Small business dispute - will not talk to us, just passing onto debt management company

[jodenice]

Hi this is a bit long winded so please bear with me.

 

The gist of it is we feel we have been forced into a service contract with a company who appear to continually break our machine. They have given us a choice - either pay the £600+ per year or they will charge us for each and every call out, including all parts and labour, even if it appears that they are the ones that caused subsequent damage.

 

We have received independent advice and written to them and their response is : Pay or we will pass your debt to a collection agency. And thats it. No lines of communication open.

 

I do not expect to get anything for free but I do not want a contract with people who make a problem worse and nor do I see why I should pay for their mistakes! Full story below.

 

We run a small piercing studio and recently our autoclave began leaking a bit, it still worked but we needed to get it fixed properly. (An autoclave is like a pressure cooker that sterilises all the equipment at incredibly high temperatures)

 

We called the company who makes it who agreed to come out and when they arrived they said it would be cheaper and easier to have a service contract with them as the call out cost would also be high. We verbally agreed this over the phone.

 

• 21st June an engineer came out and gave it a full service, he was there for ages and took everything apart. It sounded like it was whirring as he left and I asked him about it but he assured me it was fine and 'normal'. This noise got steadily worse.
  

 

• On the 26th June we were sent the service contract documents.
  

 

• 1st July - smoke was billowing out of machine. Called out again, couldn't use machine and obviously had to buy disposable parts as the stuff we have couldn't be sterilised.
  

 

• 5th July - company came out. Wouldn't start work until contract was signed (in retrospect a mistake). They found parts were 'damaged heatsticks' and replaced them.
  

 

• End of July, machine had stopped working again.
  

 

• 1st August we called, 5th August they came out. This time it was apparently the fuse holder.
  

We wrote to complain and this is the reply we have received , their reply was embedded in bits of the email we had written to them.

 

Thank you for your email.

 

I have spoken to my MD, the 2 engineers that attended have worked for Excel for over 5 years and are both fully trained and more than competent.

 

On the first occasion the 21 June 2013 you had a full service carried out under your new service contract plan by XXXXX, he replaced all parts that needed to be replaced under the service and tested the machine and all worked well.

 

The second visit was carried out some 2 weeks later by XXXXXX, on this occasion it was found that both heatsticks were open circuit, this has nothing to do with the service that was carried out a few weeks earlier. However this was repaired free of charge under your service contract.

 

The third visit was carried out on 5 August, again by XXXX, on this occasion it was found that the fuse holder was faulty. This has no bearing on either of the past 2 jobs. Again this was repaired free of charge under your service contract.

 

We can once again assure you that both XXXX & XXXX are fully trained and competent engineers.

 

It seems that on this occasion that you were unlucky that after the service 2 repairs needed to be carried out but this is the benefit of being on our service contract plan. These calls were not charged for and repairs were carried as quickly as possible.

 

We hope this answers your questions and look forward to receiving your payment by return.

 

Kind regards

 

Since the first call out we have asked for further verification of what they did and have repeatedly asked about the query we gave to the engineer on the first visits. We received this (again embedded as notes in an email that we had sent to them)

 

The service was carried out on the 21 June 2013 this is some 6 months ago I can not expect the engineer to remember comments made at this time. There is no adverse comments reported on the worksheet dated 21/06/13 only a standard service was carried out. The only ‘normal’ noise we can assume the engineer commented on was either the vacuum pump operating or the steam generator unit injecting steam into the chamber. Your breakdown was reported 2 weeks after the original service so we can assume from this that the unit was working perfectly well between the 21/06/13 & 02/07/13. On this visit the engineer found the heatsticks to be faulty and replaced free of charge under our service contract agreement. The machine was left working well. The next fault was reported on 05/08/13 this was due to a faulty fuse holder again this was replaced free of charge under our service contract agreement. This is the major benefit of being under service contract. That any non faults are carried out free of any charges

 

This is our final correspondence on this matter. Please see our comments below in your email. If we do not receive payment within 7 working days then your account will be passed to our debt collection agency.

So, do we just pay up and never use them again? Honestly, this machine has had one leak in two years and the second they get their hands on it it starts blowing up and turning off at will. We have clearly come to an impasse - we are happy to pay for the first callout and parts but not willing to pay for all the subsequent callouts nor do I want a contract with them. I do honestly believe that they have broken my machine on more than one occasion.

 

I don't know how to deal with the debt collectors though - can they just say 'nope, you owe this, no arguments, pay up' and hand it to someone who is going to come barging in the shop? Do i need to seek legal advice?

 

 

I'm sorry this is so long. I'm so stressed!