Disappointing experience with Just Fire Doors
We are very disappointed in the experience overall with Mark Belcher and the team at Just Fire Doors. We had agreed for them to come and complete remedial works on our fire door. The technician Olly came and determined they could not do the work, or it was too difficult to complete on his own. On the day they arrived, they told me on the phone whilst the technician was there they would walk away from the job. This was as they had not reviewed or requested any photos/videos in advance and underestimated the complexity of the door. As a gesture of goodwill, they installed a door seal (complimentary) which was appreciated. However, given we could have avoided this with better planning and we also lost 2x annual leave days, this was the first example of a poor customer experience, but we understood this was unintentional and they were very polite and thoughtful on the approach. We wanted to bring them back to see if we could complete the work, as we trusted their judgment from a technical standpoint. After further discussions, they agreed they would return to do the remedial works on a day rate with two installers. This was the maximum day rate + VAT as a fixed cost could not be given which we understood was reasonable. A week prior, after we had already arranged time off work, arranged with our tenant (a teacher who has to agree this in advance) and put the time cost in, when we emailed to confirm timings (2 days after they had confirmed they would attend and to confirm their parking permit), they cancelled and said that they made a company decision not to undertake work for single doors. This was deeply unprofessional. They had made a commitment. We made arrangements. They suggested they made a company decision to change their business model (i.e. not worth their time/investment as it loses them money) and wanted to only install manufacturer doors in full blocks vs single doors. Even if they changed their model, they should have (a) made this clear ahead of time (b) not committed to this project/date (c) honoured the commitment for the sake of the customer experience (already tainted from the first visit). How much was a single door really going to cost them vs this review we have now had to leave? The greatest cost for us is wasting ~12 weeks (3 months) with this supplier, our own time, costs, and putting our tenant and property at risk where we could have spent this time on a supplier fully happy, decisive and available to take on the work. The lack of commitment, communication and inability to make a decision in our view is deeply unprofessional. This has reduced our timelines for resolution with our building management company, and caused greater stress and anxiety to now find a replacement supplier given many have backlogs. We did attempt resolutions to have a conversation, offer to renegotiate costs (if this was an issue) or even find a way to consider this as an exception as they had invested time to send someone out and installed a ~£20/30 part for free but it seems they made their decision. It was up to us to deal with the aftermath and for us the saddest part was not delivering to the customer on principle, as this is not how we would treat our customers for our businesses. It is regretful that we would not recommend Just Fire Doors to any individual customer, nor block management co. Mark was responsive and had good suggestions as did his colleagues at the beginning, but sadly, this just did not translate into practical solutions for us. I have left 2*s vs 1 here because he installed a door seal, his technician was polite and he was responsive and did apologise for the decision they had made. Ultimately - the work did not get done, nor did he honour his commitments and it did cause us greater anxiety and stress which could have been avoided entirely with better planning and communication. Reliability is important in any business relationship and trust, and sadly we experienced neither things and would not recommend Just Fire Doors based on our experiences.
April 10, 2024
Unprompted review
