ALWAYS HAPPY TO HELP

Susanne Carden

scarden-c@shire.com

I would like to alert potential customers of Homeserve to think again, and find an alternative company to deal with their problems. I never want to cross their path again as the following (lengthy) catalogue of errors will demonstrate:

The original claim was a simple one; to carry out repairs (on behalf of my buildings insurance company) to a water-damaged bedroom ceiling, treating the affected area with fungicide and to re-paper. A Homeserve surveyor came on 10 January 2008 to assess the claim and as he was satisfied that there was no structural damage, the repair work was scheduled for 26‑27 March 2008, after payment of £100 policy excess.

On the first day of remedial work, it became apparent that the damage was considerably more than superficial and would require replacement of the entire ceiling. This information was reported to me and I agreed to the extra work being carried out, on the assumption that appropriate steps would be taken to minimise the disruption and to protect my belongings. This assumption proved false.

When I returned home it was to find a scene of unbelievable filth; it was clear from the state of the carpet that plastic sheeting had not been laid down prior to the removal of the ceiling, not had any attempt been made to protect the contents of my fitted wardrobes. When I opened the wardrobe doors, it was to find that every single item was covered in a thick layer of black dust. I started to clean the worst affected areas, but had to throw away several items of clothing that were beyond repair.

The carpet was covered in grime and debris, all surfaces had a thick layer of black dust and one electrical socket was hanging off the wall, where it had obviously been knocked when the bed was moved. The bedroom walls had black handprints on them, the woodwork was covered in black smears, the bed base and mattress had black marks and dust on them, and the carpet in the landing and hall was littered with dust and plaster. This meant that all the dust and grime had been walked through into the kitchen and bathroom, the floors of which were filthy. I am unable to comprehend how a large company can allow such unprofessionalism in their workforce.

When I rang Homeserve to complain about the appalling standard of workmanship, I was told that I was to blame for not clearing the bedroom adequately and that Homeserve would not accept any responsibility. I pointed out that when I made the initial appointment for the work to be carried out, I had stressed that I would be unable to move the bed out of the bedroom due to size restrictions of the maisonette. Also that it should not have been necessary to empty the wardrobes, since it would have been an easy and straightforward matter to seal them.

At this stage, I contacted the insurers Zurich, who agreed to cover the cost of any necessary cleaning and repairs, and recoup the monies from Homeserve.

Following the débacle of the ceiling removal, I then had to schedule an appointment for the ceiling to be reinstated. This apparently could not be done until 14‑15 April, nearly three weeks later. So for nearly three weeks, I was left to live in a home with no bedroom ceiling, with very few wearable clothes and still with black dust and grime everywhere, including the bed-base and mattress. I saw no reason why I should have to clean up the mess made as a result of an incompetent, slipshod workman. It also meant that my family was living in very crowded conditions, because it was not viable to move all the furniture back into the bedroom for the interim period. Having four adults in cramped conditions is not conducive to harmonious relationships, and this proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of the entire time. The weather during this period was extremely cold and included more than one fall of snow, meaning that I had to keep my heating turned up fully in order to maintain a reasonably comfortable temperature. Night-time conditions were especially cold and unpleasant, and it was very difficult to keep warm.

When the plasterer arrived on 14 April to rebuild the ceiling, he was horrified at what he found and rang me to tell me that he was going to voice his concerns to the office staff at Homeserve and arrange for a quality check to be carried out, to assess the damage and identify what remedial steps were necessary to resolve the situation.

The work went smoothly and plastic sheeting was used to shield the bed as well as the wardrobes and their contents from any further damage. However, the ceiling was left with no central light fitting and with a gap between the new ceiling and one of the walls. Consequently when the painter and decorator arrived on Friday 18 April, he was unable to do much. All he could do was to apply filler to the gaps and to try and arrange for a team of cleaners to come and prepare the room ready for painting. He also rang the Homeserve office with a request for an electrician to come on Monday to fit the ceiling light and repair the broken socket. He too was shocked at the level of mess and filth that had been left, but was assured by Homeserve that a quality check had been carried out. This was both untrue and in direct contradiction to what I had been told by Homeserve; I had been informed that a check would be made only after all the work had been carried out.

Early on the same morning, I received a phone call from the cleaning company telling me that before any cleaning could be carried out, the room would have to be assessed first. I was told that someone would come either later that day or on Monday to make the assessment, although I made the point that the cleaning was required no later than Monday in order for the room to be made ready prior to painting.

