- Jan 20, 2012
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- If you're a qualified, trainee, or retired electrician - Which country is it that your work will be / is / was aimed at?
- United Kingdom
- What type of forum member are you?
- Other
- If other, please explain
- Solar installer for 15 years
- Business Name
- Leeds Solar
Rant alert...
We foolishly talked ourselves into carrying out a holes series of works for a customer with horendous energy bills to try to get the bills down, only to find that basically everything in the house was a complete nightmare - central heating pump installer the wrong way, swimming pool heating unit having had a vital circuit removed from it, and left booby trapped by some previous victim of the customer with a fitting held together with putty so it disintegrated when we touched it, spraying water all over the electrics etc etc.
but basically the customer was utterly useless at figuring out technology, despite both being university lecturers, that we had 2 call backs for the new solar immersion switch not working that turned out to be because they'd switched the switch off that we'd marked 'do not switch off' and clearly told them not to switch off, then when we fitted a new heating controller I had to go back 3 times because it wasn't working, basically because they kept cocking up the programming.
So the latest installment was that we reluctantly agreed to fit a wireless remote switch to allow them to switch the swimming pool air heater on from the house instead of it being on a timer for 8 hours a day in case they might want a swim... turned into a complete nightmare of a job due to the pool installer having plumbed the pool pipes across the control panels so it was impossible to get the panel out more than a couple of inches, but we managed it and got it all working, tested it, good signal from even the far end of the house etc. So we left quietly satisfied at a job well done.
5 days later we get a call that the swimming pool is overheating, and full of steam, and there's a cut out light on the unit.
Turns out that they'd instantly managed to knock the switch somehow and leave it switched on for the next 5 days without wondering why the pool was still warm when the went for a swim without switching the switch on first, which then combined with underlying faults in the unit, that hadn't been serviced for 8 years and we now know had wrongly had an entire heating circuit from the dehumidifier removed by some numpty, to cause the pool to overheat and the dehumidifier to go in to protect mode.
At this stage we say to get the engineer out from the manufacturer to sort the problems out and determine if we#d installed the switch correctly / if we were to blame for the problems... yes we'd installed it correctly, yes it was working correctly, no none of the faults were down to us, and the unit was really badly in need of servicing.
So the engineers just put all the covers on and driven off when the customer announces that they want us to remove the switch we'd installed..... the switch that was wired in to the inaccessible panel behind the swimming pool pipes that the engineer could probably have sorted ok while he was there with loads of spare parts etc.
I've got another job booked in, so can't do it that day anyway, so get back and drop them an email explaining that the switch is definitely ok to use, and how to use it to make sure there's no issues, and just comment that it's a shame they didn't say about wanting the remote switch removing while the covers were off and the engineer from the manufacturer was there.
The email in response was so snotty, hopelessly wrong and desperately trying to pin the liability on us that if I replied Id have properly lost my rag.
So instead I left it, until a month later they're now desperate to resolve the situation and have us carry out a further job.
I really should have just told them to stick it, but did at least point out to them that we're under no obligation to carry out work for anyone if we don't want to work for them again. I'll see if that gets a torrent of further rubbish or an apology before I decide whether to do the job or not.
Also, it's probably no coincidence that this tale of woe involved plumbing and rectifying dodgy plumbing at that... never seem to have as much of an issue with elastictrickery. That pool guy was taking the ****, £100k for a bodge job of an install apparently.
Thanks for reading, feel free to add your tales of customer woe / rants to this thread, kinda like a group therapy session or something.
ps, no we've not been paid for fitting the remote switch despite an independent engineer confirming that we'd done it correctly, and they didn't seem to think that this ought to be a necessary pre-condition to us doing further work for them.
[/rant]
We foolishly talked ourselves into carrying out a holes series of works for a customer with horendous energy bills to try to get the bills down, only to find that basically everything in the house was a complete nightmare - central heating pump installer the wrong way, swimming pool heating unit having had a vital circuit removed from it, and left booby trapped by some previous victim of the customer with a fitting held together with putty so it disintegrated when we touched it, spraying water all over the electrics etc etc.
but basically the customer was utterly useless at figuring out technology, despite both being university lecturers, that we had 2 call backs for the new solar immersion switch not working that turned out to be because they'd switched the switch off that we'd marked 'do not switch off' and clearly told them not to switch off, then when we fitted a new heating controller I had to go back 3 times because it wasn't working, basically because they kept cocking up the programming.
So the latest installment was that we reluctantly agreed to fit a wireless remote switch to allow them to switch the swimming pool air heater on from the house instead of it being on a timer for 8 hours a day in case they might want a swim... turned into a complete nightmare of a job due to the pool installer having plumbed the pool pipes across the control panels so it was impossible to get the panel out more than a couple of inches, but we managed it and got it all working, tested it, good signal from even the far end of the house etc. So we left quietly satisfied at a job well done.
5 days later we get a call that the swimming pool is overheating, and full of steam, and there's a cut out light on the unit.
Turns out that they'd instantly managed to knock the switch somehow and leave it switched on for the next 5 days without wondering why the pool was still warm when the went for a swim without switching the switch on first, which then combined with underlying faults in the unit, that hadn't been serviced for 8 years and we now know had wrongly had an entire heating circuit from the dehumidifier removed by some numpty, to cause the pool to overheat and the dehumidifier to go in to protect mode.
At this stage we say to get the engineer out from the manufacturer to sort the problems out and determine if we#d installed the switch correctly / if we were to blame for the problems... yes we'd installed it correctly, yes it was working correctly, no none of the faults were down to us, and the unit was really badly in need of servicing.
So the engineers just put all the covers on and driven off when the customer announces that they want us to remove the switch we'd installed..... the switch that was wired in to the inaccessible panel behind the swimming pool pipes that the engineer could probably have sorted ok while he was there with loads of spare parts etc.
I've got another job booked in, so can't do it that day anyway, so get back and drop them an email explaining that the switch is definitely ok to use, and how to use it to make sure there's no issues, and just comment that it's a shame they didn't say about wanting the remote switch removing while the covers were off and the engineer from the manufacturer was there.
The email in response was so snotty, hopelessly wrong and desperately trying to pin the liability on us that if I replied Id have properly lost my rag.
So instead I left it, until a month later they're now desperate to resolve the situation and have us carry out a further job.
I really should have just told them to stick it, but did at least point out to them that we're under no obligation to carry out work for anyone if we don't want to work for them again. I'll see if that gets a torrent of further rubbish or an apology before I decide whether to do the job or not.
Also, it's probably no coincidence that this tale of woe involved plumbing and rectifying dodgy plumbing at that... never seem to have as much of an issue with elastictrickery. That pool guy was taking the ****, £100k for a bodge job of an install apparently.
Thanks for reading, feel free to add your tales of customer woe / rants to this thread, kinda like a group therapy session or something.
ps, no we've not been paid for fitting the remote switch despite an independent engineer confirming that we'd done it correctly, and they didn't seem to think that this ought to be a necessary pre-condition to us doing further work for them.
[/rant]
