The Power of TheTruthAboutSolitaire
TheTruthAboutSolitaire does help residents with getting their complaints heard from Solitaire / Peverel.
In the last few weeks, we have been informed by a few contributors that having had their cases highlighted by TheTruthAboutSolitaire, they were suddenly contacted by Solitaire and some are finally getting their problems addressed.
One contributor sent us the following:-
Thank you for the wonderful job that you are doing.
The measure of your success is that I have had a letter from my property manager (who?????) offering to meet me after I posted a message on your site saying that I wanted to get rid of Solitaire. That he should take the trouble to find out my address and contact me shows the measure of concern that Solitaire must be experiencing.
More recently, we highlighted the story ‘We Want Our Money Back’ - whereby Solitaire had promised to act upon a complaint, that dated back to July 2008 and even put in writing on TheTruthAboutSolitaire in November that it would be sorted, which never occured.
Solitaire’s Online Feedback Manager – ‘Andy’ issued the following comment, apologising profusely for their failings on this matter:-
There are no excuses that can be made for the failure of our local Property Management team in the South West of England to follow up on the specific repair issues that were raised by ‘A N Onymous’ in October. We apologise unreservedly to A N Onymous for the unacceptable delay.
In addition, I would like it to be absolutely clear that these are not the standards that we as a company work to, nor is this a reflection of the new management standards introduced throughout the Solitaire business.
Following your posting I alerted the Managing Director (Operations) and I can now confirm that:
1.This week a contractor visited the development and several ‘Private Property – No Parking’ signs were replaced with new signs – including the example shown in the photograph. Minor repairs to the roof tiles of one block were also completed at the same time.
2.Early next week the contractor will be re-visiting to remove the damaged door hinges from the now redundant bin stores. As the bin stores were built prior to the introduction of larger rubbish collection bins by the local authority, they are no longer used for the purpose they were designed for. Replacing them with larger stores to accommodate the new local authority bins would require major works that all residents would have to agree to. ‘A N Onymous’, please clarify that this is what you are referring to in your second point.
3.One outstanding issue remains at this development, and this is the cracked and bowing wall on the right hand side of the garages outside block 26-29. One quote has been already obtained for its repair, but a further quotation is being sought before a contract is placed.
Admin – although in my October posting I suggested that ‘A N Onymous’ – or any other concerned resident at this development – might wish to use our Customer Complaints Procedure (available as a download from our website http://www.solitairepm.co.uk) and make a formal complaint, neither ‘A N Onymous’ nor any other resident at their development, has done so.
As ‘A N Onymous’ has genuine grounds to make a formal complaint, if they wish to pursue the matter under Stage 2 of our Complaints Procedure we would ask that they write to our Managing Director (Operations) at:
The Managing Director (Operations)
Solitaire Property Management
Marlborough House
Wigmore Place
Wigmore Lane
Luton, Beds
LU2 9EX
It’s pleasing to see that yet again, TheTruthAboutSolitaire has helped to get this issue sorted, but the question is WHY did it take the second report to be highlighted on TheTruthAboutSolitaire for this to finally be acted upon?
Andy’s original comments are a typical example of Solitaire’s ability to make promises and not fulfil them and is why TheTruthAboutSolitaire was setup, because the ‘Team / Property Managers’ responsible are so poor at providing satisfactory Customer Service.
These examples are enough to demonstrate the power that TheTruthAboutSolitaire has over Solitaire / Peverel Property Management.
The more people that raise issues on TheTruthAboutSolitaire, the quicker your issue will be sorted by Solitaire.
In fact, ‘Andy’ – ‘the admins’ at TheTruthAboutSolitaire – are considering charging Solitaire for acting as the Customer Service Department of your company, because is clear that we are a lot more effective than your company!
January 18th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Admin – I particularly like the final paragraph of this post, in which you suggest you might charge Solitaire for acting as their Customer Service Department…!!!
Not sure if you’re being serious, or have your tongue firmly planted in your cheek (!!!), but I agree (and the evidence seems clear) that this website is indeed a lot more efficient at providing Customer Service that Solitaire’s own in-house provision.
And after all, Solitaire / Peverel etc. aren’t shy in lumping up on their charges to their customers – charges often levied for doing very little (if anything at all…) – so why shouldn’t TTAS charge Solitaire themselves for your time & considerable efforts in providing a level of Customer Service that Solitaire themselves can only dream of…???!!! Only seems fair.
Keep us updated on your submission of your invoice, and receipt of payment thereafter…..
January 18th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Power to Admin
Getting money from Peverel would be attempting to get blood out of stones. We are the money cow as referred by Nirmal.
Would you consider the following?
1.A new form for the visitors to fill what they want , lacking and the improvement are required to source the root problems to take with petiton to 10 Downing Street. It will be useful tool to regulate the Management Companies across the board.
2.Form an Association which Parliament have an example to discuss to model on. Perhaps membership of £20 or so might be far beneficial.
3.You may decide to become a charity if Admin is financially secure on their own right or somebody leaves a legacy.
4.To have Solicitors, Surveyors, Loss Assessors and Expert Witnesses and so forth on the books. If someone wants to exercise right to mange then they will have immediate right people to act on their behalf to have 100% success. It will stop if someone like me wasting, time money and energy again and again without moving forward and industry will stop supporting the Management Companies. The more leaseholders will have confidence of taking Management Companies on rather then crawling back to their hole of hell.
Go admin go
January 18th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Would it be an idea to create a part of TheTruthAboutSolitaire as a private members area where there is a “private” form for people to fill in?
The form could containt name, address and management company details (name, prop man, etc) as well as allow people to keep a structure record of their dealing with problems with SolPev (including uploading documents, etc).
PevSol Customers could then keep a structured log of their dealings with PevSol – I think the gyst of what I mean is remember when Martin Lewis on Money Saving Expert provided templates to contact banks, etc – something like that but where PevSol customers could also manage the record keeping.
As part of the T&C’s you could then collate statistics about performance to strengthen any regular contact with PevSol over how wonderful they are….
January 19th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
So very pleased to find this site. I have some documents from Solitaire I would like to share, how can I post them?
January 20th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
I can confirm that as a direct rusult of my photographs appearing on TTAS recently, Solitaire have at last replaced the signs and have attended to the bin store doors. I would recommend this course of action to everyone instead of trying to deal with Solitaire direct. Get your photos on TTAS.
However, don’t try asking awkward questions as they are likely to fall on deaf ears. Andy has admitted management failure but has avoided answering questions about a refund for management failure.
Andy, you have admitted that the existing bins stores are no longer up to the job – a 4 ft wheelie bin will not fit into a 3 ft bin store. I am not qualified to say whether the existing bin stores need to be replaced or not, maybe the tops of the existing stores can be removed allowing the wheelie bins to slide in, I don’t know. As far as I am concerned this is a management issue to be resolved between yourselves and the residents here.
February 23rd, 2010 at 2:56 pm
We have to be more proactive in making Solitaire’s poor service and disgusting behaviour of their customer service department known to all property owners/ leaseholders in England.
I am a member of several car forums and I have already mentioned about their amateurism and creative accounting to manipulate revenue from service charges!