It’s amazing how you miss the tap in the kitchen sink when it stops working. Really odd: our single-lever tap was always a bit stiff but recently it was getting worse and worse until it seized altogether. Now, that’s a real disappointment when our kitchen was only fitted last year. The fact that we were left without running water in the kitchen on Easter Friday was a real pain, but the way that Wickes and the manufacturers, Astracast, handled it was nothing short of exemplary.
I called Wickes on Easter Friday afternoon, getting through to a real person after very little phone-menu-and-hold-music-hell, and without question they agreed to replace the valve on the tap, though I was warned that the manufacturers weren’t going to be working until the following Tuesday. It arrived in the post on Thursday morning, so I had it fitted by that night. Less than a week, and there were two Bank Holidays in between.
I get such indifferent or just plain crappy service from so many places that it’s really worth praising a company when they get it right. Of course it would be preferable if the part hadn’t failed in the first place, but a very good second-best is this kind of handling of the occasional hiccough.
