Dealing with a complaint, during and after the event

If you pay a company a large sum of money to move your belongings to the other side of the world, where do you think their responsibilty ends?

The moment they take your money or the moment your belongings arrive are unpacked and checked for breakages.

We paid an agent with Britannia Movers the best part of £4,000 to quote, pack, insure, ship, provide necessary paperwork for customs, pay all fees relating to the move, contact the agent this end and should our container disappear answer the bloody emails within 5 working days to help...no scrub that, not help...do the job we paid them for.

So when the agent in the UK doesn't respond within 5 days (granted 2 of the days were a weekend) fails to notify you your container has reached customs and now customs want to charge you for storage, fail to tell the agents this end where they are delivering to and you end up driving between johannesburg and Pretoria with a customs forms in triplicate, finding witnesses to sign the forms also, all without a car, a sat nav and the realistic fear of crime in South Africa , having only been in the country 8 weeks. What do you do?

You email Britannia-Movers that's what.

Oh don't get your hopes up, they replied with 'we've contacted the UK agents and they say all is good' you then reply with 'all isn't good, I don't know where my container is' and get OUT OF OFFICE MESSAGE.

So 9 months on, this has been simmering, as per bloody usual I just got on with it, fed and entertained 8 removsl men who turned up at my hpouse for 2 days on the row ready to unpack a container that had disappeared.

I emailled Britannia-Movers again today...this is their response and my reply....please note they copied in the UK agent.


Dear Mr and Mrs *****,

Thank you for your email today. We have reviewed your file and can revert as follows.



We forwarded your e-mails to Britannia ******** whose responsibility it was to answer their customer’s complaint and who assured us at the time that they had addressed the issues that you raised in your original complaint (as per email exchange with Britannia ******** hereafter).



Britannia ******** feel that the issues you raised shortly after your removal were addressed to the best of their ability and we are sorry that you felt you had to write to us again.



We would like to take this opportunity to wish you well for the future.



Yours sincerely,




******
Your response is less than satisfactory, you and ******** may feel you dealt with our complaints at the time but your lack of getting back to me, your assumption that ******** had dealt with the issues raised is less than professional. Copying ******** in on your response is unprofessional, I raised the issue with you and your lack of response, your lack of committment to worldwide customers.
I would like you to provide me with your line managers email address to enable me to take this matter up at a higher level.
Suzanne *****