Topmarx Builders
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Value For Money
Topmarx Builders
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User Reviews
Shoddy Unreliable Liers
I unfortunately had this company come to my property through my insurance company on the recommendation of Infront innovations who supplied the structural engineer.
After my years of wrangling we finally agreed to a schedule with Infront and top Marc's
On day one they turned up to start the work but not with the correct paperwork so just started were they thought the Forman then turned up some two hours later stinking of alcohol.
They just do what they think they should do they were supposed to place reinforcement bars in brick work but beat the pebble dash above and when they tried to pach it was horrendous so they have blighted this area of my property they have tried twice they were supposed to place resin in joints after me exposing the areas they just put mortar in there so in frustration I called a meeting with Infront and top Marc's they agreed so a meeting took place I even had the director of top Marc's to attend he agreed the work was very poor and agreed to rectify the shoddy work they came back and believe it or not made it worse yes worse I was so annoyed after contacting Infront innovation with photos they asked the director what was going on his reply was get another contractor in to redo there work what a joke company there office staff are rude and incompetent and the directors just give lip service they now have blighted my house and just walked away an to think I paid £1000.00 towards this abortion of work makes me very angry I would advise anybody whom has to have this company through there insurance company stay well clear I will end in disaster .
Interestingly this is exactly what has happened with my property almost to the letter with the render repair.
We carry out over 2500 claim per year. Most customers are very happy with the industry but sometimes you are dealt a bad hand. In front had been dealing with this customer for sometime and it came too a point that we no longer wished to work at the property. An agreement was reached with Infront to close our part of the works and they reluctantly had to conclude the claim in another way.
I have reported the above review to this website as libel
Value For Money
A Bunch Of Complete And Utter Rude Individuals.
Had a hole in the ceiling and topmarx was due to repair the ceiling and addd artex ceiling coat finish.
They came and only did a flat skim finish . Later we called and asked them why they didn't do it.
They claimed we instructed the plasterers to only do a flat skim finish without art and then the lady whoever she was, decided to hang up on us three times deliberately and she then had the audacity to claim that it was all our fault even though we enquired throughout the whole process whether they would do art but they said ' oh no they'll do it on friday'. She then claimed we were shouting when actually no, she wasn't letting us talk so obviously i was trying to talk over her whilst she was throwing accusations round and round.
Then she so kindly cancelled our decorations due friday.
DO NOT USE them.ever.
Thank you for the comments, We do make every effort to conclude claims in the best possible way but unfortunately sometimes you come across immovable objects.
I am unsure where the comment came from regarding our trades as we employ qualified time served trades ,
If you have a genuine issues with any works we have carried out please contact our office, Im sure if your issue is valid it will be dealt with in the correct manner
If your company does 2500 claims per year and has a complaint ratio of roughly 1%, then that is 250 dissatisfied customers!
Multiply that by the 20 plus years your company has been trading, then you arrive at a total of 5,000 dissatisfied customers.
I find it unbelievable that your company has not made any effort to improve the relations with customers, and to go all out to settle a claim amicably, and to ensure that proper time served tradesmen are employed, and not employing rough subcontractors/ staff who has no manners or experience of the construction industry.
I just hope your company can vastly improve on the ONE STAR rating that is presently shown.
We have worked directly for the insurance services for over 20 years, We complete over 2500 claims every year with a complaints ratio of under 1% ( this is a requirement and audited by our clients)
You will always have one or two claims that have problems but we always try to resolve in a positive way. The above review is one sided, as are most reviews.
Value For Money
Halifax Sacked Topmarx
I didn't let up on Halifax. I threatened to refer to the Insurance Ombudsman if I did get satisfaction.
Halifax sacked TOPMARX from the job and got quote from A N Other to work out my compensation.
DON'T take TOPMARX lying down.
I have posted on another comment but again this is sounds almost to the letter of our dealings with TopMarx.
The Halifax decided to refrain from using Topmarx due to poor work and high ratio complaints, poor trades, poor office staff and poor site foreman's who don't have a clue what their doing. Topmarx are quite happy to take their money and run, leaving the client to sort it out themselves, and get a better firm in to finish off the works and mess.
