3 plumbers were asked to quote for work – to replace 2 radiators. Here's a mercifully shortened tale of woe…
Dear Plumbers, how difficult can it be to:
- Visit when someone asks for a quotation?
- When a potential customer is visited, to prepare a quotation, estimate, something, in a reasonable time, i.e. not simply disappear?
- Do a good job when you get the work? And that's the key here; we got a crap 'un…
He changed the radiators, that much is true. The rest though, naah,' twas a bit crap.
- Rescheduled twice, from times that suited us to times that emphatically did not,
- Flexible plastic piping to join up to the rigid copper stuff,
- The cut ends from the copper pipes left by the side of the bed for me to stand on,
- He obviously hadn't doors at home; Ruby dog got out, he'd left the front door open as far as it could possibly go. Twice,
- Left the packaging materials for us to clear away,
- The hall carpet is soaked,
- Black gunk left in the bedroom carpet and outside, he mustn't have put a sheet down – or used the packaging materials,
- Didn't bleed the air out of the system before he left,
- When he returned to get heat into our home he spent more time telling me we had a crap system, that our new boiler wasn't working, that…
The worst bit though, when he told me he was on a course in London today & tomorrow. My wife mentioned afterwards that he'd spoken on his phone (loudspeaker of course) with a woman just around the corner about a job he was doing there today.
During his followup call later, after I'd got rid of him, he let me know that I could ring him today and if we were having problems he could look on Thursday. The thing is, consistency is all in attempting to spread positive feedback about a business. To tell me "I'm not being evasive" when telling me why he couldn't make it today; sorry mate, I'll be looking for tradesman review sites now.
So I spent time bleeding the system until it just worked.
2am.
Today for lunch I went around to the café and bought a spam & egg butty and blueberry muffin, and sat at my desk to eat them.
Feeling much better now.