Can any plumbers or installers reading this suggest how I get the following problem solved? I won’t mention names.
Seven months ago I had an upstairs bathroom installation done by a one-man business with a shop (ie showroom) in the nearest town. He gave me a “Guild of Master Craftsmen” certificate stamped with the name of the shop. The man arranged two lads to come round, they installed the suite, all went well and I paid the man in the shop. In September, the concealed cistern failed (continuous flushing) while I was away on holiday. That’s after only seven months’ use. I shut down the isolation valve to the cistern and contacted the man in the shop, asking for the siphon to be replaced. (It’s a Macdee dual flush siphon in the cistern, built-in below a shelf, not very easy access. I can barely see it though I can feel it.)
After a couple of weeks of fobbing me off (“busy right now, I’ll let you know when”), the man from the shop came, saw the problem for himself and agreed to order in a new siphon. He clearly was not a plumber himself. A week later, when I phoned up to ask when he’d get it installed, he said the plumber was pretty busy with other jobs, he’d get back to me. He didn’t. Every other day I phoned up and asked reasonably, when would the plumber come? Two weeks later, eventually a plumber did turn up. He saw the problem, decided the siphon was faulty and agreed to install the one ordered by the shop the next day on his way home from work. A ten minute job, he said.
I heard nothing more until I phoned up the shop two days later, asking what had happened. The man said he’d ordered in the wrong siphon, the correct one would come in a week. Nobody had bothered to let me know!
Four weeks after that and I’m still waiting. I have to talk directly to the plumber now and he has the replacement siphon, presumably in his van. He asks me to remind him at 10am about the siphon job and when I do, either he’s too busy, working on jobs thirty miles away allocated by the man in the shop, or jobs have gone wrong and priority lies there, or he says he’ll call me later. But he never does. The one day he said he was working actually in my village and he didn’t turn up, he said afterwards he was sorry but he’d forgotten all about me, would I phone him at 10am tomorrow……
I’m making all the phone calls. Neither the man in the shop nor the plumber contacts me off his own bat. I realise they’re not interested, only want to do new jobs, not repairs to faulty workmanship, but I think I have a case. I paid good money for a complete bathroom suite and I expect it to last at least a year without problems.
Time to end “Mr Nice Guy” routine now. I could drive to the shop next week (it’s often closed, let’s hope this time it isn’t) and ask the man in person if he’d rather I got some other plumber to do the repair and then I send him the bill. Would that stir him into action? I need to know how these guys think.
What else can I do?
Seven months ago I had an upstairs bathroom installation done by a one-man business with a shop (ie showroom) in the nearest town. He gave me a “Guild of Master Craftsmen” certificate stamped with the name of the shop. The man arranged two lads to come round, they installed the suite, all went well and I paid the man in the shop. In September, the concealed cistern failed (continuous flushing) while I was away on holiday. That’s after only seven months’ use. I shut down the isolation valve to the cistern and contacted the man in the shop, asking for the siphon to be replaced. (It’s a Macdee dual flush siphon in the cistern, built-in below a shelf, not very easy access. I can barely see it though I can feel it.)
After a couple of weeks of fobbing me off (“busy right now, I’ll let you know when”), the man from the shop came, saw the problem for himself and agreed to order in a new siphon. He clearly was not a plumber himself. A week later, when I phoned up to ask when he’d get it installed, he said the plumber was pretty busy with other jobs, he’d get back to me. He didn’t. Every other day I phoned up and asked reasonably, when would the plumber come? Two weeks later, eventually a plumber did turn up. He saw the problem, decided the siphon was faulty and agreed to install the one ordered by the shop the next day on his way home from work. A ten minute job, he said.
I heard nothing more until I phoned up the shop two days later, asking what had happened. The man said he’d ordered in the wrong siphon, the correct one would come in a week. Nobody had bothered to let me know!
Four weeks after that and I’m still waiting. I have to talk directly to the plumber now and he has the replacement siphon, presumably in his van. He asks me to remind him at 10am about the siphon job and when I do, either he’s too busy, working on jobs thirty miles away allocated by the man in the shop, or jobs have gone wrong and priority lies there, or he says he’ll call me later. But he never does. The one day he said he was working actually in my village and he didn’t turn up, he said afterwards he was sorry but he’d forgotten all about me, would I phone him at 10am tomorrow……
I’m making all the phone calls. Neither the man in the shop nor the plumber contacts me off his own bat. I realise they’re not interested, only want to do new jobs, not repairs to faulty workmanship, but I think I have a case. I paid good money for a complete bathroom suite and I expect it to last at least a year without problems.
Time to end “Mr Nice Guy” routine now. I could drive to the shop next week (it’s often closed, let’s hope this time it isn’t) and ask the man in person if he’d rather I got some other plumber to do the repair and then I send him the bill. Would that stir him into action? I need to know how these guys think.
What else can I do?
