Customer service? What’s that?
A friendly but overbooked Hetas engineer recommended Glenn, so we booked him in to sweep our chimney,
Glenn was professional, smartly dressed, and arrived punctually, so a good start. From here on it went rapidly downhill.
Glenn promptly and definitively told me that he couldn’t sweep the chimney because the wood burner was unsafe.
He indicated that he would charge me anyway but at a lower rate.
I was told that a report would be produced, and that I would pay £60, reduced from the £85 that I was quoted to sweep the chimney.
Ok I thought, this will at least be a useful report which recommends rectification works to sort out the issues. Maybe a side of A4 for my £60.
Sadly not. I got a tick list form which probably took about two minutes to fill in, saying that this and that and the other are not safe to use. Basically to buy a new stove, liner and (the gall of it) to SWEEP THE CHIMNEY. wasn’t that what I paid you to do?
Then came time to pay. I asked Glenn to email me the invoice. He replied that he’d take payment now as he had a card reader. Ok I thought, a bit brusque but whatever. I went off to get my card. I returned and I’m standing right next to him, when he places the contactless card reader ON THE FLOOR!
So I have to bend down to pay him £60. Who thinks this is an acceptable way to treat your Clients? Someone from the guild of master chimney sweeps, that’s who.
Imagine going into a shop to buy something and the sales assistant standing right next to you puts the card reader on the floor. If the manager witnessed it, they’d be immediately sacked for terrible customer service.
I contacted Glenn to ask him for a more comprehensive report, feeling that my £60 was perhaps more than the value he had provided. He refused. He even encouraged me to complain about his service if I didn’t like it. I don’t where Glenn got his business training, probably in the armed forces or police.
Is it too much to ask that tradesmen are polite and provide value for money? It wouldn’t take more than 5 mins to write up some notes about what we discussed, but when you’re dealing with a jobsworth who is determined that they know better than their customers what they want, you just end up feeling like you’ve been swindled.
C-
Must try harder