Decision report 201200363

Summary

Mr C is the manager of business premises with over 100 staff, and where there is a call centre. He complained that Business Stream did not communicate clearly or provide timely advice about a planned shutdown of the water supply to the premises . The shutdown was to allow essential maintenance work to be carried out. Mr C was unhappy that, after he received notification about the shutdown, when he requested further information this was not provided until the day before the works were due to be carried out.

Our investigation found that, in line with Scottish Water's code of practice, appropriate notification of the proposed works had been given. We were, however, concerned at the delay in providing further information to Mr C. We noted that this led to considerable uncertainty for him as manager of the relevant facilities, and so we upheld the complaint. Business Stream had already accepted that their customer service could have been better, and had made a goodwill payment to Mr C. They also confirmed that Scottish Water had taken action to check if any change was needed to their process, but had decided that the delay in providing information was an isolated incident.

Recommendations

We recommended that Business Stream:

• apologise to Mr C for the poor customer service provided in relation to the delay in providing further information.