Feedback on Square Yards, the designer firm we chose (and are regretting very badly)
Overall:
Rating: 1/5. If there was a way, it would be 0/5
Recommendation: Absolutely pathetic and worst company. All the employees on our project were just liars and cheaters. Avoid at all costs. Even if you paid some advance, it is better to forgo that advance as the pain and suffering is not worth it.
We were promised a dedicated designer and execution team as our project cost was above 15 L. But, neither the designer nor the project manager were dedicatedly assigned to our project. The project manager is not on-site 99% of the time. This caused huge delays and the project - which was supposed to be delivered in 45 days was not delivered even after 4 months. There was also a delay compensation clause - Rs. 500 per day for each day of delay - which was never paid. They cheat and lie at each possible instance.
The Project Manager and Senior Project manager promised 4 dates so far (June 14, July 19, Aug 18, Aug 30) and still have not delivered the project. The Project Manager keeps asking for additional money to complete pending works - which he insists are not in his scope. The designer cheats by removing critical dependent work items from the final quotation - so that they can fleece the customer at the end.
Execution of the works so far is very bad with damage to existing tiles and walls, poor workmanship and worst execution. There are dozens of design flaws and execution blunders and we had spend huge additional amount to get them fixed.
The Project Manager, Senior Project manager and relationship manager do not answer calls and do not complete the work. There is no escalation point either. Wer were left fending for ourselves to get our interiors completed.
Just don't go anywhere near this company
The people from Square Yards on our team:
Sachin Nair: Overall project manager
Lavanya Guruswamy: Designer + Relationship manager
Abhijeet - The execution senior project manager
Dheeraj - The execution project manager
Feedback Summary:
Totally unprofessional: They claim to be a professional company - unlike a single boutique designer or executor such as a local carpenter. They have a process to look into complaints, but it is not so effective as their people and managers are very lethargic and unprofessional. No status update meetings are setup with people who initially assured us to take care of the project. No project reports are sent. They keep just giving new dates but don't resolve the issues on-time. Both their designers and engineers want us to talk only to them directly and not the proper channel (via project manager or WhatsApp chat). Even when we have issues, the designers and engineers do not want us to talk to the overall project manager. Overall very unprofessional attitude of the employees. When there are issues they blame other employees and do not take responsibility as a company. The project manager shouts at us (customers) and also the vendors. Overall, totally worst behaviour towards customer by all the people in the company and total apathy towards their needs.
No escalation path: If there are issues in design and execution, there is no one to escalate to. The senior project manager is the only one whom we can talk to. He does not answer the call 99% of the time. When he does, he just says that he will check and get back - which he never does. Even when he talk to customers, it is very rude. There is a relationship manager who gets assigned and that person is totally silent on any issue and useless. So, all the employees: Project Manager, Sr. Project Manager, Relationship manager, Overall project manager are all aligned just to tell lies and stories to the customer. The overall project manager quit the company and there was no escalation point when there were issues at the site.
Huge delays: The project has still not been delivered after a delay of 2 months beyond promised delivery date. The execution project manager and senior project manager absolutely don't care at all. They are not reachable 90% of the time. We planned our gruhapravesam 2 months after the promised delivery date. Yet, the project was still not completed and delivered. In the end we had beg the project manager daily - for 4 weeks - to complete the project. A project that was promised to be delivered in 45 days was not delivered even 4 months after the start of the project. Main cause of the delay is project manager is rarely on the site. The vendors do not show up or when they come in, they come in at 11 AM and leave by 5 PM. As most apartments have a quiet time of 2 hrs in the afternoon, the effective work day is just 4-5 hrs. The Senior Project Manager and Relationship managers do not care.
Knowledge and attitude issues: Their designers are mostly responsive but lack the knowledge and skill. They lack the creativity and are very mediocre. By the time we realize this, we would have paid a hefty design fee and cannot exit - unless we are ok to lose money. Their engineers are a bit more knowledgeable but are not responsive - we need to run behind them/beg them to get things done. The employees behave as if they are doing a huge favor to us by designing and executing the project.
Total apathy from the project managers: The overall project manager himself is not even from interior design background. Most of the times, he does not respond to calls. When he does, he did not understand the issues at all. He just tried to stage-manage things instead of resolving the core issues. In the execution phase he is totally missing. He just says he will talk to the concerned person, but there is never a call back. The execution project manager and senior project managers behave as a demi-gods. The senior project manager shouts on the customer for mistakes from his team. He blames the design team and other employees of his company, but does not fix the issues.
