Thank you Doodles. You're in a small minority as far as BG bashing is concerned but I admire that you stick to your guns and are prepared to go do a bit to try and turn a negative into a positive.
A bad report is around the world before a good report has its boots on!
Unfortunately, many of Doodle's colleagues fail to show the diligence and concern for customers as he does.
BG have been fined many millions of pounds for failing to deal with customer's complaints properly (and that is a fact anyone can check out via goggle).
Any properly run company will seek to put right their mistakes as soon as possible, but the first step is to admit that a mistake has been made, and for many years BG have just deflected criticism and failed to recognise the validity of customer's complaints.
Having put things right, the next step is to do everything possible to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated.
Yes, everyone makes mistakes, and the bigger the company, the more mistakes can be made, but the obvious thing to do is to reduce the potential for error as far as possible. The first rung on that ladder is to make sure staff are properly trained and competent, and have the necessary knowledge and skills to do the job.
Having the required knowledge and skills is essential for competent work, BUT, people also need to have the right
attitude, i.e. to have some pride in the work they do. Which in my area is a real problem for BG, i.e. some of their blokes just couldn't care less: they make the visit, tick the boxes on the sheet, and they're off to the next job.
BG still has some of the old institutional ways, i.e. staff get everything supplied, and the impression I get is that managers are quite supportive and that there exists a strong sense of esprit de corps between the staff that is shared and supported by management. Which essentially is a good thing imo.
However, to maintain standards and an organisation's reputation, there needs to be some discipline amongst staff that comes to bear when individuals repeatedly show little interest in the job, and regularly produce shoddy work.
It's not unusual these days for managers to say: "oh it's a training issue!"
If someone doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge or skills, then fair enough, provide further training and support - I'm totally in favour of that.
But when come-backs reach a certain point, and when the blokes involved know very well what they should be doing, saying it's: "a training issue" can be just a way of avoiding taking the appropriate action, i.e. it's about management ducking responsibility for maintaining standards.
Which is what I've seen happen with BG in my area.
If the OP puts in a complaint to BG it will be feedback on the local manager's ability to maintain standards, so I hope they take that course of action. In theory, it might save other BG customers from being left with shoddy workmanship.
