Playbook, removals company
The complaint about the invoice, and the one about the plaster
Complaints in this trade split along a line that is invisible from the wording. Some are about money, a charge that appeared after the day and was not expected. Some are about goods, which is a claim. And some are about the building itself, a gouged wall or a scraped banister, which is different again, because on moving day the property is often not the customer's any more, or not yet.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Damage to a property is not damage to goods and is not covered by the same thing, so a reply that reaches for the goods in transit limit is answering a question nobody asked.
- The building damaged may belong to somebody else entirely: a landlord at one end, a buyer at the other, a management company owning the communal stairwell, so the complaint can arrive from a person who never booked anything.
- The commonest money complaint is a charge added after the day, and the customer is not disputing that the waiting happened, they are disputing that nobody said it would cost anything.
- These arrive after a fortnight of living out of boxes, so the patience available for a clarifying question was spent long before the message got typed.
How it arrives
- the crew put a hole in the plaster on the landing
- we have been charged for waiting and nobody mentioned it
- the new owners say your movers damaged their door
- how do i complain about the way the job was done
- who deals with damage to the house not the furniture
- is there anyone above the office manager
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your complaints route, named as a desk and separate from claims | Who receives it, by what method, and the response time you actually publish. A complaints route that is really the general enquiries inbox is not a route, and the customer works that out within a day. |
|---|---|
| How damage to a property is handled and recorded | That it is distinct from goods, who assesses it, and what evidence helps: photographs of the area before the crew arrives where that is possible, and photographs on the day. These disputes turn entirely on what the wall looked like at nine in the morning. |
| The charges that can appear after the day, with their triggers | Kept in the complaints material as well as the billing material, because half of what arrives here is a charge somebody did not expect and would have accepted without argument if they had. |
| Any dispute route your own terms name | If your terms name a route beyond your internal process, quote it exactly as they word it. If they name none, say what the final internal stage is instead. Inventing an external body is far worse than having none. |
The reply
I will pass this on. Damage to a property is handled separately from damage to goods, so a line saying which this is will help, and it goes to the office rather than to the claims desk [1]. If you have photographs of the area, including anything taken before the move, keep them, because that is what these turn on. Our published response time is on the contact page [2]. Your name, a number and the move date are enough to find the job without a reference. I have no way to look at the job myself, so I am handing this straight over rather than making you explain it twice.
It agrees in the first sentence, because after a bad move any question at all first reads as resistance. The photograph instruction is given now rather than by the office in two days, since by then the wall has been filled and painted. The reference is removed as an obstacle before the customer runs into it and gives up.
Where it stops
The trigger. The first mention of a complaint, an unexpected charge, damage to a building, or a request for somebody senior. Nothing is asked before agreeing to pass it on.
Yes, that goes to a person. Leave your name, a number and the date of the move, with one line saying whether this is about a charge, about the goods or about the property, and the office will call you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say whether a charge was correctly applied, since that reads as the firm's decision handed down in a chat window.
- Never say damage to a property is or is not covered, which depends on an assessment and on terms and is nobody's call from here.
- Never comment on the crew, by name, by number or by description.
- Never name an external ombudsman, arbitration scheme or trade body that your own terms do not name.
Questions
- Should damage to a property really be handled apart from goods?
- Yes, because the two answers have nothing in common. Goods run against the cover the customer chose. A gouged wall runs against a different assessment altogether, and often on behalf of somebody who was not your customer at all, such as a landlord or the buyer.
- Can it tell us how many complaints come in?
- It is not a complaints system and it does not categorise anything. What you get is the enquiries it forwards, in your own inbox. That is a fair proxy for what arrives at night and at weekends, and it is not a report.
- Sometimes the complaint is from the new owner, not our customer. What then?
- The assistant treats it identically: agree, take a name, a number and the address. Working out who the firm owes a duty to is exactly the kind of judgement that has to be made by a person with the file open in front of them.
Keep reading
- Everything for a removals companyPrice depends on volume and access, so a survey comes first. Insurance limits are what customers misunderstand most, so say them plainly.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- Seven in the evening, a loaded van and nobody picking upKeys at four, crew still loaded at seven, nobody answering. What a website can honestly do at that hour, and what it plainly cannot.
- A date changed in advance is a different animal to one that collapsesMoving a survey costs nothing. Moving a booked move is a crew and a vehicle, and a swap onto a month end can be repriced.
- Three sets of hours, and the one people actually meanThe office answers on weekdays. Crews load first thing and work Saturdays, and a storage warehouse keeps different hours again.
Try it on your own material
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