Invoice companies for bad service

HugoSP

I was talking to a friend the other night. He seemed surprised at my perfectly legal tactics to get companies and organisations to compensate me for my having to go out of the way to manage their bad service.

Here are some examples.

The local water company was replacing the water main outside my house when throught their complete neglegence they blocked my drive for a total of 8 days. This prevented us from using one vehicle but we had others. We invoiced them for £650 for various losses and they eventually offered £400, which we accepted. I enlisted the help of CC Water for this one.

Transco went from cockup to cockup whilst providing a quote for, then installing a gas main to a property of ours. The cost of the installation would have been around £150. It was eventually done for £0.

The TV Licencing Authorety sent me a recorded delivery letter, which had to be picked up, despite my having told them that the address they sent it to was unnocupied and therefore no one would need a TV licence. They were invoiced for time and travel costs incurred to pickup this letter from the local sorting office. They promply paid.

Every time my bank makes a mistake I invoice them £50. Sometimes I get it and sometimes they offer slightly less. It all depends who you speak to.

My commercial vehicle insurer was invoiced for an hours labour when they forgot to tell me that I have to manage the VAT on a broken rear window. It is not in the Ts and Cs of the policy and I found myself having to pay the £50 excess (no problem with that) plus the VAT on the whole amount, then claim it back off the insurers. Apparently this was a new policy. They paid my invoice representing my time in having to sort out the paperwork to claim it back.

PC World kept me waiting in for a whole day for a laptop pickup that didn't happen. Their head office received a letter asking for a days earnings to be reimbursed as a result. Within 2 weeks I had the cheque.

Make them pay when they screw you around. They may screw people around less as a result.

GavB79

Superb, good for you!

Wings_of_Ambition

What do you put in the letters? Do you threaten small claims court action?

wearside_2

I will have a go with this instead of letters of complaint!

geordie_joe

HugoSP wrote: »

Make them pay when they screw you around. They may screw people around less as a result.

In my experience this doesn't work. You can't make them pay just by sending them an invoice or ringing them.

It used to work for me in the 80's when very few people had computers at home, and those that did thought they were games machines. The chances were you could knock up an invoice on your computer and send it to a large company and some fool would pay it. Because the people who paid the invoices had no idea what they were paying for. These days they are a lot wiser as every body has tried it.

This is something that sometimes used to work, but now you have to blast out a lot of invoices before you actually get one paid. In the same way you blast out a lot of spam emails to get just one mug to look at what you are selling.

Apart from the fact that the public have done this one to death, most company accountants take the view that you don't get rich paying bills, you get rich not paying them. Therefore most companies are set up to try and not pay their bills until they have too.

Take BT, I once signed up for free internet calls, but my first bill included a charge for all my internet calls. When I called them, and emailed and faxed and wrote, the only answer I got was "You must pay the bill and we will deduct the money for the internet calls from your next bill"

Even before I had paid the bill they had admitted it was wrong, but they still insisted on me paying it and would not refund any money. All I would get was credit off my next bill.

My solicitor said they were in the wrong, but there was not much I could about it as they would cut my phone off if I didn't pay it. As I needed the phone line I had no choice but to pay it, then leave BT (for my call costs) four months later when I had all the money deducted from my bills.

It was one of those occasions when the price of being right wasn't worth the cost, i.e. no phone and a black mark on my credit file for not paying my phone bill.

HugoSP

Wings_of_Ambition wrote: »

What do you put in the letters? Do you threaten small claims court action?

How I approach it depends on the situation.

I have never had to put a threat of small claims court action in a letter to date.

I usually set out the complaint, just as you would for a complaint letter then add a paragraph detailing the cost that their actions represent to you.

Sometimes I speak to them first and follow it up in the letter. That is what I did with the TV Licencing Authority. Other times I write to the CEO or similar as I did with PC World.

The effect can vary. Sometimes they make a "goodwill offer". You then have to decide how to approach this, and ask yourself how robust your "justifications" are .

Generally speaking I tend to settle depending on how easy they are to deal with, what steps I can take to arrive at a sensible agreement, and the time it takes to extract money - I am not going to chase someone for half a day for £10 for example.

HugoSP

geordie_joe wrote: »

In my experience this doesn't work. You can't make them pay just by sending them an invoice or ringing them.

You need to write to a senior figure, such as the CEO, not the muppets.

Also, in these cases there is an escalation procedure that they should provide you details of. I have never dealt with BT in this way but a large number of companies do have such a system.

