Good product but awful process/customer service
Overall, I would give English Heritage Buildings (Ehb) 3 stars for the supply and fitting of a double shed and carport. The overall structure supplied and fitted looks good and we are pleased with it but it was the process to to get there that caused us much stress and anxiety. It is for this reason I would not recommend using this company to supply and fit timber buildings. Our main issues:
1. We were told that we had to have a middle post in our double carport which made it really difficult to get cars in/out as we have SUV's and not a lot of space to maneuver outside of the carport. This made the carport unworkable so we were then told that it would be ok to take the middle post out (if this had been said at the outset when we asked, we would have saved a couple of hundred pounds from having foundations dug/bricks layed etc and saved us a lot of stress.
2. It was our preference to use oak for the cladding instead of softwood and Ehb's estimation of oak to be used was way out which meant that we had to have the back of the carport done in pine as we needed wood quickly as we already had the fitters on site. The fitters told us the night before they were due to panel the back of the carport that they were short of oak!
3. Ehb's contractor (Elkins Carpentry & Joinery) decided it was ok to do the pre installation survey before the base of the carport was finished. When the installers arrived a few weeks later, they said that our base was slightly out (base was done by a 3rd party) and this caused a cancelled installation day with £700 costs. It makes sense for a pre installion survey to be carried out only when the base is completed and ready for installation.
4.As we were using oak instead of softwood, just before installation, we were told there would be an extra £100 cost for the nails. We refused to pay this as we had already agreed a price and signed a contract months earlier with no mention of extra costs for nails.
5. The shed (attached to the carport) doors stuck together a few days after installation and EHB's installation contractor (Elkins) refused to help as he said we owed him money for the nails.
I wrote to the managing director of EHB with my complaints and never received an acknowledgement or a response. I only got a response from one his colleagues a couple of months later after I chased again, and the response back was an apology and that Ehb had learnt lessons for the future from our experiences.