If you're considering IVF our experience with Melbourne IVF has been excellent. they have been 100% accommodating to our need, very compassionate and provide very personal service. We just got the results from our last cycle to find out we're pregnant. about half an hour after recieving the call from the lab we received a call from our nurse (we've been dealing with the same nurse throughout the process) simply to tell us that she had been hoping to be the one who gave us the good news but as we had already been told she thought she'd ring to say congratulations. It's that personal touch that impressed me.

The only negative of the experience was the councellor (you're required to meet with one of thier concellors before you start your cycle). The councellor we met with had a bit of a screw loose. She was clearly a pro-lifer with an adjender, she was was not at all objective (as a councellor should be) and was quite unprofessional. Just remember the best medican advice through this experience will come from the doctor and, to a lesser extent, your nurse, your concellor shouldn't be talking about medical issues and if they do check anything they say with the doctor. But to spite this, I was so impressed with everything else I still give Melbourne IVF 5 out of 5.

Get a referal from your GP (if you get a referal from your obstit. it's only good for 3 monts, your GP can give you an indefinat referal), when you go to Melbourne IVF we can recomend a doctor by the name of doctor Geoffrey Clark.

Make sure youre registered for the medicare safety net to maximise your rebate

Approximate cost: $approx $2500 out of pocket (this will be more if you haven't reached the medicare safetly net)

For insurance repairs these guys are the best. They are a cooperative of small businesses who handled my insurance claim, made sure I got everything I'm entitled to from the insurance company and made the insurance company pay for quality repairs rather than budget repairs. They also came and picked my car up and left me with a car to use while they repaired my car, at no cost to me. If you have an accident call these guys even before you call your insurance company.

Approximate cost: $0 out of pocket (insurance company paid)

Had these guys service my back, do a fitting and various upgrades. The service was outstanding and they know it all.

Approximate cost: $3500

These guys sold me and fitted a Hayman Reese towbar for my Toyota Aurion. They provided excellent service, they fitting it on A Saturday for me and they had the lowest price I could find by a long shot.

Approximate cost: $550

I've had these guys print many jobs for me and they've always provided great service on time and at an excellent price.

Approximate cost: $various

Had Preston locksmiths make keys for a deadlock I didn't have a key for, I just provided the lock. Very helpful and knowledgeable. Also the only local locksmith I could fin that would do this on a Saturday.

Simonds built us a two story home in Epping, the customer service officer provided good service but every other aspect of the experience was a nightmare. I had to deal with continual incompetence, manipulation and intimidation. I found I couldn't believe a word they say unless it's in writing. Even if it was in writing they would still try to worm their way out of things. They provided us with contradicting and misleading documents to confuse matters, then lead us down the garden path and we'd find out that we had been given incorrect information once it was too late so we didn't get what we were lead to believe we were paying for. Their response to this was simply "well that person shouldn't have told you that" and they'll refuse to accept responsibility for the actions of their staff. All this largely came about because they provided us with ambiguous documents to make us believe one thing and then use that ambiguity to worm out of it. Put simply, DON'T TRUST THEM AS FAR AS YOU COULD THROW THEM.
To give you an insight into some of the specifics of our experience below is an email I sent to the regional manager outlining the administration problems we've had with Simonds. Keep in mind, this is just the admin problems, you can add just as long a list of problems we've had on site.
NOTE: I have made minor changes to the original email so as to individuals can't be identified.
"Dear.....
I was reflecting on our conversation yesterday and realised you may have thought I was being a little hardnosed about this issue of the infill above the Laundry Door. If I am that is probably because my experience with Simonds to date has got me to the point where I have had it. When we spoke yesterday I mentioned how unbelievably incompetent our salesman was but said that this was not a reflection of our experience with Simonds as a whole. On reflection I may have spoken to soon when I said that, it actually has been an accurate reflection of our experience sith Simonds. To give what I am saying a factual basis and make it more than just subjective criticism I've given you a brief overview of our experience with Simonds.
Before I start though, I will give credit where credit is due. The exceptions to the rule have been both of the CSO's we have had. They have proven helpful and competent which is more than can be said with most anyone else who has been involved with our house.
The Salesman:
To start, after meeting on two occasions and providing him with a very clear outline of what we wanted in our house I arranged to meet with him to sign off the documentation on which the contract would be based. The night prior to our meeting I rang him to ensure all was on track, he assured me it was done and ready to sign. When I met with him the following day I found that he had done nothing. What should have been a 30mim meeting then went for 4 hours because I had to sit there and do his job for him, holding his hand as we went though each individual item one by one. On most items he simply refused to include them and just told me to include them in a variation.
At the signing of the contract I was assured that, due to the unbelievable incompetence, the necessary variations would be prepared without charging me an administration fee so I will give Simonds a small amount of credit for that.

