18 May 2007 12:00 AM:
Hi fellow HR owners,
We signed-up in April 2005 and chose an apartment in phase 7, hoping that would minimise the length of time we would have to endure being on a building site! After much consideration we settled on an end of block apartment in Tomillo 5, which should have given us a long and unobstructed view right up the golf course to the old Hacienda. At that time there was a track running across the development, which we were told was for the farmer to move his sheep across ........ a bit of rural colour, we thought, and it didn't bother us a bit, being country dwellers here in the UK.
Last October we went out to Spain and visited the site (as others have said, its hard to get anywhere near). Only then did we learn of the revised plans to create various sports facilities, including a football/multi-sports pitch, children's playground & pool, etc. Where were these facilities to be?....... you guessed it, football pitch right bang in line with our terrace. No doubt the farmer has been bunged a hefty back-hander and has skipped off into the sunset without another thought for his sheep!
This discovery resulted in a few hours of stressful and fruitless wrangling in the PW head offices. They had no explanation or apology for not informing us of these changes, and merely stated that they were an 'improvement' to the resort..... they wouldn't even tell us how near the pitch would be to our building.
No doubt the extra facilities are of benefit overall, but there is no way we would have chosen that location had we know about the plans. To some a balcony view of football, with added background noise of children in the playground, might be their idea of heaven... but not us! I want to relax on the terrace with a cool drink and enjoy a calm view of the golf course, which is exactly what we thought we were buying into.
In a nutshell, we got nowhere on that trip - they offered for us to move to different apartment, providing we paid the current price, and not as it was in Spring 2005 (no matter that they had had our 40% for 18 months!). After three or four months of arguing (Parador aftersales helped, too) PW finally agreed to bring the price on the alternative apartment down to the 2005 level...big of them!
So, now we are in phase 1 (Jengibre 4) and waiting for the call, like everyone else.........as recently as January they were stating completion for March/April '07.
PW's communication is non-existent - apart from the glossy and expensive brochures! We had no idea about the missing blocks until finding this site a few days ago ...... we feel for those people.
At the end of the day, lets hope the whole resort is as nice as we were led to believe it would be..... we all want some pleasure after the pain!!!
Good luck to all,
Vivienne ........ sorry about the long saga!
Community thread:
Hi From Benalmádena Pueblo
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