Repairs

On Monday 7th Februaury, I called Midland Heart to report an emergency repair - 2 of the 3 lights in the communal stairwell had gone out, thus creating a danger on the stairs.

Tuesday came & went, as did Wednesday, and I called again on Thursday.

Completely baffled was the woman in the call centre. 'No record of that reference number' said she.

Bizarre, thought I, where on earth did the fella I spoke to on Monday get the reference number from if it is not recorded?

How long is it meant to get an Emergency repair assessed? 2 hours - 2 different members of staff at Midland Heart told me this.

So in keeping with my second report of the problem on Thursday morning, someone came out on Friday.

And it wasn't fixed.

And the person who had come to 'fix' the problem didn't even bother to tell us so, he just buggered off after banging about in the stairwell for a bit.

Finally, the repair was carried out a whole WEEK after it was first reported. Do any of you have landloards that would leave you in a perilous situation like this?!

What really takes the biscuit is I decided to complain to Simone Hoskins about the service that had not been provided by Midland Heart.

She referred my complaint to her manager (whose name I do not know as Simone never bothered to reply to my email asking for this information), and later contacted me to say;

Good Afternoon

Thank you for email, I have noticed from our file that the lease is in the sole name of Mr Benjamin John Jones.

I am therefore unable to respond to your queries without written authorisation from Mr Benjamin John Jones. I will be writing to Mr Jones today to ask for his authorisation.

As soon as this is received I will be happy to respond to your queries.

So, apparently living in the property for almost 3 years, and paying rent means nothing if your name isn't on the paperwork. So if I hadn't reported the repair, noone would have done. And apparently I'm not allowed to complain about the service provided (or not, in this case) because I haven't signed anything. I'm not sure that this woman understands what the Data Protection Act is, I wasn't asking for personal information, I was asking that they review what had happened that they provided such poor customer servcie!

Humm.

Welcome

This is a wee blog charting the awful service provided by Midland Heart. I feel very strongly about customer service, and when bad customer service is provided, it irks, but Midland Heart seem to surpass what is seen as 'bad' customer service. I'm not sure there is a word to describe what they do!

If you have anything to add, please feel free, this is not a personal attack on Midland Heart, merely a documentation of my experiences with the company.

I would be happy for Midland Heart to comment on the posts here, either via email or by using the comments form, however, I reserve the right to reproduce any correspondence here.