By Steve Roulstone
Having been commentating on daily matters for two years now, you would think that I would have covered most things and indeed the subject of today’s post has been touched on before, but two situations that developed yesterday are both worthy of comment and one was a first for me!
Normal practise.
As Agents, we do everything possible to respond to repairs and breakdowns as soon as we possibly can, (or should I say as soon as our Contractors can) Not that some Tenants feel this is good enough, but we even advise Landlords who want their own contractors to deal with any issues surrounding their house, that unless they have worked for Letting Agents before, the only issue we are liable to have is the response time that our contractors understand we require. In reality though, we can of course only react to what we are told.
Phone call number 1 and 2.
Yesterday we received a call saying a heating system had stopped working and would we get somebody to sort it out. The answer was yes of course, but as we always do, we pointed out that should the problem be something like a dead battery or drop of pressure, because boiler instructions are always left at every house, it could be that any costs would be put to the Tenant. (Imagine if we did not and then told the Tenant they must pay) Contractor was arranged and before they arrived, we received a call saying the problem was resolved and we of course cancelled the call out.
Phone call number 3
We then received a call from the same Tenants partner suggesting that we should have allowed the call out to proceed because the heating still does not work and what were we doing cancelling the initial call out. We of course said because we were told too, and this Tenant then asked if we were blaming his partner for failing to repair the boiler!?
Star gazing.
The difficulty here apart from cancelling the initial call out, is the level of expectation from the Tenant. We would not wish to make any statement about where the fault lay, but the problem for the second Tenant was that we had cancelled the first call and could not arrange another visit on the same day, when his call was made at 4.45pm. It is of course unreasonable to have contractors standing ready to react. Like all Agents we build up relationships with our contractors, so they will react as quickly as they can for our Landlords, but nobody can reasonably expect to firstly carry on with the call when advised we need not and secondly get somebody to call that day with so little of it left!
Broken Lock.
The second instance was a Tenant who had both a locked door to her flat and a second external locked door to the outside. The door to the outside had a lock that failed, which resulted in a phone call to us about the lack of security. The problem here was that the call came on a Sunday evening and the door could still be locked by sliding the bolt. If a member of our staff had received the call, we would have said talk to the neighbour who shared the door and ensure all is safe until tomorrow, when we will get a contractor out. With a second lockable door that should have been sufficient.
Wrong number.
The problem arose when the Tenant phoned the emergency number they had been given when they moved in to the property, which we no longer relied upon, using our own staff to cover the phone for the last two years. We wrote to everybody at the time advising them to use the new number. The Tenant could not find the letter! The Contractor reasonably listening to a call from a single young Lady reacted and repaired the lock. The Landlord received an invoice for £65 and the Tenant had a good night’s sleep.
Who pays?
Technically we could have charged the Tenant, or refused the invoice from the contractor for reacting prior to instruction, but that would have upset somebody who reacted in good faith and is one of the people we do rely upon when true emergencies do occur. A no win situation for us, because from the Tenants point of view, she believed she was also asking the work to be completed and allowed the contractor to carry out the work in good faith! Luckily, the Landlord understood and accepted the charge.
Conclusion.
My conclusion is that no matter how hard we try, these things are going to continue to happen and Tenants will still feel they should receive a response when they wish and without delay. There are of course times when these matters are truly out of our hands such as unavailable parts. But we must keep plying our message taking every opportunity to explain the reality. That does not change my request, which would be that Tenants understand that they will receive a response that is quicker than most other scenarios and especially when compared to the average home owner requesting the same services.
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