SRMC Ltd
Waverley House
Hinton Way
Cambridge
CB22 5AZ
United Kingdom
07970 480113
+44 7970 480113
A nice bloke called Jamie has just installed a heating system in our house and he’s done a wonderful job too. It’s particularly impressive given the scale of the task: he was replacing three separate heating systems, none of which worked very well and he did it, with two assistants, in just nine days.
Only one thing doesn’t work as planned. The house is divided into three zones, with the office on its own heating loop so that we’re not heating 3000 square feet that we’re not using a lot of the time. Each zone has its own wireless thermostat, which controls the business end of the system down in the cellar. Despite having a theoretical range of 30m (presumably requiring the clear lines of site you tend not to find in houses with rooms) the thermostat can’t reach its base unit.
Jamie phoned the manufacturer for advice. The first time he called he got a recorded message saying the department was busy, he was on hold for a long time and then he gave up, thinking he could call them at another, hopefully less busy time.
The next time he called, he anticipated a bit of a delay so he placed his phone on speaker and carried on working on a boiler whilst listening to a message about how important his call was to the manufacturer.
Just as he’s thinking the call will be answered, and this is about twenty minutes after the first message, another message tells him that they’re too busy and he should try later. Then they cut him off.
The first time this happened he assumed he’d been unlucky, so he tried again. Then he got the second message and disconnection almost immediately.
Consequently, the next time he phoned, and his ‘important’ call was put on hold he thought it might be answered. Fifteen minutes later he got the ‘too busy’ message again and was disconnected.
Now he was even keener to speak to someone, so that he could tell them how annoying this experience was. So he tried again, only now with the sort of growing anger that only customer ‘help’ lines and crashing computer systems can trigger in normally reasonable people.
In the end all that Jamie got from the experience was the decision never to use the company’s products again. For my part the name of the company concerned was mentioned with sufficient frequency and irritation that, now, I would never choose to buy anything from them either, for fear of having the same experience: I’ve been most emphatically warned.
It’s often said that a lot of people will tell other people if they have bad service, whereas very few will mention good service.
Turn the page to find out why I don’t that’s the issue at all... »
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© 2009 Philip Graves Consumer Behaviour Research Resource. All rights reserved.
