Robot Building Supplies

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



During the 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.



I also explained to Robot that the original manufacturer was going to loan us (free of charge) automatic front entrance gates whilst our gates were being repaired for 8 weeks. Our gates are for the safety of our business, no other company was going to loan them free of charge for that long.



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. This was just before Christmas 2018.



I then didn't hear anything until mid January 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 Building Supplies and 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 November 2019 and explained their insurance company had still not repaired our gates and are bullying us into accepting less then half of the cost of repairs. The manager said to me it's not his problem anymore and that I chose to make them put it through their insurance company and because now I'm "not getting my way, I'm jumping up and 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 and has just walked away without a care in the world at what happens to the repairs. We didn't even recieve an apology.



If one of my employee's damaged someone's property whilst on the job. I would be severely apologetic and if my i