by shawry » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:01 pm
We have been living in building 7 at Shimao Riviera, paying 20k for a 3 bed B apartment on a middle floor. For that price, you'd expect pretty high standards. But that's not all, you also have to account for other costs caused by poor construction, namely extremely drafty metal windows (making it hot in summer, freezing in winter)and with the marble floor, a kind of heat sump effect that draws the heat out in winter. It means that you need to allow for considerable (up to 1.5k monthly) costs for air con and heating in summer and winter respectively. This alone made us decide not to stay another year. However the other annoyances, listed below, really made up our minds to go elsewhere:
Poor security: People wander in and out without checks, staff frequently leave their desks unmanned and guards are known as bribable. This may have played a role in a series of late night break-ins at ex-pat apartments, as well as several waves of theft where satellite dishes are targeted.
Poor standard of appliances - this may just be our apartment, but the standard appliances are low quality if foreign brands, badly installed.
Poor build - dumb things abound, like the lips on the shower trays in building 7 don't slope back towards the shower, so water runs onto the floor.
No extractors in the bathrooms, so you have to run air con to try to dry the room, or it all gets mouldy.
Back of the apartment is extremely hot in summer, probably as a result of poor design/insulation, making kitchen unbearable to cook in
Internet reliability in the building is pretty poor, although this is probably not just confined to Shimao
Poor gym in lane 2 section: The main gym may be better, but this one is very poor, lacking decent machines
For building 7, the shops on pudian lu behind, have a habit of letting off fireworks at various times of the day. Not a problem for most, but we have a small baby who's sleep was inevitably disturbed.
Fog horns of the river boats - they sound these at all times of night.
Apparently a new manager has taken over from the management company (Savill's), so ayis are being asked to use passes and the guards now have a new uniform, but this still leaves some pretty fundemental issues to be solved.
We did read about many of the issues in different forums, but didn't think they could all be true. They are! On the positives though, the swimming pool is nice, Tina's cafe (recently opened) is great. The B apartments are pretty big. Taxis are reasonably easy to get there. And the grounds do provide good outside space for dog walking/pushing a stroller. And the view's are pretty good. But in our opinion, these don't make up for the above irritations or justify the costs of living there.