Very poor value-for-money: They jack up the price very high and finally give some discounts. They keep pushing customers to use the high cost materials, thus increasing the price significantly. They do not disclose the the price of these materials till the last moment and at that time they blackmail us saying most of the design is finalized and making changes is very difficult. In the discounts they give, they exclude critical components - example: They mention bathroom under sink cabinet but exclude plumbing for that. They mention false ceiling - but only installing gypsum boards. Putty and paining of that is not covered. Absolute cheaters. We ended up paying almost 40k extra to the on-site project manager to complete works such as welding, electrical work, painting + putty etc
Detailed Feedback
Design Phase
Overall lack of knowledge and expertise:
No knowledge of civil engineering. The designer did not know what is actually possible on the ground and what is not. We had to make major changes after the site visit from execution engineer - who told that the design given by their designers was not feasible and was risky. Examples: Wall removal, Door shifting, Concrete walls
Designers do not visit the site more than once. We had to almost beg them and escalate to the project manager to visit the site after the first visit. They rely on specs in CAD which are incorrect. Examples: They designed things and when we told them that things on the ground were different, they said the CAD drawings were incorrect.
The designers do not know how to design even basic things such as false ceilings. They could only finalize after multiple iterations with their internal teams.
Lack of knowledge of modern materials:
The designer are at least 5-7 years behind the modern building technologies. Most of the times, they have not even heard of the materials. In cases where they heard, they don't know about the materials much. Examples: pvc stone wall panels, multi color cove and cob lights
Modern designs: The designers have absolutely no idea on how to get new and modern designs. Their thought process and design ideas are outdated. Examples:
We ourselves gathered so many (12-15) designs and presented to the designers.
The study tables and dresser feel like they are from 80's and 90's. There is no modern or contemporary look to them. Same with the design of TV unit, living and foyer areas.
Lack of Creative Design Ideas:
Design is of poor or average quality. They do not come up with any creative ideas. They too refer to youtube/insta and copy the simplest 2-3 designs (that they can understand) and present as options. Examples:
Design choices: We ourselves gathered so many (12-15) designs and presented to the designers.
Partition design: We specifically said that a partition at the foyer was very critical for us. They messed up the entire design. It was finally excluded because the engineering team did not approve the poor quality deisgn given by the design team.
Space saving designs: The designers have absolutely no clue of space saving design techniques. In spite of showing many youtube/insta references, they still cannot think innovatively - or at least copy from the references.
Sudden cost escalations:
The designer provides some initial estimate, but increases it suddenly. They either do not check with the relevant teams before quoting or blame other teams for not providing the right information. They also miss including items in quotation/estimate. Sometimes they realize that they missed some items from the estimate and add them, thus increasing the estimate suddenly. Examples:
Cost of a Quartz slab increased from Rs. 48,000 to Rs.74,000 overnight. This was because the designer did not know or bother to check the actual cost.
Cost of decorative items such as fluted panels (which are being pushed aggressively by the designer) is not disclosed till the end. At the last moment, they say it will cost 1.5 lacs. If we ask them to remove it they say that the entire look has to be redesigned and we are close to completing the design.
Total arrogance and cheating by designer: The designer insisted on adding a "fluted panel" which cost 1.5 L - which we did not want at all. When we fought to get it removed, she discreetely removed critical items such as plumbing, electrical work etc and showed an artificial cost reduction of 50K. We had to pay this 50K in the end from our pocket to the project manager. They exclude critical items such as painting, electrical works on purpose so that once the work starts they can fleece the customer for additional money. They deploy the project manager to do this. Example: The designer added installing gypsum boards for false ceiling. But she removed the electrical needed to install the cove+cob lights and putty + painiting for it. The project manager starts the work and after installing the skeleton frame for false ceiling says we need to spend additional money without which work will be stopped.
Not assigning promised resources to the project:
No senior designer provided for design/oversight. Based on the project budget, we were initially promised that a dedicated senior designer would be provided for the project. A senior designer came on a call and started asking the questions all over again. We told her to get a proper knowledge transfer from the sales designer as we already spent a good 3-4 weeks with the sales designer. After this, the project manager and designers assumed that we were comfortable only with the sales designer and did not assign any senior designer on the project. Later, in spite of repeated requests the project manager did not assign any senior designer to the project.
The sales designer provided was too junior and did not know much of designing. She was learning on the job - making a lot of mistakes (design, cost, materials). Due to internal issues, she did not want to involve a senior designer on the project, till the very end.
