In October, it is the peak season for decoration.

House decoration is a major event in everyone's life. Whether the decoration quality is good or not is related to whether you can live with peace of mind.

Since ancient times, China has had the eight-character motto of "genuine goods at a fair price, childishness and no deception". Under the conditions of a market economy, business operations are more honest and trustworthy.

However, in the home improvement market, numerous additional items and unclear packages often make consumers miserable.

This newspaper published a series of investigations today and tomorrow to reveal the chaos.

  Last weekend, when the owner Xiao Chen received a list of 19 decoration addition items sent by the foreman, he reluctantly issued a sigh: It is too difficult for ordinary people to decorate!

Carefully selected word-of-mouth foreman, relatively generous decoration budget, detailed quotation details of craftsmanship, and responsive online communication. Xiao Chen thought that he would be able to exchange for a worry-free consumer experience, but he still can’t escape malicious extra charges. Overcharged.

Refined to the decoration quotation of the construction process, there are still 19 decoration additions worth more than 16,000 yuan.

Can't avoid adding items?

  96 quotations are not all listed

  "The preparation work can be said to be'armed to the teeth', but in the end there were a lot of additions." Speaking of the renovation experience of the past three months, Xiao Chen bluntly collapsed.

  As a house swap owner, Xiao Chen, who has already had a set of house decoration experience, thinks that she is not "Xiaobai" and has a certain understanding of the unspoken rules of the home improvement market. Therefore, when she selects the decoration team in the early stage, she deliberately seeks word of mouth A good and experienced foreman, even if the other party’s offer is at the upper-middle level among the peers, “the price is too low, and the family does not make a profit, and the price must be increased later.”

  After careful selection, Xiao Chen chose the foreman who was ranked “No. 1 in Jingnan” on a group buying platform.

Before signing the contract, the foreman was very active, measuring the house and drawing out the drawings quickly, but after signing the contract, the attitude of the other party changed 180 degrees, and he would not show up easily. The decoration of Xiao Chen's house was also entrusted to the site. The foreman on duty is responsible.

  Among the few meetings, Mr. Chen Yue discussed the details of the quotation on the site of the community.

"In the process of demolition and new construction of second-hand houses, there will always be unexpected situations. I have always asked him to report the quotation more carefully, and try to include the processes that may be involved." Xiao Chen said, doing so. I want to understand the process and rules in advance, so that both parties can worry about it.

  With unremitting persistence, Xiao Chen finally received a 10-page decoration quotation, listing 96 sub-items, each sub-item indicating the unit, quantity, unit price, total price, material brand and construction process instructions. , And the estimated cost of hydropower renovation has been added. The cost of the project without hydropower renovation is about 48,000 yuan.

  Take the living room wall decoration as an example. According to the decoration quotation, there are seven processes including shoveling the wall, painting the wall, leveling the bottom plaster, scraping the water-resistant putty, hanging the grid cloth, strengthening the yin and yang corners, and brushing the latex paint.

Among them, the second process-painting the wall, indicating the use of the QG500 Meichao wall shackle, the workers will first clean up the base layer floating ash, sprinkle water to moisten the base layer, and then paint the Meichao wall shackle, the unit price is 5 yuan/square. Meters, finally calculated according to the actual quantity of the project.

  However, a decoration quotation that is so detailed that it still fails to cover all the charge items.

Last weekend, the foreman sent Xiao Chen a final account of the decoration, and counted 19 decoration additions, with a total of more than 16,000 yuan.

Xiao Chen said that she neither understood nor was informed of most of the additions.

 Where do the additional items come from?

  There are 4 additional items

  Where did the 19 renovation additions come from?

The reporter combed and found that tile is a word with a higher frequency.

  Tile tiling is one of the most common processes in house decoration and the largest amount of work. It is indispensable in every decoration contract, and so is Xiao Chen.

From the living room, bedroom to kitchen, bathroom, she chose ceramic tiles when decorating. Therefore, there are 8 charges related to tiling in the decoration quotation. On the premise that she provides the main materials, she charges according to the area and the unit price. 58 yuan/square meter, the total amount is nearly 6,900 yuan, accounting for 14.4% of the initial project price.

  However, in the post-decoration additions, there are still a lot of charges related to tiling: 450 yuan for wall tiles with 45° contact angle; 1520 yuan for thin tiles; 1,200 yuan for over-specification tiles; 800 yuan for balcony tiling. Yuan.

Adding up in the early and late stages, the cost of tiling has already exceeded 10,000 yuan.

