Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: mci services on November 01, 2010, 07:34:44 pm
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I have just had the following complaint via my website
Complaint
Approx 2 month ago you came out to our house and cleaned out our guttering. I have since had my downstairs neighbour at the door very unhappy and angry that the items you cleaned from our gutter has been put down the drain and is now causing a blockage that is causing water to run down the street. This is causing a major problem, especially with recent weather conditions. I am very unhappy that i have now been put in the situation that I am now having problems with neighbours and now have the possibility of damp coming through our walls due to work carried out by your company. I would like a response to my complaint within the next 7 days.
the thing is I have never put anything down a drain and never would. How would you reply to this? ???
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i never put any thing down the drain and never would, they might be trying it on to get you to pay for it, as it cost a fortune to be fixed, besides to block a drain u need loads, and there usually isnt enough in the gutters to do it
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this a draft email I have not sent yet what do you think.
Hello,
I am sorry to hear that you have this complaint, can you clarify what address you are,
I can assure you I have never put any waste down a drain and I refute this entirely, any waste removed is always removed by bucket and transferred into a large yellow builders bucket that I remove from site and is disposed of in my recycle bin.
I agree the recent heavy rains may be causing problems but none that are to do with my company and it sounds it would be better to phone the water board. I don't wish to come across as being cheeky but it sound to me that your neighbour has put 2+2 and come up with 5.
Or maybe it is me getting this wrong are you saying a down pipe is blocked causing water to overflow from the gutter, if this is the case it could have happened at any time either before my arrival or after as a company we don't clear blockages from downpipes and care is taken whilst clearing gutters not to cause a blockage, but if it is a case of a overflowing gutter please let us know and I will see what can be done,
Just to clarify I have never and would never place waste from a gutter clean down a drain.
Does that look ok for a reply :'(
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Send this:-
Letter A
Dear custy,
I am in receipt of your communication accusing me of putting what I have removed from your gutters down the drain. I run a professional business and assure you I have done no such thing.
Yours sincerely
Or even this:-
Letter B
Dear custy
(Letter A plus) ... and if you or anyone else continue in making these libellous or slanderous statements then I shall not only defend my reputation robustly but will deal with it accordingly by any legal means at my disposal.
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yes,
how old is the house, as depending on the age, the drains are seperate ie sewage and rain water over flow, she needs to find out which one is blocked, as normally drains are at least 8 inc wide and are hard to block,
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For god's sake, not letter B. ::)
Letter A might be ok, but keep it short and simply. Don't amplify. Play the game slowly.
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Deary me, letter b is terrible.
Fwiw stu, shouldn't you have a waste removal licence to remove gutter waste from site? I only mention it because a small firm close to me recently got fined £6k with £3k costs for carrying waste unlicenced.
Just a thought as it may effect the way you word your letter.
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I would go with your own dafted letter and speak to legal adviser you can get hour free if your worried about them slurring your rep It is very unlikely you could block a drain with waste from the gutters and more likely waste from toilet or sink baby wipes waste oil from chip pan or dead animal are the likely causes
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I think your letter looks good Stu. To the point yet polite.
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Hello,
I am sorry to hear that you have this complaint, can you clarify what address you are,
I can assure you I have never put any waste down a drain and I refute this entirely, As a small local company we would never be that unprofessional.
Can you just clarify that you mean the drain is overflowing and not simply a blocked down pipe causing water to overflow from the gutter. If this is the case we will be round to rectify immediately.
Just to clarify I have never and would never place waste from a gutter clean down a drain.
would the above be a better reply(edited)
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I read her letter as meaning the drain pipe is blocked, maybe i am wrong. i did a clean couple of weeks ago and every s bend in the tops of down pipes were blocked, I just eased them off as they were plastic gutters,there were 6 in total I think, a couple were caused by whoever erected them using a long screw which all the leaves got blocked on and slowly built up over the years
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Well you can send your letter and see what happens and if they continue, tell them to call out someone to exam the drain with yourself present and if it is proven its from you, you will pay for the work if not they pay for the inspection and your wasted time, however if they do mean a downpipe then as far as i would be concerned if you had carried that work out for me i would expect you to have done it when you had done the guttering, ive never heard of someone unblocking the guttering but leaving the downpipes and i'm pretty sure they would expect the same i know all my customers ive done that for do..
