ICON Building Solutions

The following is an excerpt from our latest email to Colin Axnick at Generation Builders and Shamal Salgadoe at Icon Building Solutions: “Hi Colin and Shamal, I want to inform you of urgent repairs required for the two units built by Generation builders at address. The following defects have been identified and need to be rectified urgently. Unit 2: Tenants have informed us of water leaking into their downstairs living area from a ceiling downlight; see attached pictures. This was first observed back in May and had been noted a few times. Unit 1: There is water leaking from the ceiling on to the kitchen bench. With heavy rain, water dripped down along the wall to the floor. Unit 1: Toilet in the powder room downstairs cannot be flushed properly as the cistern doesn’t refill at all or takes several hours to fill. I would appreciate it if these issues can be looked at and fixed as soon as possible. Thank you, Co-owner. ”

We have no doubt that the very poor building works are due to the cost cutting by the Builder to recuperate the $43,375.00 payment to buy the Building Contract from Icon and paid from the deposit we invested on building works without our knowledge and consent. The other issue was the lack of building supervision: building site was situated about 47km away from the Builder.

Since the handover day, we have been inundated with defective and incomplete works: no landline and internet for more than a month because internal cables for NBN were not installed by the Builder, no solar power for more than 3 months because of the attempted defraud of solar rebate by the Builder. The unrectified defects include: creaks and breaks when walking up the stairs and on upstairs, undersize front door (or oversize door frame) leaking cold air into the house (we paid $9,730.00 for the double glazing ALL windows and doors) creating internal wind gusts enough to rattle internal doors, wall and window frame cracks, un-flushable toilet, toilet bowl clean press-button falling apart, scratched toilet bowl, leaking roofs, overflowing and leaking gutters, waterlogging in garden shed, very low air flow from heating and cooling ducts, water pump laid bare on the ground, water pooling on concrete driveway (a few feet away from a drain pit) etc. A few photos are attached. Only a few defects not listed here (e.g, solar hot water unit and recycle-water pump) were rectified under the manufacturer’s warranty but the subcontractor sent by Rinnai told us that the defect was related to the installation by the Builder. For everything else, there were no responses from either Colin Axnick or Shamal Salgadoe. Unfortunately, we have no option other than continuing to live on in a house poorly built by the business partnership between Icon Building Solutions and Generation Builders and bearing the inconvenience and expensive ongoing repair costs.

Three months after the handover, we documented our expectations, experience and bitter disappointments in the paid Building Contract works carried out by Mr Shamal Salgadoe (ICON) and Mr Colin Axnick (Builder at Generation Builders) in a document titled: “Building with ICON and Generation Builders – Agony and Despair” and circulated it to Mr Salgadoe and his business partners for review and comments. Mr Salgadoe went on the offensive and paid a lawyer to claim that our expectations, experience, and bitter disappointments are “false, misleading and deceptive and defamatory” and “accusations, will have the intent and effect of defaming” him, and he takes “strong offence and objection" and accused us of defaming his “good commercial reputation. ” Mr Salgadoe also threatened us by stating: “Further, it offends the provisions of the Australian Consumer Law as being misleading and deceptive conduct and we put you on notice if you publish or disseminate the proposed communication, or any part of it, our client will issue legal proceedings against you for any consequential loss or damage suffered including but not limited to loss of business reputation and loss of work opportunities …”

The truth is Mr Salgadoe presented us the Building Contract worth more than one million dollars to sign in his meeting room. Mr Axnick, who we never met, never had any communication with, and never heard of until we made a desperate written request to disclose his details a few days before we signed the Building Contract, was not even there to sign it. From that moment, our Agony and Despair started. Mr Salgadoe witnessed our signatures and, without Mr Axnick’s signature on the Building Contract, asked us to write the remainder of the 5% Building Contract Deposit cheque payable to ICON. Only in response to our lawyer’s LOD to both, only Mr Axnick responded for the first time by stating: “Icon Building Solutions is a sales consultant for Generation Builders. Generation Builders allows Icon Building Solutions to accept the deposit payment on our behalf. ” It appeared that Mr Salgadoe sold the Building Contract to Mr Axnick for $43,375 and we were defrauded to pay that $43,375 on behalf of Mr Axnick to ICON in addition to $8,000 we already paid for ICON services. If we had any knowledge about their secretive and dubious business dealings, we would have never agreed to pay extra $43,375 to ICON and never signed the Contract.

Mr Salgadoe is still doing his sales business to Mr Axnick while through the lawyer he paid to grossly insult us by stating one of us is “emotive” and telling us off by stating “… you choosing to enter into a domestic building contract with the registered builder, which upon signing, rests between you and the Builder. If there is any further issue or complaint relating to the works performed, is a matter between you and the Builder and not Mr Salgadoe and Icon”. When things went wrong, their standard protocol was point fingers at each other. The above referenced response by Mr Axnick is hard proof that Mr Salgadoe acted as a double agent by pretending to work for us while really working for Mr Axnick at our expense. As a result, we not only lost about $70,000, compared to if we had continued building with ICON’s competitor (company that did the Building Permit documentation for us), after Mr Salgadoe blatantly disparaged his competitor, promised us high quality building works and led us to ditch key pricy items for low cost alternatives but also now living with the defects that Mr Axnick did not fix and finding new defects to fix at our own expense.

Five stars service! Best experience ever when it comes to building a house! And luckily I have had the best buider ever as well!

Got my first house built by ICON in 2014. Pretty good quality.no problem since then.

Very happy with their unique design and creative layout, plus we always know what kind of home we have been dreaming of, they can combine all factors into the great design, after a few years of hard work, our dream eventually come true.

We are happy with my home. The staff were great, easy to deal with and did a good job.