  "The reason for the over-specification of tiles is that my house uses large tiles of 800 mm × 800 mm for the walls, which are not common tile specifications, so we have to increase the price." Xiao Chen said that the large-size tiles on the walls are in the Beijing home improvement market in recent years. Fashion trend, the two best-selling sizes are 1200mm×600mm and 800mm×800mm.

However, in the decoration quotation, only the price increase standards of 1200 mm × 600 mm and 800 mm × 40 mm were noted for the over-spec size, except that 800 mm × 800 mm was not stated.

"After the tiles arrived, the foreman on duty said that I would have to pay for it, but I didn't expect it in advance, so I can only recognize it, otherwise I have to replace the tiles."

  Xiao Chen smiled bitterly, extra-standard tiles need to add money, at least the standard listed-30 yuan / square meter, but the increase in balcony tiles is not charged according to the area, only displayed as a flat price of 800 yuan.

  In addition, the 300 yuan for the plastering and hanging net of the kitchen flue derived from the tiling is neither instructed nor instructed to charge.

"One day, when I went to the scene, the bricklayer master said in a helping tone that the kitchen flue was broken when the old was demolished, and he would fill it up for me by the way. I also thanked him in particular. As a result, it was easy. The work is listed separately in the decoration addition."

 What's too tricky?

  Must do the process without mentioning a word beforehand

  After comparing the decoration quotation and the decoration addition, the reporter also found that the two waterproof-related processes that are necessary in the bathroom renovation process-bathroom ground beams and backfilling, were not mentioned in the previous decoration quotation.

  The elder Mao, who has been engaged in home improvement for many years, told reporters that when renovating second-hand houses, the new masonry wall of the bathroom must be made of a waterproof ground beam at the bottom of the wall, which is mainly used to prevent the wall foot from returning to moisture in the later period. This is a routine process known to the insiders. , There is no temporary reminder afterwards, "If it is not listed in the quotation, most cases are deliberate underreporting."

  Xiao Chen remembers that not long after the construction started, the foreman once told the on-site personnel in the decoration group that the newly built wall of the bathroom should be waterproof ground beam. The other party replied that no one mentioned that this waterproof ground beam was charged.

"Ordinary owners are not professional decorators. I saw it and thought it was a construction process requirement for workers. Who would have thought that it would be charged, and it was not cheap. A ground beam cost 1,400 yuan."

  The restroom backfilling is also a similar situation.

According to the reporter's understanding, the toilets in most families today are sunken toilets, mainly to facilitate the arrangement of sewage pipes and drainage pipes and the installation of toilets or squatting pits during construction.

Toilet backfilling is a common process in home improvement, but the reporter saw in the decoration quotation that there are a total of 12 bathroom related subdivision projects, from the removal of wall and floor tiles, the roughening of the wall to the mute treatment of the sewer pipes, and the inclusion of risers. The restroom is backfilled.

Until one item was suddenly listed in the decoration addition-bathroom and kitchen backfilling, it was 500 yuan.

  "It's not much money, but it's very responsive." This was the comment of an owner who had also experienced backfilling additional items.

 What routines are there?

  Additional routines are hard to guard against

  In fact, using additional items to increase fees is a long-standing routine in the home improvement industry, and has been criticized by the China Consumers Association many times.

"The 10 most common additions in home decoration", "Six decoration additions make you spend 30,000 more", "Check the common decoration additions, how many are in your home"... Enter the home decoration additions in Baidu, similar There are too many to share posts.

  However, over the years, the routines of adding items to the decoration still exist. Consumers have tried their best to get an honest experience, but as early as the beginning of the signing of the contract, the decoration company left a gap for the additional charges in the later period.

The reporter noticed that Xiao Chen’s decoration quotation had such a small line at the end: "This quotation is in terms of personalized customization or items that are not included in this quotation. Please make a separate quotation after the foreman understands the design." In other words, 19 increments Items can be classified as personalized or not included items.

  Industry insiders frankly say that housing decoration is highly professional, and ordinary consumers often lack the corresponding knowledge of home decoration and poor ability to distinguish the quality of decoration. This has become the reason for the irregular operation of decoration companies to "deceive customers."

Looking at the entire industry, due to the low barriers to entry, renting a venue, registering a business license, and asking one or two newly graduated designers can start a decoration company, resulting in a mixed bag of good and bad construction levels in the industry.

In order to attract customers, small decoration companies can only solicit customers at low prices, deliberately underreport items and then add items. Consumers fall into a crisis of trust in home improvement, which is not conducive to the development of the industry in the long run.

  Our reporter Zhao Yingying

  Illustration Feng Chenqing