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Home » Home & Garden » Why is Good Service so Hard to Schedule?

Why is Good Service so Hard to Schedule?

In a day and age in which time is one of our most important assets, the Farmers’ Almanac is addressing a question that we know many of you can relate to— why is it that home deliveries, repairs and service calls are so hard to schedule? Something breaks, you call to get it fixed, and you get the “We’ll be there next Tuesday, between 8 and 5, make sure someone will be home during that time” response. Don’t these companies realize that most families have dual working households? Or even if someone is home during the day, schedules and appointments don’t always afford us the luxury of hanging out for eight hours to let someone in. And what about technology?

Why can’t companies which provide service and repair calls use current technology available to shorten the window of waiting time for us, their customers! Some readers may remember our campaign to “Cure Doctor Office’s Waits” that we ran in the 1996 Farmers’ Almanac. That article addressed the unreasonable amount of time that we are often made to wait for scheduled medical appointments. We suggested a cure and produced a Patients’ Bill of Rights that encouraged doctors and their staffs to respect and value patient’s time.

This year we’re targeting companies who provide at-home repair, installation or deliveries— with the suggestion that Good Service needs to be scheduled better!
There used to be a time when, in the not-too distant past, if something broke, Dad would simply retire to the basement workbench or garage, where he stored his odds and ends, pieces and parts, and basic supplies, to fix it. Before long, he would come up with a reasonable facsimile, and whatever had broken would be working fine once again. And if something new was added to the home, Dad knew how to install it. On the off chance that Dad didn’t have what was needed, someone (usually Mom) was always there to receive the serviceman whenever he happened to arrive, which in a small town could be 10 minutes later.

The world has changed. Workbenches are no longer a part of the average home, and if they are, it’s just as likely that Mom is doing the repairing or installing. Today’s household appliances and gadgets, however, are far more complicated, forcing us to “outsource” our repair work, if we repair them at all. Outsourcing is good, mainly because the average homeowner today doesn’t have a well-outfitted toolbox, nor the know-how to create something from nothing to suit our computer driven homes. Einstein said “We know more and more about less and less, until we know everything about nothing.” It seems so true when it comes to home maintenance.

Thank goodness there are people, trained in the intricacies of modern technology, who know exactly what needs to be done to make things work. This has provided whole new industries for many workers. But there are obvious and frustrating downsides to this development: The main one being no one is home to let a serviceperson in.

Dad is at work. Mom is at work. The kids are at school, or work. The neighbors are at work. The retired neighbors are down south. And the rest of the people in the neighborhood are strangers.

And so we come to the major problem that repair and installation businesses are slow to address—the inconvenience of scheduling service appointments during regular business hours. Often, the best a service company can offer is “sometime between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Tuesday.” What to do? Call in sick? Take a vacation day? Take a day without pay? If it’s a repair, it may be cheaper to replace the item with a new one rather than lose a day’s pay (but is that good for the environment?). And the cost of an installation may be doubled or tripled because of the work time that is lost.
Is this fair? How can this possibly be considered “service” when it is not at all convenient to a purchaser?

Why is it so difficult to make an appointment for a specific time? There are many reasons, from the serviceperson calling in sick to a truck breakdown. But, according to most businesses, it’s because an installation or a repair may take longer than anticipated, so companies are hesitant to set precise times. This still doesn’t explain why customers cannot be contacted with the information that a serviceperson is running late. (These same companies are very quick to point out when we’re late on a payment!) Anne, a working mom in Maine, woke up on Sunday and discovered that her telephone wasn’t working. On Monday when she went to work, she called the telephone company and reported her trouble. To her dismay, they couldn’t send anyone to her home to fix it until Wednesday, sometime between 10:00 and 5:00 pm. She had to take time Wednesday off from work and the repair person didn’t arrive until 4:00, and then the person didn’t have to come in—the trouble was with the line outside of the house! As she recalled this story she brought up a good point—
“I wonder what my customers would say if I treated them this way.”

Good service for new products isn’t always that good either. Richard and Pauline ordered a new washer and dryer from a large retailer. They were told to call a special number to schedule home delivery, which they did. The delivery people told them the items would arrive at their house between 8:30 am and 11:00 am on the same day they called. Richard purposely worked from home that day and waited and waited. Finally at 10:30 am he got a call from the delivery truck driver saying they were delayed and wouldn’t be there until 4:30 pm in the afternoon. They showed up just before 5.

Cable and satellite companies try to offer more options. They will usually schedule appointments outside of regular business hours, on evenings and weekends—a service many other companies do not offer. But there are examples of appointments scheduled with a 4-hour window where the serviceperson showed up 2 hours late, and made no phone call saying the person would be late, or to give notice that service was still coming.

And while Saturdays are convenient, to a degree, who wants to spend their day off waiting around for someone who may—may or may not—arrive? Many small companies do not offer weekend hours which again doesn’t help those of us who work full time. Service scheduling problems vary from company to company, and state to state. Larger companies have more employees and can offer more options. However, some of the largest businesses are the worst offenders, and small, one- or two employee businesses can’t afford to offer 24-hour service, so their clients suffer. What’s a customer in need of service or an installation to do to obtain reliable treatment? Farmers’ Almanac feels that it’s time to put REAL service back into service appointments. We can remind these companies that instant communication is available (some of it through these companies we are dealing with) so we expect and demand that they use technology to keep us informed of expected arrival times for service calls. This would help especially if the repair person is running late, but would also help if they could call you about an hour before the service repair person is schedule to arrive. This will allow many of us to stay at work (depending on your commute) until that time, and take a few hours off rather than the whole day. We should also recommend that these companies schedule for the unexpected and put some fluff into a repair person’s schedule every day, so if something comes up, the fluff time can be used and the next call won’t be so late. And we can demand some type of amends if a service call cannot be made within a reasonable time. Our time is just as valuable as theirs, and companies need to understand that.

To make it easier, we have created a Farmers’ Almanac SERVICE FIRST AGREEMENT for you to share with the businesses that require at-home service appointments.