Dear Jewson,
We were brand new to self building when we embarked on our barn house in Glasgow in November 2019. It’s both a massively rewarding and disruptive experience, which insists that you restructure your life in many ways.
I am a project manager and producer. I’m used to juggling many things at once and I’m comfortable working with large budgets. The money I’m spending normally belongs to my clients, and I’m utilising it to create a product for them, something they’ve asked for. With a self build, of course, the money is ours - well, it’s our responsibility. It belongs to the bank. The bank are happy to lend us the money, but we have to build the house we’ve told them about, and within a certain time frame. There is some flexibility on the time frame of course, but it costs us to extend.
I wasn’t intimidated when we started building. I read about projects and builders all over the world and watched how they managed their finances. We read about the processes. We watched televised building programmes, you know the ones. You don’t learn a huge amount about the buying and budgeting via these building programmes but you do pick up some tips, if you watch and look carefully.
When I started speaking to local building merchants and telling them about our project they were very enthusiastic and keen to help. There were many long conversations and lots of laughs. They all urged me to support them and to shop local. Support the wee man. I was really, really keen to do this. I run a one-woman band, so I know how frustrating it can be to have a big established company swipe some work from right under your nose.
Early on, Ben paid £350 for Jewson’s “Build Aviator” which claims to help you budget in full for your self build. The price estimation came out at over 300k to build our house. Our budget was 170k and so we quickly moved away.
I started to populate empty cells in spreadsheets and to make product price comparisons. The small companies were great to deal with and really helpful, but our house design and the products were were advised to use were very specific. A lot of the small, local companies didn’t stock everything we were looking for so the work became quite complicated.
We had to meet a certain level of energy efficiency and we didn’t have a main contractor to ensure that this standard was met. It was and is, all on us. Having never done this before, we were not exactly sure how strict Building Control would be about certain things. We played it safe and stuck to everything that our architect recommended.
The more enquiries I made, the longer my lists of suppliers and products became. Nobody stocked everything, and so soon enough 100s of enquiries were out for 100s of different things. I was also working on my own businesses, so there was a lot to juggle and it didn’t feel like I was moving anywhere fast. When an account manager from Jewson gave me a call and explained what they could do for us, I was so relieved.
Jewson told us they would beat any price I already had and that they could get me literally any product I wanted. They offered us a credit account which they said was very relaxed, and also offered free deliveries to site. A dream. I showed them our house design, showed them around the site and told them that we are being featured on one of those building shows on TV. Within a few weeks Jewson had connected us with Velux and were offering some complimentary products. Amazing!
I never thought in a million years that I would regret accepting this offer, but now that we are approaching the end of our build, I’m reflecting on what has happened and want to share the experience with fellow self builders, as a warning.
Big companies have a lot of control, a lot of power and are able to use this to win more sales. Jewson told us they wanted to support self builders, which I accepted. But on reflection, I don’t think they actually understand how self builders operate. When I think about it now I wonder what they get out of self builders. Self builds are normally one-off projects, and the budgets aren’t particularly big in comparison to working with commercial developers. Our budgets are finite. We’re only ordering one roof. Small quantities of many, many things. Our requirements are really specific. Annoyingly so. And that’s because we are building homes that we are then going to live in, so we want everything to be perfect. Really the most irritating type of customer for a large building merchant. So what do Jewson want from us? Maybe they want to have a reputation of being helpful and generous towards self builders. Ahem, well.
It all started out brilliantly. We were making orders. Loads of them. I had our account manager’s contact on WhatsApp so I would update him most days with what timber we needed and when. Deliveries would arrive so quickly. It was brilliant! Who needs a main contractor? The first chunk of our staged self-build mortgage was sitting in the bank and it was all to be spent on building materials. So we spent it all and kept building. We spent around 100k in the space of 3-4 months.
