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Home renovation, honor stories
By Dwight Daniels (Shanghai Star)
Updated: 2004-06-15 13:54
Having a new flat is a wonderful and for thankful thing most of us. However,
renovating the flat can be a most painful thing for many Shanghai residents. In
fact, there is a popular saying: "If you hate someone, ask them to renovate; if
you love someone, renovate for them."
I used to be quite against this opinion and rather considered renovation as a
fulfilling experience. How brilliant to have a cozy home to provide comfort for
my family, my friends and myself! Unfortunately, as my renovation is coming to
an end, my thrill for building my "dream castle" has been largely replaced by a
mixture feeling of anger and loss. And the popular saying is exactly what I feel
now.
The whole experience taught me that the renovation market, ranging from
construction materials to furniture, is permeated with disorder and dishonesty.
I even dare to say that it would take me several days and nights to list all the
cheating stories in great detail, so I will tell only two of them here.
The first story happened in the wood floor market. It is really a sea of
lies. In the first wood floor shop, the seller offered me a high-ceiling price
at the very beginning. When I was hesitating, he immediately gave me 40 per cent
discount. Regarding it as a reasonable price, I called my dad to come to have a
look. The first problem arose when my dad used his own measuring tape on the
length of the planks. There was big difference between the result my dad
obtained and that of the seller's. It was no longer a trustworthy place.
We went to another shop. Since we kept silent for quite a while during his
spiel, the seller gave us 60 per cent discount. We started wondering what the
real price was for the planks. The funny thing was that the seller even agreed
with us when we asked him to lower the price further.
After checking the measurements, we decided to make the purchase. But that
was not the end of the story. When the planks were delivered to our new flat, we
found that most of them were not the same quality as the ones we had ordered.
Under the good planks on the top of the pile in the timber yard were all the
shoddy ones.
We ended up returning all the planks with lots of arguments and trouble.
Finally, we ended up buying flooring planks of good quality from a relative in
another city and although it cost us a lot in transportation fees, at least we
got the right planks.
The second story is about the renovation company itself. After some
investigation and making some comparisons, I chose a medium-sized company, which
appeared extremely genuine and sincere before I concluded the renovation
contract. Very sadly, I soon found myself becoming an exhausted "watchdog".
Every time I checked the renovation work, I would notice that something had been
missed or done wrongly. What is more, some materials mysteriously got lost.
Those seemingly innocent faces in the renovation industry make me feel so
confused.
I am not an expert on the economy but my renovation experience tells me that
regulation and the cultivation of a moral framework are essential for a market
economy. A market economy cannot flourish unless it operates under the rule of
law. Some minimum regulatory intervention is necessary.
However, while the rule of law is necessary for the health of a market
economy, renovating moral infrastructure is also indispensable. A market economy
cannot operate in a moral vacuum. Seeing the advantage of being rich,
individuals in the market all want to become wealthy in a short time no matter
what the moral cost.
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