Domestic & General / Hotpoint grrrrrrrrrr!

bustyb293

I have never received such diabolical and disgusting customer service in my life. I would never buy either a Hotpoint machine nor a D&G policy and would never recommend anyone else to buy one either. The people on the so called customer care lines are rude and unhelpful. My Hotpoint washer dryer decided to chew my clothes and has come up with all sorts of error signs several weeks ago (this is not the first time, apparently it had been fixed a year ago, also no compensation for my chewed up clothing!) so I called D&G and they booked and engineer for Thursday 8 February, I booked the day off work as they could be with me anytime between 8 and 1. 10.30 I get a call from the engineers (Hotpoint) the engineer had called in sick (if you remember that was the day of the snow so very sceptical about this) they rebooked the appointment for Saturday 10 February between 8 and 11. 10.30 still no show so I called the Hotpoint engineers who assured me he was on his way. 11.30 still no show, I called them again and they were closed! I called them again on the Monday by then I was fuming to be told not a lot they can do other than rebook the appointment (8 and 1 again) to which I said not good enough as I had already lost a days holiday, they would not book a weekend appointment as that is down to the engineer as to whether he wants the OT or not. They rebooked for today Tuesday 20 February between 8 and 9.30 (as apparently they can do a "priority appointment" (shame I was not told about this the first time) and promised I was first on the list. By 9 they had not arrived so I called them again and was told the call was open and he would be with me in the next few minutes. 9.20 still no show (very anxious to get to work) so I called again and insisted they call the engineer to find out where he was. They did after much persuasion from me and the customer service woman at the end of the phone was not very happy about having to do it, apparently his van had broken down, nice of them to call me and let me know! At this point I am livid as I have not had a washing machine for several weeks and am fed up with spending my weekend in a laundrette. I asked for a supervisor from both D&G and Hotpoint and apparently neither one has them. I asked for a manager apparently they don't have those either! So far I have not had any form of apology and the best they can do is rebook the appoint for Monday 26 February between 8 and 9.30. They seem to think the problem is mine and not theirs, they will not even try to bend a little to try and help me, I've asked for a new machine and they won't do that without an engineers report, I've asked them to guarantee that the engineer will be with me at 8 on Monday and I am the first appointment, apparently they "can't predict the future" so won't make any guarantees that he will be with me at 8 or even 9! I refuse to take another days holiday and apparently thats my problem and not theirs having already lost one day as the engineer called in sick and they refuse to compensate. Any ideas what I can do?

sharbutt

This does seem poor and I would appreciate it if you could get in contact by emailing pressoffice@domgen.com and I can look into this further.

Regards

Sharon Harbutt
Press Officer
Domestic & General Group plc

Ellie2758

This is interesting. I was about to take out a policy with D&G

chrisw

Ellie2758 wrote:

This is interesting. I was about to take out a policy with D&G

And I was. I'm impressed with the response from their press office though - let us know how you get on.

SaraSeahorse

this is unacceptable customer service and find it hard to believe all these probels like sickness and vehicles breaking down

unacceptable and compensation should be offered I think for phone calls, lost time, etc.

also with the repeat problems with machines maybe they should cut their losses and bring you a new machine - why bang their heads against a brick wall trying to fix the piece of junk you seem to have (which probably has known faults from time of manufacture)

hjb123

We had equally bad problems with the same combination. A D&G policy. It was a dishwasher that was involved with us and we were told that several parts had been ordered and they were still waiting for one of them. They said if after 6 weeks our appliance still hadnt been fixed that we would get a replacement, sure enough 6 weeks passed and they denied this was the case.

The service from the engineer was terrible as was some of the customer service - although some of them were wonderful. In the end we got fed up of waiting and got a local independent engineer out who saw the problem straight away - and it wasnt the part we were waiting for for all that time. Within a week of this guy coming out we had a part ordered and fitted and a working dishwasher.

We sent the bill and a complaint letter off asking for the money that we paid out for this as there was the 5 years parts guarantee and we were on a monthly thing but we just got a standard apology letter back with no money!

We know who we will call next time - oh and we cancelled our policy and direct debit!