Later on Friday 18 April, two people from the cleaning company arrived and vacuumed the carpet and dusted the surfaces. They did not wash the wood or paintwork, or clean the carpet, which still had considerable levels of dust embedded in the pile. Nor did they touch the wardrobes, so I assumed that the ‘proper’ cleaning would be done on the following Monday.

In order to facilitate the repair process, I arranged for someone to come to my home on Monday 21 April and wait for the cleaners and electrician; a service for which I felt obliged to pay. By 11am when no-one had arrived, I telephoned Homeserve, only to be told that there was no record of an electrician being booked for that day, and that they would arrange for one to accompany the decorator on the following day.

On Monday afternoon, I received a call from the repair manager who told me he had been asked to carry out a quality check of the premises after the work had been completed and we agreed that he would visit on Friday 25 April between 10.00am and 10.30am. Consequently, I arranged for a family member to be at the premises at this time and for the duration of his visit, and gave detailed instructions regarding the areas that I was particularly unhappy with.

On Tuesday 22 April, the painter and decorator arrived promptly but was angry that the cleaning had only been perfunctory and that the ceiling light had not been fitted. He arranged for an immediate visit by the repair manager, who appeared unaware of the scale of the damage and of the length of time that had elapsed since the initial repair call, but who readily agreed to the dry cleaning of all the clothes, and to a ‘deep clean’ of the room, bed, wardrobes and carpet. Clearly however, it was impractical to fully decorate the room before this had been satisfactorily carried out, so the painter was once again unable to complete the scheduled decorating, and I was unable to restore the bedroom furniture for yet another week. In addition, I now no longer had any blinds at the windows, these having been removed prior to painting.

The next stage in the saga would be laughable if it wasn’t so indicative of the poor level of communication and competence of all concerned; once the decorator had applied the first coat of paint to the ceiling and walls he left the premises, only to receive a call alerting him to the imminent arrival of the electrician. By this time, there was no keyholder available, so the decorator drove to my son’s place of work in Tooting to collect a key to enable the electrician to access the premises and carry out his work. This however did not take place until 6pm that evening, after my son had arrived home from work, but who had fortunately had the foresight to provide himself with his girlfriend’s key.

Eventually, a firm of cleaners was engaged to conduct the cleaning, and a representative rang me to arrange a suitable time. However, he had not been briefed properly on the work involved and did not know exactly what he had been employed to clean. I explained the situation, and he agreed to take the dust-damaged clothes to be cleaned, but was understandably reluctant to sort through my personal possessions in order to identify which clothes to take. I therefore agreed to empty the wardrobes myself and leave all the items that required cleaning clearly identified for him. Consequently, I spent most of Saturday sorting through the clothes and other items in my wardrobes (of which there was a considerable amount), which I considered to be a waste of my precious leisure time. At the end of this process, the bedroom was no longer usable, since the floor area was the only available space on which to leave the items. So I was obliged to sleep in the front room, which fortunately is equipped with a sofabed, but it was just a further annoyance in a long list.

On Monday, I rang the cleaners and they agreed to come on the following day. I explained that I would arrange for someone to come and wait, and they said that they would arrive no later than 9.30am. They turned up at 10.45am. I then had a phone call from the repair manager, who had been told by the cleaners that there were approximately 100 items waiting to be cleaned and that the majority of them were not damaged by the ceiling dust, but were dusty from being stored for a long period. I do not dispute that some of the items had not been worn for some time, but they were all affected by the ceiling removal, and I dispute that some had no ceiling dust on them. It is no coincidence that the damaged items most readily identified were the white or cream‑coloured garments, and I have taken photographs to illustrate this. It seems unlikely that the dark-coloured items were not affected in a similar way, just that the damage was not so easily visible. During the sorting of the clothes, my hands and fingernails quickly became black, indicating that it was not just the white or cream items that had been contaminated. I was angry that the cleaning firm had delegated the task of the clothes sorting to me but were clearly not prepared to accept the outcome of this delegation, and I was extremely upset that I was accused of being in some way deceitful.