I'm sorry to hear your claim didn't go as you would have liked
Unfortunately there isn't enough detail above for me to look into your claim and give a detailed reply.
I would like to point out that we have carried out many thousands of claims for Halifax (now LBG) and still do. LBG as well as ourselves take any complaint very seriously and always look to rectify any mistakes or workmanship issues.
Very often we are caught in the middle of policyholders expectations and what insurers are prepared to pay for which is usually very clear within the policy wording.
We often ask to be removed from these claims if we are unable to progress them and many insurers will offer some form of compensation for the policyholder to instruct their own contractor.
We were not sacked by Halifax but i will happily look into this further if you give me your details
M Fuller
Toxic
Please please stay away from this company, they set a new standard for incompetence. Dysfunctional, arrogant , rude, unprofessional, disingenuous are the core issues of my experience of this dreadful business. One or two of the visiting tradesmen were of a good standard, however this was overshadowed by the other 7/8 tradesmen whom I would not trust to fit a plug! Senior management within Topmarx are a joke. We can only hope that this business gets all it deserves and is closed down.
You should get out more. See for yourself the issues that Topmarx is getting from dissatisfied customers. Poor staff and poor communications, and shoddy handling of claims by inexperienced trades.
No wonder the score rating of the work the company does is incredibly poor according to the reviews.
Hi,
Sorry to hear about your experience with your insurance claim
Without any further details i am unable to respond to your comments in any detail.
However, i will respond as follows:
We only employ fully qualified trades to carry out our works, these trades are used to working in peoples homes and always treat them with great respect.
Our office staff are well versed in customer service and satisfaction and will always try to accommodate any requests for help.
We are stringently audited by most of our major clients for our complaints and complaint handling and resolution.
As a result our complaints ratio across all of our clients is less than 1%.
I strongly disagree with your with your personal comments.
It may be the case that other contractors, loss adjusters, drying contractors were employed by your insurers to complete your claim and your overall experience included them and as a main contractor we are taking your personal comments.
i would be happy to look into it in more detail for you if you wish.
regards,
M Fuller
Value For Money
Rude, Slow And Slapdash
Two attempts at correcting wallpapering have still left faults. I was told that the fault is in the wallpaper.
Their bloke told me that my wall wasn't straight or plumb. I got a straight edge to prove that it was straight as he didn't have one. He didn't want me to check it with a plumbline.
They had to cure a bumpy repair to a wall AFTER they'd papered it and I'd complained.
They used bricks that were wrong colour AND type.
The colours of mortar look like Neapolitan ice cream with all the colours used.
They told me that the wallpaper was too thick for them to lift the electrical fittings off.
I had to e-mail to get them to take away rubbish they left.
They booked an access tower to my insurer for three days to do work over my bay window but left after 1 day leaving lead roofing open until I complained.
Hi,
As i was personally involved at the end of your claim i can give a detailed answer to your comments above.
I visited your property with a representative from your insurers to look at your issues.
Firstly, it is worth mentioning that your property was in a poor state of repair with no real maintenance carried out for decades. I did not intend this to be a rude comment i was just stating a fact. It had suffered from subsidence which is covered under your buildings insurance. Insurers will not pay for maintenance works or damaged caused by lack of maintenance. The works we carried out were specified by your insurance company engineer and not us.
I will address your comments in the same order as you have set out above.
We agreed that the wallpaper join at the top of the stairwell could be improved. we removed this and re-papered this wall. The other fault you were not happy with is at the corner in your bedroom. It is not possible to have all the corners pattern matched in a room. Three corners can be matched as a continuous pattern but the last corner, in this case the one behind the door, can't be unless the pattern works out the exact size of your room.
The straight edge was for checking the ceiling which was out of level and showed on the wallpaper pattern. We did not say the walls were not straight.
I suspect the reason you wanted the paper replaced again is because your cats had shredded the paper at low level.