paul
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Hi Stu,
I would go round and assess the situation in person, it may be easy to unblock and then everyone is happy ;)
Regards
Alan
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I would not clear the down pipe on a job, (apart from the obvious S bend one that i mentioned) We are there to clear gutter of leaves, not unblock drains,
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Stu - from your proposed reply you are unsure of the actual customer who is complaining, if this
is so give absolutely no information until you know it is a genuine customer.
certianly dont go into where/how you remove waste - not sure if recycle bin is the proper place anyway.
we always pack the gutter 'waste' into a bag and leave with custy to dispose of.
i would be cautious as to why some one thinks you have put waste down a drain
Darran
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i normally just prise the s bend apart on normal guttering if there aint a screw holding it together to check its clear thats all,and like someone has said ask to go round check for yourself,if you no its not your fault tell them how it is.its easy to blame you but the problem was proberly already arising
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Its like the gutter power wash guys you may have accidentally caused debris to be pushed or washed down the down pipe although if I had to choose I would prefer to scoop it out into a bucket rather than the John Wayne method of blasting debris everywhere.
Invest your hard earned in a gutter vac system, it removes all the debris up and away from the down pipes and even clears the downpipes beyond the "s" bend if need be and all thetas from the safety of thte ground
Have cleared the smallest bit of slate from a down pipe that acted like a dam, it doesn't have to be a large blockage to block up as was said earlier with thw too long screw
Clear any blockage foc and leave their blocked drains to them
Gordon
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2 months ago...complaints within 48 hours please. Thanks
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I think it was cast iron gutters, but to be honest I can't tell from that complaint what exactly the complaint is, I have sent a reply and I will await their reply as at the moment I can only guess on what address it is. I have removed the method etc and kept it simple. if it is a down pipe I will sort it, if not I will defend my self
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seems a bit fishy if no name / address supplied
maybe the competition trying to fist you ""
they have your details why not contact you by phone first---all a bit odd
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people are funny they call you their window cleaner like they own you like a dog and ring you up on the phone or email you like you only do there house and then sound really surprised when you ask them where they live,had a call like that complaining about the windows and refused to give me her address,I m like how do you expect me to sort out your complaint.
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there is a name and I will go through my emails to find out who it is
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talk to them first and take a look at the problem
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Hi Stu,
If it is cast iron you may find that it is the bottom of the down pipe that is blocked. Will have to be removed to be cleaned (have done about 3 of these this year). If you get stuck you can give me a call 07739 535648.
Regards
Alan
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thanks alan ;)
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Stu,
A good first response might be:
"As a general point, I have never and would never place any items in a drain
Unfortunately, I'm unable to make any more specific comment as I don't know the address of the property we are discussing."
Vin
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Stu,
A good first response might be:
"As a general point, I have never and would never place any items in a drain
Unfortunately, I'm unable to make any more specific comment as I don't know the address of the property we are discussing."
Vin
thanks vin but to late I have already replied, but yes that would be a good starting point ta mate
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its a toughie. the letter sounds to me as if is complaining that a downspout is blocked . probably was blocked long before you cleaned the gutter and they assumed it was the gutter . i came across a blocked S bend recently and as it was plastic i pulled on it and inside was a tennis ball.
your complainer has got me thinking, gutters are not as stress free as windows
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its a toughie. the letter sounds to me as if is complaining that a downspout is blocked . probably was blocked long before you cleaned the gutter and they assumed it was the gutter . i came across a blocked S bend recently and as it was plastic i pulled on it and inside was a tennis ball.
your complainer has got me thinking, gutters are not as stress free as windows
aye your not wrong their bobby I really don't like doing gutters etc and I might just phase it out, when she replies I will have a better idea of the problem, but when I read it, it looked like a accusation of an outside drain and not the down pipe ??? but I will find out soon enough
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id be tempted to call on phone and then maybe visit but never admit liambility in any form including offering to rectify something that you had no hand in creating in the first place.
ive heard of drain clearing company - clearing someones drain at top of road and for it to move along several houses and block a neigbours further down the road - he readily admitted to client (a friend of mine) that they often come out twice cleaning drains as often gets blocked up twice before shifted.
be polite friendly and professional - re-assure them of your processes in accordance with trading standards you operate this way and that it is likely the cause has come from another direction and that you are sure she would like to know the source so it doesnt happen again - and ask her if she finds out cause let you know as you are intrigued to know what caused it - incase it ever happened to you also........