Contract Variations:
Once the contract was signed we started on the variations to correct the issues. In total we got up to Post contract variation 13 and Building Variation 6, that's 19 variations. Of these PCVO5, PCVO6, PCVO7, PCVO8, PCVO9, PCVO10, BVO2 & BVO4 exist only because the staff preparing these variations couldn't follow simple instruction and, as a result, they had to prepare more variations to correct previous variations. It would also appear the staff preparing these documents can't count as PCVO 11 doesn't exist.
Colour Selection:
When we did our colour selection xxx took us through the gallery. We made our selections and signed off on the relevant documents. During the colour selection the issue of fixtures like towel rails and toilet roll holders was never raised but I thought nothing of it as I assumed xxx knew what she was doing and that this would be addressed a tile selection.
I later found out that it should have been dealt with at colour selection and xxx just stuffed up. I was also told that, to spite the fact this was yet another Simonds stuff up, if I wanted to rectify it I would have to pay and admin fee. As a result, we will be moving into a house with nowhere for towels or toilet rolls.
The Final Plans:
When I received what were supposedly the final plans it ended up taking 4 attempts to get it close to correct and, at the end of the day, what I signed off on was still not correct.
1) The Paving for the front porch is still not correct on the plans (it is meant to stop at the front corner of the house, it is not meant to stick out past the front of the house into the front yard.
2) Up until the preparation of the final plans it was made very clear to me that the alfresco area would include a concrete slab. Xxxx had assured me that the Alfresco Are was concreted, when we signed the contract I questioned the Simonds Staff member we met with about this. I pointed out to him that item 9-2 of our contract does state that an earth floor is standard but the site plans state there is the additional site scrape in the alfresco area to allow for waffle pod step down. In addition, the Plans for the Slab looks to me like it included the alfresco area but said (earth). His response was that whilst item 0-2 says earth is standard, the slab diagram does show a concrete floor for the alfresco area as does the site plans so he assured me that is must have been included in addition to the standard.
Simonds simply refused to make these corrections and threatened to up the base price on our house if we didn't sign off on the plans (I don't know if intimidation is a common tactic used by Simonds but it doesn't make for good P.R.).
In regard to the other issues, basically, most of our upgrades had been left off. I sent the first draft of the plans back with the required corrections and, had the Simonds Staff been able to follow simple instructions, that would have been it. The thing that really got me was the sheer stupidity of the mistakes. To put into context I'll give you an example. The air-conditioning unit had been located were the solar panel needed to go so I told them it would have to be relocated. When I got the second draft of the plans back they had relocated the air-conditioning unit but had not relocated the power and water supply so I had the unit on one side of the house and the power and water on the other. These people don't seem to be capable of independent thought.
In addition to all this of course is the extensive list of things that have been stuffed up on site.
Then, as the cherry on the cake, A Simonds staff member asks to meet me on site to try to resolve a problem. I personally don't see the need for it but to get the matter resolved and appease this person I change my plans, delay our weekend away by one day and go out on site early Friday morning to meet him only to stand around like an idiot for 30min waiting for someone who didn't have the decency to show up to a meeting he wanted. Given my experience to date I really shouldn't have expected any different.
So, what it comes down to is this. If this is a standard of service that Simonds considers acceptable then you deserve all the bad Publicity you can get. If you agree with me that the service I have received to date is sub standard (to put it very mildly) and if you have any desire to rectify this and try to improve your customer relations and P.R. then between now and the end of September you are going to have to perform some major miracles to make up for the incompetence, stupidity and total lack of respect I have had to put up with from Simonds (not to mention the 100's of hours of my time wasted having to fix Simonds mess time and time again)
Feel free to call me if you wish to discuss this."

I followed this up with another email asking the regional manager for his feedback, that was a month ago and I've had no response. This would suggest to me that as far as the regional manager incompetence, lies and intimidation are acceptable practice at Simonds.

Approximate cost: $310000