The bump in the wall was as original as demonstrated to you. As stated above your insurers will not pay for improvement work. However, we did remove it and re-plaster the area followed by re-papering at no cost to yourself or your insurance company.
The bricks used were the best match we could get. Your original bricks were no longer available. The colour was similar to your original colour but the original ones were very dirty. You had agreed this prior to us removing the original cracked bricks.
The pointing of the bricks will always stand out against old mortar. The main problem here is that most of the pointing to your property had fallen out due to lack of maintenance. The new mortar will tone down in time but will look fine once the rest of the property is re-pointed.
We did not say that the wallpaper was too thick. We did not take the electrical fittings off because they had not been taken off the last time it was wallpapered. I agree that it is normal practice to tuck the wallpaper behind electrical fittings which we did in most cases. The low level sockets you refer to were heavily corroded through your cats spraying so we made the decision not to remove them.
I apologise if we did not clear away the last remains in a timely manner but we did clear it once we received your email.
At our meeting your insurance engineer asked us to look at the lead flashing over your bay window to check that it had not been damaged by the subsidence at your request.
We hired a scaffold tower to do this. A three day hire is included as a minimum charge already agreed with your insurer on a schedule of rates.
We did not replace the flashing due to it being badly maintained and falling away with the pointing. We did re-point it whilst there at no costs to you or insurance company.
You again called your insurers to look at our work. I re-attended with them and they disagreed with your comments and re-itterated that they are not responsible for your maintenance work and signed off the works as complete and satisfactory.
M Fuller
Value For Money
Incompetent Bunch Of Cowboys. Avoid At Any Cost!!!
Before I start here is the web address of the company I am talking about www.topmarx.co.uk
I had even worse experience. Halifax too is a rubbish insurance company , who I had the misfortune of having an insurance with. After paying the premiums for years, I needed to make a claim this year and what a nightmare it turned out to be!! Halifax wouldn't use any other contractors other than these bunch from Topmarx, despite my repeated request. It took these, in my opinion, incompetent, rude idiots from Topmarx few months to decorate just one room and you got to see the state of it to believe it. If you have an insurance with Halifax, cancel it now and tell them that you do not want having to deal with Topmarx. Here is my letter to Halifax at the end of my ordeal.
How to recognine Topmarx..
1) Incompetence at every level, starting from the "help"desk to the trainee plumber/electrician/decorator that will knock at your door at whatever time they think is appropriate.
2) They will always arrive at an unscheduled time, charm their ways into your house, will do a rubbish job of everything. Find any excuse not to do the work, when they are supposed to do, like long fag/tea/news paper breaks.
3) always leave you feeling duped.
4) Leave their materials/tools at your property for weeks.Material left by their tradesman on 31/01/12 was finally removed on 20/02/12 – 20 Days left in the hallway!! How unprofessional!!
5)01/03/12 - Electrician turned up a day ahead of scheduled before we had a chance to buy the
new lighting. He decided to drill a hole way off the centre because the wire
apparently was too short.
Why could he not add a bit of wire, was beyond me. The lighting, before the damage was bang in the middle, somehow.
He also noticed that there was no “earthing” upstairs which means that we could not put the metal lamps there till the situation is corrected.
Had we been made aware of this situation when the ceiling was being removed then we would have arranged for the “earthing” to be corrected when all the flooring were removed.
Although he did find the right hole in the centre (ceiling I meant not his own!!) But then there was an extra hole left in the ceiling.
Here are the sequence of events...
16/01/12 - Leak Fixed by (name removed)
17/01/12 - ceiling collapsed
23/01/12 - Halifax (PCC) visits
26/01/12 - Independent Inspection visits
24/01/12 - Excess paid to Polygon
31/01/12 - Asbestos removed. A subcontractor to do the ceiling arrived unscheduled, one day ahead of scheduled. How unprofessional!!
Left all his material to come back next day because the joists were not dry. Material was left in the hallway for 20 Days, obstructing our access to stairs etc. Despite repeated request Topmarx didn’t remove it.
01/02/12 - Ceiling repair postponed due to wet joists.
