BillyOh Expert Tongue and Groove Pent Workshop 14 x 8
When I ordered My workshop, I chose a delivery date of the 20th, on the 15th (Sunday night) I received a text to say my delivery would be the 16th, on logging into my account the notification told me I was now unable to change this, I msg'd your customer services & was instructed i could refuse the delivery if i was unable to take it, at this stage we had not laid the base for our workshop as we were expecting it on the 20th & i was due to be out most if not all of the 16th.
On the morning of the 16th I received a2nd msg saying I had refused delivery, I had not, someone at GBD had done this... I spent the next hour trying to get hold of an operator to find out what was happening, the phone options system gives people the run around, deliberately ending calls directing people to the website, I had to chose completely irreverent options in order to get through to an operator...that operator then had to transfer me to different departments, I will be reporting this to trading standards as you don't make it easy for anyone to get hold of you & your operators from the non UK based call center just read from scripts giving standard replies, there was no real help to a problem.
When i did get through I spoke to a operator with basic English skills, it took far too long to establish my delivery should have been on the 20th, as far as she was concerned I had refused the delivery, there had not been any delivery... when I requested the delivery to be put back on the 20th she tried to charge me £30, I had already requested this date with my order, I was not going to pay again for the delivery date I had already selected. I had to refuse to pay this multiple times, no reason or apology was given i was told if i did not want to pay i would receive the shed on the next available day but she did not know when that would be.
what is the point of picking & charging clients for delivery dates if you are going to completely ignore them?
In the end my workshop arrived on the 18th i was given no warning about this delivery, luckily I was in, the driver explained when he saw the order sheet "delivery on 20th" that, and I quote "they don't give a **** mate, they just send them out as the choose, that date means nothing, few people get them on the day they want & that's just luck"
Onto the workshop building, quite frankly I'm amazed i could put it together, the quality of construction is far worse then the quality of the materials which i would classed as damp fire wood, i have assembled 4 sheds in my life time & have been a wood worker for 14 years, it would have been quicker & easier to build my own from scratch, it would have been from far better materials for the cost. I ordered a pre made building as i have limited time, the idea was it would be the quicker option, this was not the case in the end.
Non of the panels were square, they were impossible to get them to line up correctly, they cant have been made with templates or any tooling that allows consistency, sides cut shot, T&G cut long, I had to half disassemble 3 of them just to get it something like, I would have taken more apart but they start to disintegrate.... I'm very glad i didn't order a floor as the ones included or could be upgraded to were incredibly thin, we used 18mm OSB on 3.2's instead, this was cut to size and square having been cut on our panel saw in the joinery workshop were I work... the workshop would not sit on it, not only was it out of square no matter what we did, the dimensions were off we had to re make it to get it together... the roof was very much the same, when all put together there were gaps & holes in the panels i could put 2-3 fingers through.
The contents of the bags, the wood & screws were all soaked, the bags were full of water, our instructions were soaking wet we had to dry them out to use them, parts were rusting & again the quality of the wood & timber is all shocking, even pilot drilling everything didn't stop splits, its just poor stuff. about 30% of the roof T&G has splits in it before we even came to used them, we had to glue them back together, given how wet the wood is it would not surprise me if shrinkage does not cause us further roof problems down the line.
Finally we got it together something like, a few hand size gaps in sections & corners as the frames were so out of square or were just so warped, several times during the build i had considered stopping, returning it ... but the simple fact is by the time we had realized how bad it was it was all unpacked and in progress, access was limited where were were putting it up & it was just as big a job to take it down & re pack it as it was to keep going... it had taken half a day to go through all the parts & another half day to get 4 walls standing .
The next issue i discovered was when i walked into the shed for the first time after putting the roof trusses in, I'm 6ft tall, and could only just stand in between them, the listing states that the shed is 1.76 to the eves at the shallowest part and 2.06m to the ridge, its advertised as EXTRA TALL... this is complete garbage & false advertising... mine was 1.69 to the eves, i could not move around in this workshop without stooping or receiving a concussion every time I moved sideways... in the end i had to raise the roof another 4" to make it just usable. id have raised it more but i was now using materials i had bought for other tasks to make my purchase fit for use, this product as it stands is not suitable for anything but a mediocre storage shed, you could do no work in it unless you are about 5 foot 5.
After a further 3 days of wrestling with it, and modifying repairing it i have now got a workshop that's usable, its cost me an additional £100 or so in materials & way too much time, and I'm now able to line it out with 18mm OSB, all in all its been an over priced, "low cost" workshop that i would have been better off buying a more expensive shed from another UK manufacturer (these are not made in the UK) it would have saved me time & money for a better product that fits together, I'm kicking myself about that now, i will be logging complaints with Trading standards and putting up this review elsewhere as i don't want anyone else to suffer the shoddy service & appalling product i have had to make right. they really are not fit for Billy OH & Garden buildings direct are selling them as.