If this does not work then there is OFCOM etc. In the South West Water case I did what I could then went to CC Water, who take on complaints from disgruntled customers.

People give up too easily if a few phone calls don't work. I on the other hand look for ways into that organisation.

geordie_joe

HugoSP wrote: »

You need to write to a senior figure, such as the CEO, not the muppets.

Yes but CEO's have people to filter out letters etc. They just look at it and think "The accounts dept should have this" and off it goes to the accounts dept. CEO's don't deal with little things like this, they are getting paid to deal with things that are worth/cost millions!

HugoSP wrote: »

Also, in these cases there is an escalation procedure that they should provide you details of.

You have obviously not worked for a large organisation. Your "escalation policy" is more likely to be a "sh*t comes from the top down" policy. If something is wrong you DO NOT let it get to the people above you. If the people above you find something has gone wrong they will "come down" on the people below them like a ton of brick.

Trust me, people "high up" in large organisations often think they have to be tough on the ones below them, and when they need to be tough on someone the messenger is often the only and easiest target.

HugoSP wrote: »

If this does not work then there is OFCOM etc. In the South West Water case I did what I could then went to CC Water, who take on complaints from disgruntled customers.

Yes it would work in regulated services, where they have to abide by rules imposed on them. But other companies are just out to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible.

HugoSP wrote: »

People give up too easily if a few phone calls don't work. I on the other hand look for ways into that organisation.

Maybe you do, and maybe you are successful, but I also think you are unlucky for having all that happen to you in the first place.

Especially with the TV licensing, I have been trying to get them to send me something by recorded delivery for over five years and they just won't do it. All I get is "we do not have the facilities to send anything by recorded delivery"

HugoSP

geordie_joe wrote: »

Yes but CEO's have people to filter out letters etc. They just look at it and think "The accounts dept should have this" and off it goes to the accounts dept. CEO's don't deal with little things like this, they are getting paid to deal with things that are worth/cost millions!

Not always - it varies from one organisation to another. The letter to PC World for example was addressed to the CEO by name.

You have obviously not worked for a large organisation. Your "escalation policy" is more likely to be a "sh*t comes from the top down" policy. If something is wrong you DO NOT let it get to the people above you. If the people above you find something has gone wrong they will "come down" on the people below them like a ton of brick.

I have often been blocked by muppets who won't put me through to their boss, and have even been cut off by a couple. But before they do this I make sure I have taken their name. This way I can then include this behaviour with the name of the individual in the letter. It adds more weight to the complaint/invoice when it is read, so you could say that when this happens to me its actually a positive.

Trust me, people "high up" in large organisations often think they have to be tough on the ones below them, and when they need to be tough on someone the messenger is often the only and easiest target.

If someone has been helpful, you mention it in the letter. How the company treats its staff is up to them. I don't hold off making a complaint on the basis that the staff may be treated unfairly - why should I? After all it is my money that I'm spending.

Yes it would work in regulated services, where they have to abide by rules imposed on them. But other companies are just out to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible.

I have been successful with both regulated and unregulated services. It's all about how you approach them and how records reference telephone conversations and correspondance are kept.

No company wants to have to compensate its customers. When they have to or someone takes the decision to do so, questions are asked as to why they've had to enter into the dialogue in the first place. You often here the phrase "Why have we had to find £X out of the business to compensate this guy?" banded about. This is especially true with low margin businesses.

Maybe you do, and maybe you are successful, but I also think you are unlucky for having all that happen to you in the first place.

Especially with the TV licensing, I have been trying to get them to send me something by recorded delivery for over five years and they just won't do it. All I get is "we do not have the facilities to send anything by recorded delivery"[/quote]

MiniLaura

After arguing with Scottish Gas for weeks - quite a few phonecalls over a bill that was not for me - i dont get my power from them - they were threatening legal action.

Been thinking of waiting for cost of calls to come thru and then hitting them with the bill - not sure if it'll be a lot or a little so :S

Waiting to see if their apology letter reaches me as promised.

I just feel that after being threatened with legal action over a bill that should never have been sent to me plus call centre staff ebing totally unhelpful I should get something back.

HugoSP

Assess the time and costs taken for you to deal with this matter then compile an invoice.

Include a timeline as to what happened when.

Simple as that.

Then send it to the CEO and inform them out of coutesy they have 2 weeks to endorse the apology with payment before you refer the case to the regulator.