FAILING TO DELIVER
A lack of customer care when it comes to deliveries and repairs leaves this columnist cold
Alan Cochrane has a bee in his bonnet about deliveries and tradesmen
My former editor Charles Moore recently extolled the virtues of stayat-home shopping and of having stuff delivered rather than fighting through crowds of shoppers. I could hardly believe my eyes. Had my old boss taken leave of his senses?
Far from being the blessing that Charles suggested, staying at home and waiting for deliveries or for home visits by t radesmen has become a veritable tyranny – a nightmare of appointments never kept and endless frustration, accompanied by much bad language. Space prevents me from giving all the details of my truly exasperating experiences of late; however, allow me to shame the principle, but by no means sole, offenders.
Villain number one is a major white goods retailer. I bought a rather snazzy range cooker from their Edinburgh showroom, paid a large deposit and arranged a home delivery, which arrived at the appointed time. But that was when the trouble started. Tasked with putting it into position and getting it working, my delivery men couldn’t even get to first base. For a start, only two men had been despatched and one of them was so small and puny that he would have been hard-pressed to lift a hair dryer.
His sturdier colleague shrugged and confessed that they’d never be able to get my cooker into position and frankly admitted that even getting the thing from their van to my front door would be beyond them. I was offered the option of them leaving this expensive bit of kit in my front garden or taking it back to the warehouse. I chose the latter.
Two days of entirely fruitless phone calls and of waiting for a person to answer at the company’s ludicrously-titled ‘customer service department’ elicited only the information that they never send more than two people to deliver stuff, no matter how big or where it is to be positioned. I cancelled the order, got a refund and subsequently discovered that my treatment was very much par for their course.
Villain number t wo was another wellknown white goods company. Having decided to get my old cooker repaired, instead of buying a replacement, an engineer for the above company gave it the once-over, decided what parts were needed, ordered them and a colleague duly turned up a week later.
He looked busy for an hour or so and then asked for the £129 payment to be paid in cash as his company’s electronic card reader was no longer working. I nipped along to the ATM, returned with the cash and handed it over to the engineer who was, by this time, sitting in his van outside my house.
All well and good, except for one thing – the oven that was supposed to have been fixed, wasn’t. It used to give off some heat but now, after the alleged repair, it was stone cold. Umpteen phone calls to – you’ve guessed it – the company’s ‘ customer services’ resulted in my being told ‘no’, they wouldn’t send the errant engineer back to finish the work he hadn’t done. Not because they reckoned I would do him harm (or so I believe) but because their rules insisted that the job had to be put out to another repair company altogether.
At the time of writing, the latest engineer hasn’t yet come to call, but for some bizarre reason I continue to live in hope, even if he keeps saying he’s coming at a time when I’ve already told him I won’t be in. This is what I mean by tyranny. The customer must fit in with the demands of the supplier.
We’re told that a tradesman or package will be with us on a certain day, but exactly when on that day is never clear. I agree with Mr Moore that the arrival of tradesmen is something to treasure, especially when it’s the man from the Wine Society, who’s always on time and always has time for a blether. As for most of the others, I wish I could think of a way of making them wait. And wait. And wait.
‘Waiting for deliveries or for home visits from tradesmen has become a veritable tyranny’