Although Hayes Heating and its predecessor company (was it called “Evergreen?”) have served my heating needs since 1965, the recent series of difficulties at my home in Lake Forest Park suggests that I should look elsewhere for heating service in the future.
The difficulties started in the middle of last month when the furnace stopped working while I was out of the city. As I had instructed, my renter called your company for service. The service man found the door off the furnace. After he replaced the door, he reported what he had found to the renter. Unfortunately his responsibilities as a thinker and communicator exceeded his abilities. He reported that the door had been “removed” from the furnace. To him this was clear because the door can be removed “only with effort,” he maintained. Therefore, he surmised, someone was trying to “break in to the house.”
Setting aside the absurdity of someone’s trying to break in by removing the furnace door, his report alarmed my renter who had been in the United States four months only and had no idea how to handle this report. She was seriously alarmed, quite properly. She called the police, who examined the situation, gave innocuous advice and left, without assuaging her alarm.
Last week the furnace stopped working again. By this time I was out of the country and so asked a friend to check in the crawl space to see whether the door might have fallen off the furnace again.
It had. So my friend alerted my renter and both scrambled under the house to replace the door.
And so the repairman’s understanding of the situation was wrong. The door had not been removed. His report, dubious on its face, was dead wrong in fact. His interpretation of a situation he misunderstood can only be described as foolish. And his even more foolish report to my renter alarmed her unnecessarily.
Now, due to her recent experience, my renter knows how to enter the crawl space and replace the door should it fall off again.
Unfortunately this was not the end of the difficulties my renter encountered with your company. Shortly after the event, a woman called from your office demanding payment. My renter assured her the bill would be sent to me for payment. For your employee this was insufficient. She reiterated her demand for payment and when my renter explained once again, your representative insulted her, saying “Stop being so Asian.”
Shortly a member of the Hayes family came to the phone. He, too, demanded payment and would not listen to my renter’s insistence that she should receive an apology for the woman caller’s insult before she would take further action. He attempted to excuse the woman caller’s insult by saying she was ill.
I point out that an ill person should not have been representing your company that day.
Subsequently Tim Hayes called and apologized to my renter for the representative’s behavior.
Not until this week did we discover, as pointed out above when the furnace door fell off again, that every aspect of the company’s interaction with my renter was inappropriate in the extreme.
Although I appreciate the apology Tim offered my renter, the episode damages my confidence in a continuing relationship.
Sincerely yours,
William Bennett
15804 35th NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
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