UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

June 17, 2007

Why Aspray sucks …

Filed under: Life — SpaceDog @ 5:27 pm

At the beginning of this year I resolved to do something about my bathroom.

For some reason it has a fake wooden ceiling — I had a sneaking suspicion that it might be hiding some dubious wiring that be the cause of the some lighting problems in the flat.

Anyroads, it was time for the fake ceiling to be removed, I may as well get rid of the water tank too and get the wiring all checked and fixed. So, that’s plumbing, wiring, joinery and probably tiling, painting and plastering too. Time to get a ‘all trades’ company to do this. I phoned three and arranged for them to come have a look.

Only Aspray actually bothered to turn up. I forget who the other two were.

When I pointed out some water damage on a wall the man from Aspray said that that was clearly caused by a leak and this was (at least partly) ‘an insurance job’. Excellent. He waffled on about getting the insurance company to cover all sort of things (tiling, painting, alternative accommodation etc) and said that they’ll “do it all for me”. Wonderful.

Or not.

That was on the 10th on January. Five months ago.

Since then they’ve managed to remove some of the fake ceiling to reveal a very obvious hole in the real ceiling.

And beside that they’ve achieved exactly sod all.

During this time they’ve rarely returned my phone calls, I typically had to call four or five times to get hold of someone. We did get as far as arranging a loss adjuster visit but I had to cancel it at the short notice — this seems to have annoyed them as after that it became impossible to get hold of anyone.

Eventually I wrote to them and a new guy got back to me saying that the dude handling my claim was off work and that “someone should have informed me of this”. Ya think? But not to worry he’d sort it all out.

After two weeks with no contact I write to them again to remind them.

After two more weeks with still no contact. I start phoning again. I leave messages which are never returned.

After a week of this I happen to phone on a bank holiday, and no one is in the office so I’m forwarded to the mobile of the guy originally handling the case. He’s still off work. But he’ll get in touch with new guy and get it sorted. He’ll make sure I’m called back.

After a couple of days I phone again, explain that no one is returning my calls and am given the mobile number of the new guy. It doesn’t work. It’s missing a digit. I call back and explain this. They don’t have another number so I’m promised a call back.

After a day I call again and explain. They give me same mobile number again, nice of them to note not to give out that number. I explain this and they promise a call back.

After a day I call again and ask for an e-mail address and I send an e-mail to both the contact address and the main office address giving them five days to respond. I get an e-mail bounce from the address I was given but the office one goes through.

After five days I give up (you can see I’m fairly patient) and I tell my insurance company they’re not working for me. I send Aspray a letter informing them they’ve no longer working for me. That’s that.

Five months wasted. At the time I assumed they were just incompetent, overworked and badly organised. Writing this I’m wondering if the fake number and bad e-mail were part of a deliberate ploy to avoid customers they don’t want to deal with? Regardless of whether they’re deeply inept or malicious I would never ever use them and I would strongly recommend against anyone else using them. Which is pretty much what this entry does, feel free to pass it along to those who might need to know.

I wouldn’t hold them in such contempt if they’ve just admitted at any point (even right at the end) that they couldn’t do the work and that I’d need to find someone else. All they needed to do was to return any of my calls, letters or e-mails over the last five months.

But they didn’t.

That, my friends, is why Aspray Suck!

3 Comments

  1. Came across this post while looking for apsray’s website..and felt the need to repy.

    I had a leak in my kitchen from the bathroom, the whole ceiling came down I had aspray come out they were the only one of three that I rang that turned up!. Handled the whole thing for me and was done in 4 weeks. I understand you had a problem but I was very happy with the man from stockport aspray that I want them to do some more work. Dont usually write on these things but credit when credits due

    Comment by Ian — August 29, 2007 @ 6:52 pm

  2. We at Aspray were very distressed to read the article ‘Why Aspray sucks’ and especially concerned for the person who had experienced such awful service from the company.

    It is both unacceptable and inexcusable that they should be treated in such a manner and as the Marketing Manager based at the Head Office I can only apologise and reassure this person that we will be looking seriously into this matter.

    Aspray prides itself on offering an exceptional service to the customer. What has happened to this customer goes completely against our company ethos to reduce the stress that is caused when homes and business premises are damaged by fire, flood, leaks, accidents or just general wear and tear. As the writer points out, we are an ‘all trades’ company that project manages all aspects of the repair work and we do actually turn up at appointments. Our modus operandi is to attend an initial meeting within 48hrs of the enquiry being received and followed up with a written building schedule and costing within a further 48hrs (business hours). Once agreement has been given a full timescale of work with completion date is given. Communication is key and, as we are all human, circumstances do sometimes change but we aim to keep the customer informed throughout the process at all times.

    Unfortunately, this has not happened in this person’s case and we shall be investigating fully the reasons why and ensuring we all learn from it. We take complaints extremely seriously and are reviewing our complaints procedure at the time of writing this. Unfortunately I know it is too late for this person but the good that has come out of this is for future customers of Aspray. As we have to date received a 93% satisfaction rating from customers who completed satisfaction questionnaires at the completion of a job, we know we must be doing something right.

    Comment by Louise O'Connor — August 30, 2007 @ 12:28 pm

  3. […] my post about Aspray a couple of months back? Well, it’s now got an interesting comment on it, a snippet: We at […]

    Pingback by UnorthodoxY » Blog Archive » Comments — September 4, 2007 @ 9:06 am

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