We had one session with a "Lead designer", but his ideas also were very routine. Ultimately what he proposed (for partition design) was rejected by their own engineering team.
Designing software tool issues:
Very slow to open: The software is too slow to open and a lot of time in the design sessions gets wasted just waiting for the software to open the various views.
Cannot switch between multiple rooms: Multiple rooms cannot be opened in parallel. So, if we just want to refer back to what we did in the last room, the current design view has to be closed and the old one re-opened. This takes almost 45 secs to a minute and we lose track of the idea or thought by the time the view comes up.
No versioning: There is no way to compare the difference between multiple versions in one view. At any point of time, only one design version can be created. In case we want to go back to a previous version, the designer needs to recreate the previous design by manually adding/removing elements. Not sure if this is due lack of expertise in using the software by the designer or if the design tool chosen by SquareYards does not support multiple versions. IN any case, this is another factor due to which a lot of time gets wated in design sessions.
Productivity of remote meetings is poor: There is a lot of background noise and we can hear little of what the designer says. We have to keep asking them to repeat. This also wastes a lot of time. Their office is far from the site and we only get weekends to have any productive meetings.
Putting to production phase
Missing items: As they are a company with accounting etc, they have a review and approval process for putting into production (sending the deign to factory for production). This is where more missing items were uncovered and added to the cost. They were reduced to some extent after a lot of negotiation.
Delays: Even after closing out every items on design, it took about a week to get an approval from their Engineering and Finance teams as they were not available due to holidays and leaves.
Threats from their finance team: The finance people call to pester the customer about reminder of payment - even when no work has started on the site. They say that if payment is not made, the material will go to a godown and it could be damaged etc. It is almost a blackmail.
Execution Phase
Pre-execution discussions:
Scope misunderstanding: Engineering Project Manager does not know what has been committed by the designer. He keeps saying that we have to get some civil work done at our expense - whereas it has already been committed to by the design team.
No professionalism: No project plan shared. We have no clue when the civil work will be done (so that we can inform the neighbours), when it will end, when the material will arrive from production, when I have to give the items I need to purchase (lights, fittings etc). In spite of requesting almost 5-6 times over a period of 2 days, no plan was shared. We finallygave up on this. Not at all a professional way of executing the project.
Execution:
Floor protection: This was promised in the plan, but the project manager had no clue of this till the day work was starting. When I reminded him of the same, he hurriedly tried procuring, but the quantity was in-sufficient. As a result floor protection was very shabby when the work started. They were not even taped in the bedrooms. The debris from false ceiling was all over, but still no attempt was made to get the remaining floor protection sheets. Even after the sheet were installed after a lot of follow up and shouting, they were installed so poorly that there is no use of them. They just came out in 3 out of 4 places where the work was going on.
Lack of response and action in addressing critical structural issues: Both the designer and site engineer could not estimate the kind of lintel beam properly. Due to this, issues surfaced after demolition of a wall. In spite of it being a time critical work, no action was taken for almost 5 days. The site engineer pushed the blame to someone lese in the company and just kept giving dates, instead of getting hold of someone and resolving the issue.
The worst part of this is - the onsite project manager and his senior visited the site, inspected the structure, spoke to the apartment chief engineer on the nature of the lintel beam and still could not anticipate the issue. Added to this, the onsite project manager made me pay the amount - putting the vendor on-call. Absolutely worst professional attitude.
No control over vendors: The onsite engineer project manager blames the vendors for the delays instead of getting the work done. He either does not coordinate with vendors well OR has no control over vendors. We pay the extra money to a company (that claims to be professional) - just so that they will take care of these issues rather than we running behind them. The project manager does not even know how to sequence the work dependencies so that the vendors are aligned. Example: The granite company vendor is called when the dependent work from carpenter is not done.
Pathetic project management skills: The onsite project manager did not understand the scope. Even after starting the work, he did not clearly know what is in-scope and what is out-of-scope. There is also absolute lack of planning. He discovers scope issues at the last moment - without which work would stop the next day. He did not even plan couple of days in advance. The project manager does not even understand what a schedule is. He is just there to tell stories and lies to customer about deliver dates.
Absolute lack of coordination: The engineer does not call the designer directly. He wanted the customer to call the designer (of his own company) when there is an issue. Every company has internal issues, but this is at it's peak in Square Yards - wherein the engineer insists on customer calling their own design team - instead of he calling them.
Totally unprofessional and lethargic attitude of project manager: The onsite project manager just says we need to talk to vendors (welders, electricians) directly. He just hands over the phone to them and they start demanding payment.