide us with their postcode on the forum and we will happily respond to them openly.

We have an excellent client service record as the only loft specialists who are professionally regulated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. However, we work with hundreds of clients every year and recognise that not every project will run smoothly, despite our best efforts. We therefore are unique in offering our clients free redress to the Property Ombudsman who can award compensation or specific action on our part. We are proud that we have not had a single complaint to the ombudsman since we were founded. Any client or prospective client is welcome to verify this fact with the Property Ombudsman or RICS directly.

[moo moo]

Wow! I didn't expect to find a reply from Landmark themselves on this forum - i was just looking for a few honest responses from other local Mum's who have had experience of doing a loft conversion with them - which I believe I got. I'm not sure it's the right communication channel for Landmark to use NV to reply to clients who have (or had) issues - surely its a private matter and people are allowed to share their experience on this forum, otherwise it becomes pointless to ask such questions?

[LandmarkGroup]

It is our position to always reply to both positive and negative online comments about us. We have yet to be contacted by anyone on this thread either privately or publicly. We remind readers to treat such comments with extreme caution as users on this forum do not have their identity checked, let alone any verification as to whether they are genuine clients of ours. We advise readers to look at our verifiable genuine google reviews and to check with our regulatory body RICS and the Property Ombudsman for a truthful indication of our client service record. moo moo anymore questions please get in touch we'd be happy to discuss further. Thanks

[fulham_mum_2803]

What's the point of having a Google reviews page if as one poster said "There's also the issue of Landmark being fanatical about removing negative reviews."

[LandmarkGroup]

Hi Fulham_mum_2803,

I’ve seen the post you mention and I’d say that Google, like any other review site, has to act independently when deciding whether to publish/display reviews. Their software takes a view on whether the user is genuine and whether the review itself is genuine. Often this means that genuine positive reviews from our clients are queried by Google because they have strict procedures in place to verify reviewers. Likewise many non-genuine reviews are removed automatically without our involvement.

It is because of Google’s impartiality that consumers are able to largely trust reviews published. We are very proud of our 4.5* rating which is amongst the highest of any loft company.

As valuable as Google can be for finding independent reviews, we also ask readers to remember that there are less reputable companies in our industry who create fake accounts to positively review themselves or negatively review others. Unfortunately this happens all the time and can skew review rankings temporarily. One of our competitors even had, for a time, multiple positive reviews from their own employees! I am sure that you’d agree that 'user anonymity' can be a great feature on forums such as NappyValleyNet (which we enjoy hugely) but it also creates a bias that favours the author of such posts whilst limiting our ability to respond meaningfully to any genuine complaints.

We work hard with all of our clients to resolve any issues they may have. As the only professionally regulated loft conversion company in London we have a robust complaints handling procedure that gives every client the ability to refer any complaint to the independent Property Ombudsman whose decisions are binding. No other company offers this. We are pleased to say that we have never had a complaint made about us to the Ombudsman and this can be verified by anyone with a simple phone call. If any client of ours reading this has a grievance then they are very welcome to contact me personally and I would love the opportunity to help you.

Have a great weekend,
Jay

[MummyBusiness]

We are having a terrible time with them. PM me if you want to discuss properly.

We are doing a loft and thinking of using them. I know your post was a few years ago, did it wind up going well in the end? Is the quality still holding up? Would you use them again if you did it all over again?

[Nightingale]

I would absolutely not use them if I did the project again. Watching my neighbours recently undertake a very similar project through independent builders, they had a whole different experience and it was so evident from the quality of their team, the fact their site was always kept tidy and clean and that their job ran to time. A totally opposite experience to ours. In order to complete our loft extension we had to have the whole bathroom re-done, their level of incompentcy was farcical. As for our project manager, I think we only saw him once or twice and he went off for holiday for 3 weeks part way through and didn't bother to tell us. I ended up project managing the whole thing and due to their incompetencies it was a full time job. It is a shame that their slick sales pitch is let down so badly by the teams they contract to undertake the work. As noted, we did our project 3 years ago now so of course it is possible they no longer use the team we had, they would be crazy to if they did. We had no follow up from the company and no apology or compensation for what was a totally shambolic few months.