Kevin Welling

Response from Kevin Welling:
I diagnosed a faulty motorised valve and after purchasing one returned the next day to fit. I explained that I was only going to change the head initially as it was not working and told her to monitor the situation which I highlighted on the bill as well. The customer rang me 4 days later to say the problem was still there and I explained that I was going on holiday and could it wait until I returned she agreed. On my return the customer rang me and said that she had got it done by someone else and wanted her money back I explained that I was never given the opportunity to return to the site and that if she returned my valve head I would refund the labour (I also fitted a tap as well and charged the labour for 2 calls) the rest was parts and VAT. I spoke to the customer on 3 separate occasions after my return so in fact she is mistaken in that she has not been able to contact me although since I asked for the return of the valve I have had no contact from her until now.

Response from Kevin Welling:
We did explain our charges to the customer over the telephone before taking on the job, both the call out and estimate charge. We have a call out charge that covers the first hour of work (labour) regardless of parts used. We would have supplied a fuse free of charge but as we had exhausted our supply that day the customer supplied one. If the fault is an obvious one i.e. a leaking tap then we can adhere to our free estimate policy however many diagnosis over the phone can prove to be inaccurate and often leave the customer to, dangerously, attempt to rectify the problem themselves. We do our best to avoid this for the safety of the public. It is a shame that this customer feels that we have wrongly charged her but we charge reasonably rates that seem to be an average going rate for the work we do, which is always carried out professionally.

Response from Kevin Welling:
" Last Wednesday or Thursday I received a rather short sharp phone message with respect to the job I had carried out some 10 days earlier, informing me that I had not fixed the problem. The message clearly stated that ..the customer .... was not impressed and rightly so. She informed me that she would not be available until the folowing day and that I could contact her then to arrange to put the matter right. On arriving home that afternoon, I received another call from this customer, not very happy that I had not contacted her, at that point I reminded her of her earlier message stating the fact that she would not be available until the next day. The customer disputed this. On the Saturday that I fixed her heating she was very happy with my work and speed of responce. Listening to the new symptoms it sounded to me that the problem was not connected to the work we had carried out previously. The customer disagreed with this. I agreed to return the following day to try and rectify the problem to which the customer agreed. The following morning I received a telephone call informing me that I was no longer required to attend this customer. With regard to the the bill of £156, £23 of this is VAT, which leaves a balance of £132. £75 was the initial call out fee for a Saturday and although this seems a little high, the customer had contacted me informing me that she had just returned from a holiday and her house was freezing. It was at this point that I informed her of our callout rates which she duly accepted. We were on site within the hour which I consider to be pretty good service. I am also unaware of many other local companies that offer 24/7 cover as I do for which I have to pay my engineers highly for. On arrival it was apparent that the motor in her valve was not switching over to central heating so I manually carried out this procedure and showed the customer how to do the same if the problem occurred again. I informed the customer that I would order the