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thanks vin but to late I have already replied, but yes that would be a good starting point ta mate
Whoops, hadn't noticed that you'd responded.
Vin
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Hi Stu ... from reading the email looks to be a drainage issue.
In a former life I dealt with lots of customer complaints (car sales 25 years) and to me it looks like they are trying it on - blaming you for a blocked sewer.
As a car dealer I always followed this saying "dont touch it with our spanners" which means the moment we get involved then we have admitted liability and its now our problem .... unless of course we HAD done summit wrong but 2 months later .... seems a long time to me ??
Personally I would send an email back stating that your work practices would make their scenario impossible i.e. its nothing you did.
I wouldnt even offer to go around to take a look cos then if you do "your spanners have touched it"
May seem a little harsh but its not really your problem from the sounds of it.
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I know it's a case of 'bolting the stable door...', but why on earth did you take the debris away with you? When we clear gutters, we leave the debris for the customer to dispose of. This has two advantages:
1. The custy can see exactly what you've removed so they know they haven't been turned over.
2 There's no problem with possible waste disposal issues.
In your case the added advantage would be that if the debris had found its way into the drains, there is no way the custy or their neighbour could accuse you of putting it there!
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I know it's a case of 'bolting the stable door...', but why on earth did you take the debris away with you? When we clear gutters, we leave the debris for the customer to dispose of. This has two advantages:
1. The custy can see exactly what you've removed so they know they haven't been turned over.
2 There's no problem with possible waste disposal issues.
In your case the added advantage would be that if the debris had found its way into the drains, there is no way the custy or their neighbour could accuse you of putting it there!
Yes Ian lesson for the future duly learned.
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ok quick update I replied and tried to clarify the problem, and made a couple of points, and I have just received this reply, the customer has now back tracked a bit and it is the neighbour that has a problem, and it is not the down pipe but an external drain so nothing to do with me.
Thank you for your quick response.
I understand that the points that you have made in your reply.
As far as I have been made aware by my downstairs neighbour it is the drain that is overflowing, not water overflowing from the gutter.
I am not looking for any follow up from yourself as personally I have not got any complaints with the service, I was only looking to make you aware of the situation following the angry complaint I had from my neighbour.
not sure what to do now, I know I am not in the wrong but the neighbour has put 2+2 and came up with 5 ???
she still hasn't confirmed an address but I know who it is and her partner was at home when I did the job and would have seen me fill a big yellow container that I removed from site (rightly or wrongly).
any way at least I know it wasn't me so that's a relief
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I know it's a case of 'bolting the stable door...', but why on earth did you take the debris away with you? When we clear gutters, we leave the debris for the customer to dispose of. This has two advantages:
1. The custy can see exactly what you've removed so they know they haven't been turned over.
2 There's no problem with possible waste disposal issues.
In your case the added advantage would be that if the debris had found its way into the drains, there is no way the custy or their neighbour could accuse you of putting it there!
i always bang it in thier wheelie bin
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Would you not of thought that the downpipe might of drop slightly leaving a gap at top which looks like its from the gutter when its not connected properly as some of these downpipe are not that secure and you can pull them down a bit to give this slight gap. So neighbour might of done this to make a quick buck of one of you's. :o
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Would you not of thought that the downpipe might of drop slightly leaving a gap at top which looks like its from the gutter when its not connected properly as some of these downpipe are not that secure and you can pull them down a bit to give this slight gap. So neighbour might of done this to make a quick buck of one of you's. :o
the down pipe has been ruled out, it is an outside drain and nothing to do with me
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I know it's a case of 'bolting the stable door...', but why on earth did you take the debris away with you? When we clear gutters, we leave the debris for the customer to dispose of. This has two advantages:
1. The custy can see exactly what you've removed so they know they haven't been turned over.
2 There's no problem with possible waste disposal issues.
In your case the added advantage would be that if the debris had found its way into the drains, there is no way the custy or their neighbour could accuse you of putting it there!
i always bang it in thier wheelie bin
same as stan ;)
glad you have got it sorted stu
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Glad it sorted aswell m8, some people ought to think before issuing accusations.