I was oblivious at the time, as there was so much going on, but Jewson were very pushy about certain stock items. They kept telling me that timber was going up in price and that if I didn’t order my cladding with them right away I would be sorry. These emails came in thick and fast. We had a very specific idea of what we wanted to use for our cladding and had a quote in from bespoke timber company, Russwood, based near Aviemore. At one point our account manager was pushing so hard to win our cladding order, that I just told him if they could get us the same profile, for the same price, in the same time-frame, then we would buy from Jewson. He wasn’t able to fulfil this and I’m so glad that it didn’t come to pass as we are delighted with Russwood’s product and I would have really regretted this one. The quality of the Russwood timber is exquisite. But I want to make this clear: The pressure to order via Jewson was fierce.
My husband and I visited CladCo in Glasgow to look at steel roofing options, independently. We received a friendly and informative service and the staff put together a quote for us. Jewson asked where we were buying our roof and insisted that we made the order via them as they “had a merchant account” and told me it would be much cheaper plus we would get free delivery. I took Jewson’s advice. This was a very bad move. I handed control over to Jewson. The owner of CladCo spoke directly to me at one point further down the line and told me how damaging this was to his business. He was so disappointed that we had purchased through Jewson after having met him in person onsite. Through Jewson we were supplied with the wrong screws and were missing the mastic tape. Our roof is now complete, but installed without the recommended mastic tape. The owner explained that when they deal directly with customers, they learn about what they’re using the product for and ensure they have the best advice and correct installation. This is not something we can afford to rectify, and something that could knock some years of the life of the roof.
We had a fixed budget for Velux windows and had 8 x basic windows in an online shopping basket, ready to purchase. Jewson and Velux together offered us two free electric opening windows along with solar kits. This seemed amazingly generous, but we soon realised that we were expected to purchase 6 more of the same windows, taking us hundreds over our budget. It took a lot of negotiating to explain to Jewson that we had to buy the most basic possible for the remaining 6 as we didn’t have any extra money outside of our budget. A saving isn’t a saving if you’re forced to spend more money on other things. There was no saving made. These windows arrived with the incorrect flashings for our roof. Our window fitter, recommended by Velux, came along on a weekend with team, tools and kit, only to tell us he couldn’t do anything with the flashings that had been provided. We put our trust in Jewson and they provided us with the wrong materials. They then proceeded to tell me that this was my “personal preference”, despite the official Velux window fitter stating clearly that we needed a very specific type of tin roof flashings to do this job. The correct flashings were 3 times the cost. Jewson wouldn’t accept my return of the incorrect flashings and I had to raise a formal complaint.
After we told Jewson that we weren’t ordering cladding with them, and at the point where orders started to slow down, as we approach the finish line on our build, we got dumped. Our account manager disappeared without a word and we were assigned someone new. The new manager doesn’t respond to our emails, seems to have no knowledge of our build, nor information about materials when we enquire. She quotes 2 weeks for delivery now and increased prices on literally every item. It most definitely doesn’t feel like we are a part of Jewson supporting self-builders anymore, that’s for sure. Any self builder will tell you that the end is where you need the most support, yet we struggle to get a response to an email these days, never mind an order fulfilled!
Our project isn’t over and is yet to be broadcast on TV, and so why Jewson are behaving this way at this stage we really can’t understand. We’re still here, chipping away, trying to order battens and plasterboard, but they have no time for us. When we reach out, they’re not available, our account is on stop, or there are a lot of other people waiting.
Recently we enquired about a plasterboard delivery and after 4 or 5 days of being ignored, then being told it was a week for delivery, then being told we couldn’t actually order anything as we hadn’t paid for last month’s timber, I picked up the phone and called our local building merchant. I had such a lovely chat with them and the plasterboard arrived a few days later - 20% cheaper than Jewson had quoted.
It’s such a shame that things have gone sour. I wish I had stuck with my gut feeling all along. The other five self builders on our street here in Glasgow are scheduled to start groundworks in the next few months. They are coming to us for recommendations and advice. I thought we would be handing them over to Jewson, but instead I’ll be saying “Support the wee man.”