A Failure To Communicate?
Most articles inThe Newsare worthwhile. Sometimes they rise to outstanding. Unfortunately, “A Heat Pump Failure Investigation” (May 19) is way off the mark. This is even more troubling since the writers are engineers. To me, noteworthy problems include:
Thermocouples only click if you bang them together. Your authors need to learn about thermostats — in this case we could call them freezestats.
Gary Stults, Steamfitter, Wisconsin Dept. of Administration, State Facilities Bureau, Madison, Wis.
Author's Response
Thank you for the opportunity to reply.
I welcome feedback such as this, because it makes for better articles in the long run.
Dirk H. Duffner, P.E., Managing Engineer, Exponent Failure Analysis Associates Inc., Menlo Park, Calif.
Honesty And Respect
[Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the guest column by Charlie Greer called “Solving Your Biggest Problem.”]Chase away half your customers? That has to be one of the most absurd statements I have ever read. Day after day I work on keeping our customers that we have and building relationships with new ones. Where are all the customers supposed to go that we chase away? Down the street to an unlicensed, poorly trained “garage” company. Let’s give consumers another reason to distrust our industry.
For eight hours a day, I answer phones and dispatch calls to service techs. My basic job here is to listen to our customers’ needs (and tell me their needs they do). Our customers trust us to take care of them, not to chase them off. The company I work for has a rock-solid reputation and has been family owned and operated for over 54 years. We live, work, have children, and attend churches in this community. I am proud of where I work and of what I do, and cannot even imagine treating our customers in such a disrespectful manner.
We are obviously not the only heating and cooling company in our county. Quite frequently I answer calls from irate consumers who feel they have been taken and are quite frankly disgusted with their present heating and cooling company because suddenly, without warning, service and replacement prices have skyrocketed to what they feel is unreasonable. As a homeowner myself, I know what “sticker shock” is when I am facing a much-needed repair. The least I can expect is that the company that comes to do the repair will treat me with honesty and respect. Isn’t that what this industry is trying to evolve its image into?
Frankly, this “editorial” sounds like just another push to justify flat-rate pricing. Maybe there’s a reason it hasn’t caught on like many thought it would.
Lisa Isaac, Administrative Assistant, Modern Heating Co., Beach Park, Ill.
Publication date: 06/23/2003
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