02/02/12 - Polygon drying the ceiling.
10/02/12 - Polygon removed their fan and declared it dry
20/02/12 - Topmarx did the ceiling. (Material left by their tradesman on 31/01/12 was finally out of the way – 20 Days left in the hallway!! How unprofessional)
23/02/12 - TopMarx turned up at 8.30 in the morning as opposed to in the afternoon. I had to reschedule everything. Finished the job by 12 Olock and left for the day. Turned up again on 24/02/12 and finished the job by 9.40.
24/02/12 - Topmarx left around 9.45. Flooring finished.
29/02/12 - the decorator arrived.
02/03/12 -
Decorator left. Radiator not put back yet. The guy meant to put back the radiator didn’t turn up. No word from topmarx for a week till I rang them up.
05/04/12 – Topmarx finish the job. Loft flooring left undone, Wallpapers left in a state. Idiotd Idiots Idiots!!
This is my letter to Halifax at the end of it.
Hi (name removed),
Thanks. Please arrange for the payment to be made to my bank account.
Just to let you know that Topmarx too have concluded their work.
Although there are still bubbles in the new hangings, new hangings looks much better than what they looked like before. It is a shame the rest of the hangings don’t look half as good.
And all they did this time was prepare the wall before hanging the paper and it took about 10 minutes extra and it hid all the dips and bumps of the loose emulsion.
Why they had to ruin my new decoration for the sake of extra half an hour is beyond me.
I have since arranged a local decorator to have a look at the work Topmarx have done with a view to get it redone as it looks stupid how the writings on the wall are visible through the paper.
And the local decorator thinks that Topmarx could have done a lot better job of it.
(Name removed)’s claims that they could not have done anything else to make it better, is loads of BS (excuse my French). I did not want to insult the guy, but do pass on my message to him.
This is what my local decorator had to say.
1) Although it is not always cost effective to remove many layers of emulsion, we ALWAYS first prepare the wall by applying a quote of filler to fix the loose emulsion before applying the wall paper.
These fillers are there for precisely the same reason. Although you can never guarantee that every imperfection will be taken care of, preparing the walls takes care of most of these. I remember that you did pick it up
during our meeting with (name removed). I wish you had stressed it a bit more. Hence (name removed)’s suggestion that they would not have known that it will look as bad, is another load of BS.
This is not as unpredictable as he made it. I hope Topmarx have learnt a valuable lesson, at my expense, that if you do not prepare the wall with loose emulsion then it will invariably turn out to be rubbishe!!
And this is not rocket science.
2) Where there were writings on the wall , we should have applied a quote of white filler to take most of it out. And it is neither difficult nor expensive.
(Name removed)’s assertion that , this would have caused a chemical reaction and more bubbles is another load of BS. The decorator almost laughed at it.
3) Most of the decorators do include provisions for lining the wall in their quotations. Topmarx did not. I am not sure why. Probably to win the contract and deliver a poor quality work, leaving the customer gasping for air.
(Name removed) did accept that, on the hind side, they should have flagged it up but he didn’t think appropriate to pay for their mistakes of not flagging it up when they could. I would have paid for the difference.
Today I went to the loft, and realised that Topmarx’s electrician had removed the loft insulations and loft boards to find the cable but did not bother to put them back. What an idiot!!
Although Topmarx’s have left me feeling let down, I do not wish to pursue this any further, as I do not want Topmarx anywhere near my property. I have seen the excellence of their workmanship. I wish to see no more.
I am happy to have my room back after four months and happy to sign it off.
However, I want you to know that I do not think Topmarx is a reputable company, worthy of working for reputable Insures like Halifax,
and I hope you take my views in to account when suggesting this company to unsuspecting customers. We, as your customers put our trust and money in company’s like yours, year after year to ensure that you look after us in times of need.
You should not allow companies like Topmarx, ruin your reputation.
I have since found out that Topmarx have many more “happy” customers with similar complaints.
Topmarx have ruined my new room and I cannot let Topmarx get away with this. I will bring this in public domain, through as many forums as possible.
