Robot Building Supplies

Hello everybody. What a great experience dealing with Coldstream. Placed an online on on Wednesday afternoon. Received a phone call from the driver Friday morning asking me where I would like my delivery placed. Very friendly and efficient. Thank you.

Fantastic customer service... helped work out what I needed and the best way of getting things at best value... delivery was on time left near and easy for us to move.

Lovely friendly staff very helpful

Good friendly helpful service

Great service - all the stuff I need to repair shed after storm tree demolished it!

Shaun has great customer service skills and knows his products

Good service polite and have what you want

Excellent. Grace is a gem

Very helpful staff

Very helpful. Thanks Shaun.

I'd like to share my unfortunate experience with this company. In November 2018 Robot Building Supplies Coldstream delivered supplies to our business.

During a delivery their driver accidentally backed his truck into our front entrance gates causing significant damage to them. This is the second time Robot has damaged our property during a delivery. I immediately called Robot to let them know of the incident & they asked for a quote. We got the quote back from the original manufacturer. The damage done was going to cost $11,200 to repair.

I can't stress enough our gates are custom-made automatic swinging iron gates, big enough for a semi-truck entrance. They require a factory crane to repair them, bead blasting and a powder coating finish, which requires a lot of labor.

After calling over and over for an answer to fix our gates, one of Robots managers told me this price was "extortion" & they offered to fix the gates themselves. I declined and told them they were 100% liable, so I will require the original manufacturer to repair them as the gates were only 12 months old and this would void our warranty if we allowed Robot to repair them.

We also personally didn't feel Robot had the facilities & proper experience to repair our gates to a high quality standard and not just cheaply fix them, causing us issues later down the track, especially because they were arguing the repair costs. Robot then told me if I will not allow them to repair the gates themselves then they were putting it through their insurance company.

I then didn't hear anything until mid Jan 2019 when I found a strange man standing out the front of my property. I asked the man what he was doing, he said he was from Robot & that he was writing down what needs to be repaired so he can quote the job for Robot to repair it.

I told the employee from Robot I declined this offer numerous times so I do not know why he was there. The man then left and I called Robot to discuss why this was happening as they told me in December they were putting it through their insurance.

After a back and forth discussion with multiple managers at Robot, they finally put it through their insurance company. This began another problem.

Their insurance company refused to pay the full amount to my gate manufacturer and had offered us only $5,000. This doesn't even cover half of the repairs. Why should we be out of pocket $6,200 for damage someone else caused?

Our lawyer sent a letter of demand to Robot for the $11,200 to repair the gates. They ignored the letter completely. When I followed up with an email asking Robot if they would please reply to the demand letter. I was sent an email from their insurance company to "stop harassing them" or they will take legal action.

I contacted Robot in early Nov 2019 and explained their insurance company are bullying us into accepting less then half of the cost of repairs. The manager said to me it's not his problem anymore & that I chose to make them put it through their insurance company & because now I'm "not getting my way, I'm jumping up & down"

I told him this isn't about getting my way, this is just about getting my gates repaired to the quality they were before their truck ran over them. I then told him I find it absolutely appalling that their company has damaged our property & has just walked away without a care in the world at what happens to the repairs. We didn't even recieve an apology.

He then told me again that it's not his problem anymore and hung up on me. After all of the back and forth between our lawyer and the insurance company for 1 year, We ended up settling for $7,500 because otherwise we would have to go to the magistrates court, which ment more legal fees without reimbursement.

After our legal fees which are $2,000. We are left with only $5,500 to repair our gates. This leaves us out of pocket $5,700 for their delivery drivers negligence and blatant disregard for other people's property. I hope by in sharing my story I can spare someone else the agony of going though this.