James D. Stallardblog

A few years ago; up to around the end of the eighties you could really trust the big brands. IBM and Everest were a case in point. They (the brands) used to say that "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" and if you wanted to "fit the best, fit Everest"

It's true that in the nineties both brands suffered considerably at the hands of the clone product manufactures and their collective arrogance in keeping their prices artificially high caused them both to sail close to the brink of the corporate graveyard.

IBM re-invented itself as a great services provider and my own recent history in working with them have proven the point. No one will get fired for buying IBM for the foreseeable future.

Everest has not achieved the same greatness.

My house has two Everest products, windows and a fibreglass flat roof.

A few months ago I had an Everest engineer in to repair a window and such a shoddy job was done in fitting the new handle that I have just had to remove it and repair the repair, before refitting the handle. An isolated case? No.

Like a fool I continued to trust the brand and ordered a new fibreglass flat roof. Everest now apparently only hire their sales and admin staff as permanent employees. The actual fitting has been outsourced to a bunch of ostensibly self-employed fitters. This means that straight away you aren't buying the warranty of Everest; you are buying the warranty of a man and a van that only gets paid a fixed amount for a job regardless of how long it takes. Clearly it's in his best interests to get the job done as fast as possible and get on to the next one.

The roof had a number of problems from the beginning with leaks, low quality finish and in some places not finished at all. To add insult to injury, the fitter allowed several litres of fibreglass resin to leak over my new driveway, leaked oil from his van onto the same new driveway, dripped fibreglass onto the window cills and deck at the rear of the house and finally killed a large patch of my lawn by leaking cleaning chemicals into the ground - as I watched.

No amount of calls to Everest would get any of this sorted to my satisfaction as they were not prepared to send a different fitter. Each time the same fitter returned, he would politely cause yet another problem. Sometimes he told stories of identical problems he had generated at other premises while glibly telling me that these couldn't happen here - then they did, every time.

A few weeks ago a chap came to the door and asked to use us a reference site for Everest! Seeing an opportunity I told him of the problems and that I would not give Everest anything more than they deserved (utter contempt) in any reference. He promised to go away and speak to the salesman to resolve the problems and that I would hear back within a few days. Of course, I heard nothing and didn't expect to.



The total tale of woe is as follows:

Immediately after the the first fitting we had some rain:
. Leaks inside Garage at south east corner. Significant amount of water running down SE wall and puddling on floor.

. Called 12/12 to arrange appointment for 15/12. No one turned up.

. Called 15/12 to ask where was fitter and to complain. Apparently original oppointment was not "confirmed". Told next appointment would be 21/12. Spoke to Manager (Steve B) and tried to arrange engineer for 15/12, told them I would be out 14:00-16:00 and explained that I have to take days off at £xxx per day to wait for engineers that do not arrive. Also explained that Everest are responsible for any damage to premises caused by leak. Told that engineer would call me to arrange at time. Asked Steve to confirm the time on Thursday, he said he would call me back, he didn't call. Engineer did not call (or leave a message on my phone), but instead turned up while I was out and left a note.

. Called 15/12 and spoke to John D to complain about engineer not turning up when I said would be in. Also asked about room needing finishing as corners are not all finished and paint needs touching up in a number of places. Appointment confirmed for 21/12 9-12:00hrs and new job will be booked if half day not sufficient to complete outstanding works.

. Engineers arrived on 21/12, too cold to fibreglass, so put in a seal on the leaking area and re-appointed for 06/01.

. Engineers failed to arrive on 06/01. Roof still unfinished.

. Called and spoke to John D again on 09/01 @ 11:00hrs. He told me to get in contact direct with the original installer, Tim G. on 07745 xxxxxx to arrange yet another date for the fix to be complete. Explained that I am within my rights to seek another builder to rectify the works and bill Everest, to which he responded "you'll invalidate the warranty" I stated that I believed that to be illegal and that Everest had not delivered a complete or quality product. I stated that this "would be sorted out if I had to come down to Slough and grab someone personally"

. Called Tim G on 09/01 and booked him to return on 13/01.

. Tim G arrived on 13/01 and said it was too wet. Promised to return on 19/01.

. No one turned up on 19/01.

. Tim G arrived 28/01/07 and sanded the corners for re-finishing. Returned on 29/01/07 and painted sanded areas. Snagging check now required.

. Roof still looks unfinished and damages not repaired properly or at all in some cases. Will have to repair it and damages myself.

Why has this happened?

Well, IBM realised their mistakes and while they outsourced a great deal of services to save costs, they kept the line management responsible for delivery in house. IBM will not allow a job to go wrong because the Big Blue name is worth too much. As a result, every job must deliver what they said it would - come what may. This is admirable and clearly works.

Everest, on the other hand outsourced all the fitting services (the bit that is actually supposed to be the quality) to men in vans and provided no Everest manpower whatsoever to management the fitting process. There was no quality control and no in-contact customer services. The result is the men in vans care nothing for quality as they are paid per job and only want to move on to the next one. Everest themselves could care less about customers as they aggressively market for new ones all the time. This virtually guarantees a crappy job, while making the customer pay over the odds for a warranty that means nothing.

Everest don't fit the best, they fit the cheapest, while charging you the most. Avoid at all costs.

Wednesday was a bit painful.

Every job has at least 1 overnighter, where I (and usually my long-suffering team too) have to work all night to cut over a new bit of kit. Most jobs have three, and the first of them on this job was Wednesday.

In order to put in all these fancy new services, we needed to buy some new servers and that's were the trouble starts. The servers need rack space, power, aircon and network and none of those were in abundance, until Wednesday.

On the night, we powered down the room, cut over the power to the new supplies, installed 2 new racks and cleared a groaning desk and 2 mini racks holding a mishmash of kit of varying origins and pedigree.

We weren;t planning on moving more than a couple of servers, but around midnight one of the chaps pulling the cables got a little enthusiastic and pulled all the servers on that side of the room - instead of the 2 I was expecting. In the words of Graham (ashen faced at the time) "you do realise we're committed to moving all these, don't you?

I had that sinking feeling we all get sometimes, and remembering how long it takes to build the rack in my dining room, I reckoned we weren't going to be out by 02:00hrs, as planned.

Well, the guys got stuck in and at 5am we were hoovering the floor, with everything up, and the first two racks populated. Graham and I were the last to leave and I eventually got home at 06:30hrs. Graham (apparently, some sort of nosferatu) actually went back to the office and didn't quit until after 11:00hrs.

24hrs straight, I'm too old for this.

Anyhow, I know the team googled me when I joined and have found the blog, so hey, and thank you again for all your hard work:

David and Gavin (the sparks), Marcin, Graham, Mark, Jeff, Jay, Ian, Robert, Derek and Joyce. Catch me on a free day, and it will be my pleasure to buy you lunch in the pub up the road.

2 racks down, only 6 more to go, and then we start on the stableyard.