There will be few web pages dedicated to the disillusioned customers of Topmarx where they can leave their true feedbacks for all and sundry to see, including the insures who employ them.
Rant over. I am happy it is over now. Thanks for your help with sorting out the last bill.
Good Night.
Just goes to show you how incompetent Topmarx are, the client who put a valid complaint about the grief Topmarx gave him and the poor workmanship took 5years and 2 months in order to get a response!!
They don't care about customer relationships and the grief they specialize in giving out.
No wonder their ratings are extremely low.
It's very rare to stay in a fire damaged house and have a construction company namely Topmarx or any other company working there at the same time. Your insurance company must have assessed the fire to have been of an extremely minor nature so that the works could commence and you still stay in the property.
Makes you wonder if Health & Safety measures were implemented during the works. After all it depends who you were insured with and the services they offer for their customers.
Look's like the insurance company got off very lightly.
Clearly had a bad time with your insurance claim Buddy. Had Topmarx in to restore my house after a house fire. We stayed in our home whilst they completed the work. Will say they done a fantastic job for us. And the quality of the trades work was excellent. Sorry to hear such a bad time for you but wanted to put in the domain that this is not my experience of Topmarx.
Can you put on here the 99.3% of your customers whom you claim to disagree with the comments listed above.
I'm pretty sure your companies complaint's ratio is much higher, maybe you would like to publish all the complaint's and be more upfront and honest, and how you plan to improve the ratings on this website.
It looks like you have had several different contractors working in and dealing with your property.Inspections, drying, asbestos removal all of which will have contributed to delays in the work. We do not have any say over these companies.
You start by saying that Halifax is a rubbish insurance company and finish by saying they are a reputable company?
We always welcome feedback from customers as it helps us to identify where we are good and areas that could be improved.
We have an extremely good record for customer service which we take pride in maintaining.
Our staff are very competent as are our tradesmen. We have a very low complaints ratio.
99.3% of our customers would strongly disagree with your comments!
I do not know the specifics of your claim but will happily look into them if you were to give me further details
M Fuller
Value For Money
Made A Claim In August 2010 Regarding An Escape Of
Made a claim in AUGUST 2010 regarding an escape of water to kitchen. They used a building company called TOPMARX who are dreadful. No communication, rude, have stripped the floor and left bare, powdered concrete to be trodden around house, promised to re-imburse cost of using electric for 2xfans and 1xde-humidifier to aid drying but no hour meters on fans?? then Topmarx deny any re-imbursment at all. The works have been underscoped as the wall tiles behind the escape of water have all come away along with debonded plaster, kitchen is a mess and its now FEBRUARY. 7 months on and still no agreement or even a costing on settlement after we have chosen what units we would like replaced. Halifax have no idea whats going neither do Topmarx. Disgusting service from a company who loves to take money (for the last 12 years) and never made a claim. Ombudsman next move...
You are correct in saying that Topmarx are bad. They give the impression of being professional, but that is let down by the employment of sub contractors they don't vet. They are mainly rough trades scratching around for work, and them employed by Topmarx and let loose on customer properties.
They do have some good trades, but most of them have left to start up their own businesses, but this is compounded by the fact they have absolutely no customer relationship skills when dealing with customer complaints, whether it's flood damage, fire damage, subsidence ect.
They fail to grasp the reality, that the CUSTOMER is always right in most cases, and until they accept and address that problem, they will always continue to be left bad feed back whether it be on this site or direct communication with their insurers.
I had even worse experience. These are bunch of cowboys running loose. Halifax too is a rubbish insurance company , who I had the misfortune of having an insurance with. After paying the premiums for years, I needed to make a claim this year and what a nightmare it turned out tob!! Halifax wouldn't use any other contractors other tahn these people from Topmarx, despite my repeated request. It took these incompetent, from Topmarx few months to decorate just one room and you got to see the state of it to believe it. Lies, deceit and incompetence is all you should expect from them. If you have an insurance with Halifax, cancel it now and tell them that you do not want having to deal with Topmarx.
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