Fair Go: Complaint of leaks and delayed refunds from shower company

Emotional scenes and fixing a shower don't usually go together but at Claire Smith's house, the tears were flowing almost as fast as the leak from the shower upstairs when Fair Go and Master Plumbers visited with some good news - a brand new shower at no cost to the Auckland primary school teacher and her family.

For nearly a month, Clare and her two children had been restricting themselves to 60-second showers and using a bucket in the bottom to catch the flow, rather than risk more leaks, which had been causing ceiling damage.

They paid Auckland firm Shower Solutions Ltd more than $5000 to rip out and replace their shower but when she noticed a leak six months later, she says her initial complaint was met with resistance.

"The minute I noticed it, I phoned up, so I felt awful and because the blame was being put on me, I just started to question myself and thought maybe it is my fault?" she said.

Shower Solutions director Grayson Ford says the company had offered to patch the ceiling damage and was waiting to hear back from the family.

It had made one repair of the shower and told Fair Go that it had been supplied with the wrong silicone sealant for the job.

However, when the shower unit was inspected by Master Plumber Reuben Cutts, it was his view that both the installation and the fix were likely to be the cause of the leak.

Touched by the stress the family was under, Cutts made an on-the-spot offer to sort out the shower at no cost, which Clare gratefully accepted.

Fair Go was also able to point to Shower Solutions that an order from the Disputes Tribunal to pay another customer $2610 was overdue, which Shower Solutions promptly paid up, saying it had been asking the Tribunal for the order unsuccessfully.

The money was to refund a deposit for two showers installed for Auckland couple Rob and Nikola Luscombe, who had spent two years disputing the work done for them by shower Solutions.

They'd started with one good shower and one leaky one but "after they (Shower Solutions) finished, both of them leaked," Rob Luscombe said.

The Tribunal found that Shower Solutions had not used reasonable care and skill when installing the showers and did not use a qualified tradesperson to move the shower drain. By law that's sanitary work for a registered plumber only and earned the company a breach warning from the Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board.

A third customer, Ferozza Patel, said she had also contemplated taking Shower Solutions to the Disputes Tribunal over a shower installation that created a bigger building headache, but decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

"It was an extremely stressful time. I'd just had a baby and I felt so pressured that I ended up just paying the invoice," she said.

Ford told said he would go back to her to check, as he thought the matter had been resolved two years ago.

"Shower Solutions takes these concerns very seriously and we are endeavouring to put things right. Customer satisfaction and quality workmanship is extremely important to us and we unreservedly apologise for any upset caused to each of these customers," Ford said in a statement.

"We are also undertaking an internal review of our systems, including making sure our subcontractors are more aware of our obligations and that we are double-checking materials with our suppliers, where appropriate."