So I had to agree to re-sort the clothes and to minimise the number requiring cleaning to 20 items, which involved yet more time and inconvenience. When I returned home to carry out this re-sorting, I discovered that one of the wardrobe sliding doors had been dislodged from its runner, making it impossible for me to open and close one wardrobe. I accept that this had probably occurred accidentally, but I would have expected that the cleaners would have put things right before they left. Also, it transpired that the central heating had been switched off and not switched back on. This was particularly annoying because it meant that I had to return to a freezing house and no hot water. Finally, when I inspected the bedroom, it was soon clear that the bed had not been cleaned very well and still had several areas that were stained black, as well as black dust lodged in the corded edges.

On ringing the repair manager, I was told that Homeserve would cover the cost of a replacement bed, as well as a replacement pair of shoes that were beyond repair, in addition to the previously agreed dry cleaning costs, but again I was the one doing all the work and making all the phone calls. I consequently spent the following weekend choosing a new bed, equivalent to the old one, and duly submitted the invoice to Homeserve for reimbursement. At this point, all I had was some verbal agreements, so it was felt prudent to try and obtain some written assurances that Homeserve would fulfil their obligations with regard to replacing damaged items. It took some persistence, but I eventually received a confirmatory email from the repair manager on 7 May, although this was less than satisfactory, authorising only a replacement mattress without any mention of the matching divan base. Also it referred to the dry cleaning costs as a ‘gesture of goodwill’, which made me extremely angry. However, it did say that the paintwork on the bedroom would be completed ‘ASAP’, which was some small comfort and I telephoned him with my choice of paint colour for the walls (the colour used by the first decorator being far too vivid for a bedroom). 

I have also had to buy a new bedroom carpet, as well as a new carpet for the stairs and landing, neither of which Homeserve was prepared to pay for. Both carpets were undoubtedly old, but nonetheless were made considerably worse as a direct result of the mess, and it would have been a nice gesture by Homeserve to have offered to pay the £600 cost of replacing them, or at least a proportion thereof.

Despite several phone calls, it was not until Wednesday 7 May that I received a call (from the Sunbury office this time) telling me that the painting had been arranged for Monday 19 May, and possibly Tuesday 20 May as well, and I confirmed with them the paint colour to be used. By the time the painting was scheduled to start, some 3 weeks would have elapsed since the room had eventually been cleaned in readiness, and despite assurances that the final painting would be carried out within a few days of this cleaning being completed. This meant that the total time involved in repairing my ceiling had stretched from the initial estimate of two days to a total of 54 days… nearly eight weeks in cramped living conditions due to having bedroom furniture spread throughout every room (without exception) in the property, and several weeks of sleeping in a cold, dirty, inhospitable bedroom.

On Monday 12 May, I received another call from the repair manager; he wanted to take photographs of the bed for submission to his insurance company as evidence that the bed was indeed damaged to such an extent that it needed replacing. I had taken photographs myself, so I emailed these to save him a journey (but received no acknowledgement) and then subsequently emailed him a further set.

Finally Monday 19 May dawned and I was looking forward to everything coming to an end. How foolish of me to expect anything other than a complete fiasco. The painter had arrived without any paint and without having been given any details of the room he was expected to decorate; he seemed unaware that he had to paint the ceiling as well as the walls. Having been aware since 7 May of the paint colour I had chosen, I would have thought that anyone with a shred of common sense would have communicated this information to the person carrying out the painting, prior to commencement of the work. I am at a loss to explain the scale of ineptitude, but can only assume that it is widespread throughout the company, since previous failings did not seem to ensure that future mistakes were prevented.

Every step of the repair process has been a battle and I have had to take the initiative in order to get anything done. Nothing was ever done properly in the first instance, and every mistake took an inordinate length of time to rectify. Whilst I accept that the ceiling removal was unforeseen, if the surveyor had been more thorough in his initial examination this whole sorry saga could have been avoided. Equally, once it became apparent that a simple cosmetic repair had become a much more complex job, appropriate protective and safety measures should have been taken commensurate with the work and mess involved.

The amount of disruption and the resultant distress that I and my family have suffered cannot adequately be conveyed in an email, but it has certainly put a huge strain on us all.

In order to find the correct address to which to send a letter of complaint, I looked at the Homeserve website and found the following statement:

“Too often, building repair can degenerate into a catalogue of let-downs, recriminations and confusion. With Homeserve though, it's different. Our combination of industry knowledge, quality contractors and careful management takes uncertainty out of the building repair process for a service you can trust, and rely on.”

Based on my experience, this statement borders on being fraudulent.