Text/Hong Xiaochun
Decorating a house is a major life event for most people. Even what ceramic tiles to use must be done online first, such as learning about it on China Ceramics Online. After all, for those who have worked hard for most of their lives to buy and finance a house, they just hope to have a warm and comfortable home in the next few decades. As the saying goes, "Men are afraid of getting into the wrong profession, and women are afraid of marrying the wrong man." If you choose the wrong decoration company to decorate your house, you will regret it even more.
In recent years, news about all-inclusive companies and Internet home decoration companies going bankrupt or running away has been frequent. Owners, workers, and material vendors who were owed money had no way to complain, so that the entire decoration industry once faced a crisis of trust. The nationwide quarantine at home at the beginning of 2020 has undoubtedly led to a sharp decrease in the order volume of home decoration companies. The author has also confirmed this phenomenon from a number of ceramic tile dealers who mainly focus on home decoration channels. The capital chain was originally the number one problem for home decoration companies, but due to a sharp drop in order volume, home decoration companies suddenly closed down and ran away from home again, and many of them were large chain companies.
一
Dongba Elephant Group Incident
On May 31, many owners who had signed decoration contracts with Dongba Xiang Home Decoration Plaza in Liuzhou City received notices from the company to terminate operations, so they went to its office building to seek explanation. It is understood that among the rights defenders, in addition to the renovation owners, there are also project managers and material suppliers who supply Dongba elephants, totaling nearly 300 people.
"They were still collecting model houses two days ago, but today they suddenly notified us to register claims." According to the owner, Ms. Feng, she signed an overall decoration contract with Dongba Elephant last year and has paid about 90,000 yuan for decoration. ; Construction started on April 29 this year. Now that the house is half-furnished, the decoration company has left it alone. I don’t know if the remaining decoration money can be refunded.
forMr. Yao, who supplies boards to Dongba Elephant, revealed that at first the company settled payments once a month, but last year the payment was delayed for several months. The other party explained that it was because of capital turnover problems and asked him to wait. Now Dongba Xiang owes him a total of more than 90,000 yuan in payment, and there are at least dozens of material dealers like him who cannot recover their payment.
Also owed money are more than 20 project managers of Dongba Elephant. According to one of the project managers, Mr. Ruan, this decoration company has always asked the project managers to sub-package the repair projects, and settle the settlement once each decoration is completed. Project money. Since the beginning of this year, he has paid the wages of the decoration workers in advance for the decoration work for 9 owners. The company owes him nearly 300,000 yuan in project payment.
▲Dongba Elephant terminates employee employment relationship agreement
It is understood that Dongba Xiang Decoration Group began to stop project construction and operations of branches in various locations this year; not only that, it also stopped paying all dues of employees, material suppliers, and advertisers. The author found on Tianyancha that the legal persons of Dongba Xiang Group have been changed, and the registered capital of some companies has been reduced from the initial 5 million to 200,000. According to incomplete statistics, Dongba Xiang Group's companies are involved in about 200 unfinished projects, involving a total capital of about 5 million yuan.
二
Nanjing Lu Gong Mansion Incident
A few days ago, the Consumer Complaint Station of the Nanjing Home Decoration Consumer Rights Protection Expert Committee received more than ten complaints about Nanjing Lu Gong’s Mansion, all of which were about the unilateral announcement of the closure of Nanjing Lu Gong’s Mansion (Mofanma Road store). It is such a large-scale home improvement company that the owners thought was relatively reliable, but unexpectedly it turned out to be a bigger trap!
▲The employees of Nanjing Lugong Mansion notified the owner to terminate the contract
According to the owner, Mr. Zhou, he signed a decoration contract with Nanjing Lugong Mansion Decoration Company at the end of last year, and has paid 10,420 yuan so far. However, the day before the construction started, I received a notice from Lu Gong Mansion requesting to terminate the contract. After Mr. Zhou issued a reminder letter, Lu Gong Mansion agreed to continue the renovation for Mr. Zhou, but made it clear that the company would close in September and would not provide any after-sales service.
There are other owners in a similar situation to Mr. Zhou. After being notified of the termination of the contract, Lu Gong Mansion only refunded half of the deposit. The owner called the decoration company, but the other party started not to answer the phone. When he found the previous employees of Lu Gong Mansion, the other party even said that the decoration company had changed its name and could not continue to coordinate.
▲Nanjing Lu Gong Mansion Complaint Record
On the home decoration consumer complaint station website, there are more than ten complaints recorded about the decoration company's lack of integrity, contract violations, unreasonable additions, poor construction quality, false quotations, etc. There is even a situation where the owner has been delaying the construction of the Lugong Mansion since signing the contract with him. After the official start of construction, he continued to ask for additional additional costs from the owner. The promises he made were always reneged on, and the situation was extremely bad.
