Choosing Kalka as a contractor was the biggest mistake of my life costing us much money, effort, time and now have nothing to show for it after an entire year!!
During our first consultation the sales rep told us that cost would be around $715,000. After waiting for over two months for the tender we told that the revised cost was now $915,000 and this is after taking away the pool and many other items that we felt were too expensive. We did the colour selections and then finally signed the HIA contract in October and paid the balance of 5% of the contract price. We were told that it would take about 6 weeks to get the building permit. After numerous follow ups with Kalka we were told that there as a delay in obtaining the building permit because their engineer was not qualified to sign off on the drawings!!! We were then told for sure before Christmas they would obtain in. On 31 of January Kalka issued us a delay damage notice saying that because they couldn’t get the building permit within 60 days and cost have gone up they wanted us to give them an extra $150,000! We or course said no, as this makes the project unviable and also, we had a fixed price contract for which they were supposed to have lock in their prices with sub-contractors and suppliers, plus the delay was their own fault. When we told them, we weren’t paying the money they then issued us a termination notice. So now we have paid $45,000 to Kalka, have no home and now prices have gone up and we can’t afford to build. Unfortunately, the HIA contracts are poorly written and totally in favour of the contractor. We wanted to fight them but the stress has just gotten too much. I would just warn anyone thinking of hiring Kalka to read these reviews carefully. I know that they have been doing this to many of their customers (as they actually told us during a meeting with them).
It has quite honestly been one of the most difficult and disappointing experiences I've ever had. Kalka is unprofessional, untrustworthy, dishonest and should not be allowed to continue doing business. 1 star is far too generous.
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