The Able Group

markray007

Hi all

Over the xmas holiday my grandad was unfortunat enough to suffer from complete heating and hot water loss. I couldnt fix it so (dont shout at me) I hit the phone book and net to find an emergency plumber / heating guy. The letter below is long, but in short I was disgusted with this companies lack of customer service / failed promises. I have no issue with them being busy and not being able to get out straight away...thats understandable, but the people on the phone were awful and they just didnt keep their promises. I will of course post their response should I get one.

Dear Sir
I am writing to complain about the (lack) of service I received from your company on (initially) Tuesday 21st of December 2010. I telephoned your company after finding out that my granddads heating and hot water were not operating at all. I and others attempted to diagnose and remedy the situation, but failed and thus resorted to finding an ‘emergency response company’. Your advert promised trained technicians, customer satisfaction and visits within 2 hours.
Your telephone operative informed me that it would be Thursday before I could get a visit to my granddads property due to the current high levels of demand for such service. I understood this, and informed the operative that I would be removing my granddad from the property as it would be unsafe for him to remain there. He is 83 years old and suffers from dementia. I asked therefore for a phone call to be made to me on the date about an hour prior to a visit to enable myself of the person who has power of attorney to be present at the property. This was agreed to. I stressed that there would be no one at the property, prior to that phone call due to the freezing conditions. I was asked to provide a ‘credit card deposit’ which I struggled to understand, as I never ever pay for work until it has been carried out, and besides which my granddad would be paying for the work, not I. It was agreed that a credit card would be available at the property from which payment would be made. I received a job number (above).
On the Thursday i waited until 3pm before telephoning to check on the status of the technician. I was told by a very unhelpful employee that there would be n visit as I had not answered the phone. I asked which number they had used and was told they had telephoned the number of the property. I reminded the operative of my discussions on the previous Tuesday and was told that it was now too late and it would be a further week before anyone could call. I asked to speak to a manager but was told none were available.
Astonished at this I called back after a few minutes and asked again to speak to a manager. Amazingly one was available. I spoke to her and was told it would seem that ‘I had been let down’ due to a ‘systems change’ that morning. The information I described including the telephone call made on the Tuesday was ‘on the system’ and she could not understand why they had not contacted me as agreed. She apologised but said that there was no one available to help me, in fact it would be a further week before anyone could visit.
Rarely have I been as disgusted with a level of service as I am currently. Some brief research done on the internet has revealed that this is not an isolated incident, in fact I have been relatively lucky by following consumer advice and not parting with cash prior to work been completed. Many others did, and are struggling to get refunds.
Thankfully we managed to find an emergency heating technician who was caring enough to visit and fix the issue. Incidentally, he did not require payment up front, nor did he charge extortionate rates like your company does.
I look forward to hearing your response and suitable offer of compensation for mobile telephone calls, and stress / trauma that you caused a family. I have taken the liberty of copying this letter to both South Yorkshire Trading Standards and Martin Lewis’s Moneysaving Expert.com forums. Rest assured that your response will also be made available to those organisations in the spirit of fair play, giving you a chance to redeem the situation satisfactorily.
I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.