三
It’s Nanjing again! The owner’s project funds evaporated by 70%
In March this year, Julian Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd. located in Jiangning, Nanjing, suddenly announced its dissolution, causing a large number of home decoration projects to be suspended. Subsequently, the Urban and Rural Development Bureau of Jiangning District, Nanjing City, as the leading unit, investigated and dealt with the Julian Decoration Company. Now more than two months have passed, and many owners say they still have not received specific advice on how to deal with the problem.
▲Local TV station’s report on Julian Decoration Home
Julian Decoration Company once said on the phone that if the construction continues, the contract needs to be re-signed. Because the owners did not want to delay the home decoration project any longer, they negotiated with the company to refund the original fees paid, and then find other companies to complete the remaining projects. But after the project was completed, when the owners went to the company to settle the settlement, the other party suddenly regretted it. According to the algorithm of Julian Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd., the project contract was originally quoted at 50,000 yuan, but now it is only willing to pay 15,000 yuan, which is difficult for the owners to accept.
The explanation given by the person in charge of the company is that the company is currently short of funds and unable to pay the owners. The owner's money has been collected in the early stage, but the project has not been completed yet. Why are funds still tight? Where did the owner's 70% of the project funds go? At present, relevant departments have intervened in the investigation. Once the audit finds that Julian Decoration Engineering Co., Ltd. has misappropriated funds and other illegal activities, the person responsible will bear criminal liability.
四
Hefei Shengteng Home Decoration closed down, and the owner was cheated out of nearly one million dollars
Recently, there was news that the Shengteng Home Decoration Factory store located at the intersection of Qianshan Road and Shihe Road in Hefei City was suddenly empty. The announcement posted on the company's glass door said: "Due to the impact of the epidemic, the company's construction site cannot start work normally. The company is currently suspending operations due to internal adjustments and will reopen after adjustments are completed." So far, this home improvement company still has no signs of "reopening".
▲Shengteng Home Decoration has locked the door
At present, nearly 30 owners have filled out the rights protection registration form. The owners said that Shengteng Home Decoration closed without any warning; it is said that just the night before the closure, another owner paid 40,000 yuan to the decoration company. Mr. Wang, the construction contractor who cooperated with Shengteng Home Decoration, also suffered losses. According to incomplete statistics, Shengteng's arrears for project payments, workers' wages, and material supplier payments are as high as several million yuan.
Wu
Zhangjiakou Tianjin Huating Decoration was complained by customers for fraud
On June 1, a citizen complained to the Sunshine Governance Window of Hebei News Network that he had signed a decoration agreement with Zhangjiakou Tianjin Huating Decoration Company, but the company ran away. It is understood that Tianjin Huating Decoration Company signed decoration contracts with many owners in Zhangjiakou last year, but it could not find anyone before the decoration was completed. The local functional departments suggested that the owners report the case on their own, but the road to safeguarding their rights was slim. In order to recover their reasonable demands, the owners had no choice but to seek help from the Sunshine Management Window. It is understood that the complaint has been transferred to the Zhangjiakou Municipal Administration for Market Regulation and is waiting for acceptance by the relevant departments.
……
In a short period of time, many decoration companies with long operating times and medium-sized scale have passed away. What have they experienced? As a result, the entire industry is always in a "sub-healthy" state. In this regard, some industry insiders said that C-end home decoration companies have not had a good life in the past two years; take Dongyi Judging from Risheng’s loss of 233 million yuan in the first quarter of 2020, the downward trend has become somewhat unstoppable.
The main pressure for this decline comes from finely decorated houses.
According to statistics, in 2019, the penetration rate of my country's finely decorated housing market has rapidly increased to 32%. By 2020, the country will have basically formed a market mechanism and development environment suitable for the modernization of the construction industry, and 50% of new residences will be fully decorated. Among them, Beijing and Shanghai account for 45% and 55% respectively of finely decorated houses, while Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen account for more than 70%. We can see that Country Garden has spent more than 1.4 billion recently to invest in three listed ceramic bathroom companies: Huida Sanitary Ware, Diou Home Furnishing, and Mona Lisa Ceramics. When real estate developers began to plan around the entire industry, the pace was so fast that they did not give others a chance to breathe.
Seeing this, many people may think that the "sub-healthy" state of the decoration industry is caused by finely decorated rooms, but it is not.
The home decoration industry has low entry barriers, long industrial chain, complex structure, wide coverage, and fierce competition. Once there is a problem in the capital chain, most decoration companies will choose to walk away irresponsibly. Comparing the same to the highly questionable finely decorated houses, there is no crisis of trust like the home decoration companies that frequently go bankrupt and run away; after all, the former is just dissatisfaction among consumers, while the latter causes people to suffer real money losses. So the problems faced by the decoration industry are not only external ones, but also internal ones.
With the implementation of the hard-decorated housing policy, quality and standards are gradually improving; most powerful leading real estate companies are also further improving the personalization and customization of hard-decorated houses, and consumers' recognition of hard-decorated houses will also increase. increasing day by day.
If you were a homeowner, would you buy a furnished house directly or find a home decoration company?
