Maintenance agreement

[Guest]

Today when leaving work some asian rings up at twenty to six and enquires if some one can pop round TODAY and set the shops alarm up as he

[Guest pauli]

I rarely post in this part of the forums but this may cause some to consider the benifits our industrys offers.

I was duty engineer last night. And about half past midnight I got a call from a guy who said he had one of our alarm systems. I asked for the contract ref but nothing came up. So I asked was he sure he was a contract customer.

[Guest rjbsec]

Pity you couldn't set up a kind of pre-contract callout, I guess he would have been less abusive, you could hav solved his problem and he would most likely have a contract with your company and not one of your competitors. Food for thought?

Who needs people like that for customers, if he wasn't abusive then he would be at some later stage.

[Guest ALSEC]

I'm on call this week and I have my first one at 1705! Non contract customer who had called the office at 1655 and they had told him they would get an engineer round ASAP - couldn't get through to me so left message with call centre to call me with details. Told guy I couldn't help him in the end - do you know why? I don't get paid whilst on call for any call outs/overtime. I was around 1 hour away say it took me 30 mins to sort problem and then 1 hour drive home - 2.5 hours work and customer hands me a cheque/cash for callout plus any parts for the company and I get paid nothing - I don't think so!!

I recommended another firm who were more local to him.

[Guest]

I'm on call this week and I have my first one at 1705! Non contract customer who had called the office at 1655 and they had told him they would get an engineer round ASAP - couldn't get through to me so left message with call centre to call me with details. Told guy I couldn't help him in the end - do you know why? I don't get paid whilst on call for any call outs/overtime. I was around 1 hour away say it took me 30 mins to sort problem and then 1 hour drive home - 2.5 hours work and customer hands me a cheque/cash for callout plus any parts for the company and I get paid nothing - I don't think so!!

I recommended another firm who were more local to him.

a week on call and you dont get paid.. that cant be right...

[Service Engineer]

We have to attend within 4 hours.

No you don't, you meerly have to respond within 4 hours.

So a phone call to arrange an appointment will do.

[Guest]

but what can you do?

Should be able to give customers a response URN, for the 4 hour thing. Stupidity on their part gets it pulled.

[Zak]

No you don't, you meerly have to respond within 4 hours.

So a phone call to arrange an appointment will do.

That is not correct. You have to attend within 4 hours. Discussed this recently with SSAIB inspector and former NACOSS inspector.

As far as I am concerned, if a client had a problem a day before, or several hours before but did not report it, although we would endeavour to attend ASAP I do not think that the client should benefit from the 4-hour response (depending on the situation)

[Service Engineer]

That is not correct. You have to attend within 4 hours.

RU absolutely sure..? only I expressed this concern to a manager after recently having my area extended which could now mean 4hours in en-route drive time alone, so if another call was to come in I could posibly have no way of meeting the 4 hour deadline.

I was assured that he'd verified it was ok with our Nacoss rep not to attend within 4 hours so long as we phone the 2nd call and arrange an attendance time.

[Zak]

If the customer is happy to make an appointment and does not require you there within 4 hours that is one thing, but apart from that we are supposed to be on site within 4 hours.

The only reason I enquired recently was because of the differences of opinion on here. I asked my SSAIB inspector who was absolute in his opinion. It would seem a bit ridiculous if we only had to respond by phone during that time.....