I did ring VT to talk but i was not put throuh. Left the message
that he need to read your postings as they are not helping him.
If the same people I am being refered to then there is going to be
no change. It is not only I am made to lose but he is also losing.

Appreciated the response to my postings as I have been able to get some answers for you.

Our research questionnaire has just been sent to a sample of over 1500 Solitaire customers, selected at random across developments of various sizes and locations so to be a representative sample across the country.

As with the survey we sent to OM Property Management customers last year, we are again using the independent research company who are full members of the Market Research Society and bound by its strict code of conduct. Results of the survey will be presented to our senior management at an aggregated level – we won’t be given responses from individuals.

The cost of the survey is entirely borne by us.

The survey questions are the same as last year’s questionnaire as we want to compare the results, but we have added some additional questions to find out if a resident has lived in a leasehold property before, how long they have lived in their current property and would they buy a leasehold property again.

Hope this answers some of the questions raised.

Thanks

Andy

Solitaire Online Feedback Manager

Also are you ‘managed’ by Solitaire or OM? I’ve asked Andy to confirm if this is a Solitaire or OM Survey that they are now conducting but am not sure if he will be forthcoming with the information.

Thanks.

I have had a bit of an up and down relationship with Solitaire, just when I begin to think we’re getting somewhere and resolving issues, they let me down yet again! So unfortunately for them the timing of this questionnaire was not good as I’m still waiting for answers to various emails sent repeatedly over the past few months.

I was also wondering who will foot the bill for this survey and although Solitaire may actually pay the invoice, I’m sure we’ll all pay for it somehow!

Neil – superb! Perhaps Admin could start a new thread on which we could post our own alternative questions to be included in a Solitaire (dis)satisfaction survey…!!!???

Michael Epstein – I’m wondering if the recipient of the bottle of wine from the last survey (actually, wasn’t it a “case of fine wines”, rather than a measly single bottle?) has consumed it, or donated it to his local car body shop as paint stripper…??? Anybody seen any bottles of Chateau CBG in their local Tesco’s…???

When you telephone our wonderful new telephone system you must be pleased that ‘we care about you’. How many people were in the queue ahead of you? (Prizes to be given to those in double figures)

How long was it before we bothered to answer you? (12 minutes on Monday)

When you wrote and asked for information, and then followed up with reminders, how long did it take for us to respond? (2 months and counting)

When you asked us to fix your roof how long did it take? (3 years and counting)

When you asked us to replace missing drainpipes that were affecting the foundations how long did it take for us to arrange? (6 weeks)

When we send contractors did you notice that we don’t check their work?

Did you like last year’s 12% increase in service charge or did you think us unambitious? Would you prefer 15% this year?

Do you feel that our gardeners are a) hopeless b) pathetic or c) worth twice as much?

You may be aware that your cleaning contractor charges somewhere between £100 and £200 per hour. Do you think that this is a) wonderful b) creative or c) lacking in imagination.

Would you prefer your light bulbs to be changed by contractors from a) Brighton b) Marseille or c) Glasgow

You do feel privileged don’t you that your building is insured by Swiss Gnomes at twice the market rate?

I’m sure I’ve missed a few other necessaries off.

Working on a ‘population’ of 33,000 Leaseholds; and using a ‘Confidence Level’ of 95% (most researchers use a 95% confidence level); and a ‘Confidence Interval’ of 5 (meaning that the margin of error is plus+ or minus- 5% – i.e. a total margin of 10% around the average) then you only need a sample size of 380 for a ‘good representation’ of the population.

If you increase this to a 99% ‘Confidence Level’ (with all other things being equal) then a sample size of 652 would be needed for a ‘good representation’

If you decrease the ‘Confidence Interval’ (i.e. want to be ‘more’ accurate) then for a ‘Confidence Interval’ of 1 (i.e. +/- 1%) you would need:

At a 95% ‘Confidence Level’ a sample of: 7,439
At a 99% ‘Confidence Level’ a sample of: 11,063

Again most researchers would use a ‘Confidence Interval’ of 5. Therefore if Solitaire are ‘going with the flow’ then at a 95% CL and a CI of 5 then they only need to use 380 stamps and envelopes for a ‘good representation’ – which should hardly break the Bank!

So you can see (as we’ve all seen with a lot of the opinion polls recently!) you can play with the statistics quite a bit – of course if you look at it simply then the more people you ask the ‘better’ and ‘more representative’ the results would be! The Confidence Interval calculations “assumes” you have a genuine random sample of the relevant population (this is a BIG assumption!) If your sample is not truly random, you cannot rely on the intervals at all. Non-random samples usually result from some flaw in the sampling procedure – which if Solitaire are reading this I take them back to my first line “if the sampling is done properly!” An example of such a flaw is to only call people during the day and miss almost everyone who works. For most purposes, the non-working population cannot be assumed to accurately represent the entire working and non-working population and there are many examples of how ‘random’ samples aren’t really random at all! It’s actually harder to be random than methodological! (Maths eh!) And also this all works best with simple Yes/No questions and answers, or where the choice is (quite) limited (that’s why a lot of these surveys use a 1-5 scale of bad to good!) when you consider people’s views and opinions then all this pretty much falls down as you can’t really have an average ‘view’ (though I pretty much know what people’s average view of Solitaire is!) Also the actual questions asked and how they are worded can have a significant impact on the results of ANY survey regardless of the maths behind it!

It would however be very interesting to know from Solitaire / Andy exactly how many people they would send their survey to. Of course you would have to factor in non-returns too but I very much doubt that they would release this information (as they haven’t released any of the result from the first survey either) as it would be quite indicative of how they are going about the process! We can but wait and see IF anything comes of it! (…I doubt it tho’)