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Copy of complaint sent to hillarys:-
Dear sir/madam,
I would like to make a formal complaint about the lack of customer service I have received from your company, the shambolic way my shutters were eventually located and dispatched and finally the unprofessional way the shutters have been fitted.
Initially it took 13 weeks and 27 phone calls to get my shutters delivered.in the end I did manage to speak to a customer services manager, after 4 times being promised one would call me back but never did, and he told me my shuuters were in nottingham still waiting to be dispatched - at this exact moment there was a fitter in my house fitting the shutters! The shutters were being fitted on the day we moved in, which was obviusly not the best day and after the fitter had dropped a whole cup of tea over a table and some clothes he asked me to pay the balance of £1450.00 which I did with no hesitation and he said if there were any problems then we were to phone him and he would come straight back. On checking the shutters later that evening we found that 2 had been put on upside down, one had such a wide gap down one side that you could get your hand in it and see 5 screws and the mitres were not cut at the right angle. To be honest the whole job looked like a diy job and not worth £1650.00.
We contacted the fitter, mark, who said he would come later that week and give us a call back to let us know when. A week later we had not heard anything and after 5 more calls he said he would be with us on monday at 3pm. At 4.30pm he still hadn't arrived so we called him and by the sounds of things he had forgotton (or had no intention of turning up). He arrived about half an hour later and as we were due to go out we left him in the house to rectify the problems. He admitted he had fitted 2 shutters upside down and he said he could see our point about the gap and the screws showing.
On our return one set of shutters did not open at all and the way he had rectified the screw problem was just to remove them which looks just as shoddy a job. We phoned him again and on the 3rd attempt he said he would come today at around 4pm. We phoned at 3pm and he said he was measuring something and he would call us straight back to let us know when he was going to arrive - surprise surprise he has never called back. My husband has now phoned 10 times since then and the call is ignored and does not go to answer maching to enable us to leave a message.
We have therefore paid £1650.00 for 3 sets of shutters - one does open at all, one has a large gap down one side and now screw holes left open and one has mitres that my 19 month old son could have cut better with his bob the buidler saw.
Please please please can someone get back to me and explain where we go from here and if it is ever likely that our shutters will ever work.
I do not want the original fitter, mark from chelmsford, back in my house as I think he is not only a bad fitter but very rude and unreliable. We trusted him enough to leave him alone in our home and yet he can't even return our calls or turn up when he says he is going to.
I am going to make it my mission to leave as many reviews about hilarys as I can on as many review sites as I can as I feel your customer service is disgusting as are your products and your fitting.
Yours faithfully,
Rachael smith
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you need to get hold of Mr Jason Pilcher the Hillarys Area Mng . He Lives in Haverhill, Suffolk.
The Service you recieved is abysmal, and typical of thier service levels.
I have to agree! The service from Hillarys is non-existant. It has been this way for several years now from what I've heard & also read elsewhere.
I have been reliably informed that the Sales people recieve the same level of service from the Head Office as the general public get.
It doesn't look good for them in the long run by the looks of it.
I've been on the receiving end of the Hillarys products & I can say the are absolute rubbish.
I'd suggest that you'd be better off supporting a small local business rather go to them.
On 15/9/2010 following a visit from a sales rep, I placed an order with a deposit of £1000. I was given a delivery date of 4-6 weeks and promised that they would be made quickly as Hillarys had own factory in Nottingham. two weeks a later a fitter came for second measurements following which I was told that my chosen blinds did not fit spec so will have to go back to rep and select a new design for conservatory blinds. I was told that porch blinds and bathroom blind spec was OK and that they were being made. I replaced the order with new design (second best!) and was assured that all would be ready asap. However, a few weeks later I had another phone call saying that my chosen blind samples had got lost and I had to start all over again! This I did with further delay and yet again had to make selection despite the fact that I did not like the selection on offer. I was once again alarmed to receive a further phone call from the rep apologising and saying that the sizes did not fit spec. ! She was very apologetic again and said that she was going to send me flowers (where are they?). It is now nearly 3 months since I placed the order and all promises of delivery dates have come and gone!. I have tried to cancel the order but I am not being allowed to. The company is offering a measly £50 compensation on a £2500 order! I still have no idea when my blinds will be fitted and what the post delivery service is going to be like! This whole saga is like a very bad joke!
Couldn't agree more with all of the comnments that I've read - if ONLY I'd read them before we had the work done by Hillarys. Roof blinds were fitted to our conservatory and after a few weeks the strings started to sag. It looked so amateurish - DIY at its worst. We have been contacting Hillarys with depressing regularity since October 2009 to no effect.
I would never ever do any business with these people again - to my mind they are thieves, cheats and liars.
Thanks for all the comments I was just about to make an appointment to get my windows measured when I stumbled upon this message board... I think I'll take Chris's advice!
We had one set of shutters fitted by Hillarys a year ago - no problem. Because we liked them so much we then arranged to have them fitted in most of the other rooms - BIG MISTAKE. The fitter allowed his 14 year old son to place the order an he didn't check what his son had typed. This meant after waiting 12 weeks for the shutters to turn up when they did they were the wrong sizes! We then had to wait another 6 weeks for the correct shutters to be sent. These have not been fitted as well as the previous ones. For their part, Hillarys offered us a £200 discount! The shutters still don't fit properly and the after care team are useless. No managers are prepared to speak to customers, you can only speak to advisors. Pathetic. Would I use this company again - NO! Would I recommend this company - no way. We knew they were expensive but chose to use them because we thought they were reliable and responsible. How wrong were we... if I can prevant one person from using Hillarys then I will have saved them a headache.
I placed my order with Hillarys = BIG MISTAKE! The "second surveyor" is unwilling to allocate a time-slot as promised by the "first surveyor" and according to their poor customer service, I am left with two options: accept what I have been allocated (as apparently my area - London - is served only by this surveyor and wait for another 12 weeks or cancel my order (in writing of course...). What a waste of time these people are! I have also received second confirmation of order with wrong details! Definitely not customer-orientated service - next time I will avoid them...
we had shutters fittedin conservatory in October after waiting 3 months the door shutters were messaged wrong so had to wait another two months the shutters for the windows caused windows to leak had a window fitter out to check They filled in screw holes and since then no leaks we have been trying to get hillarys to sort this out with have no shutter up now till somebody comes to look at damaged shutter and waiting to have other shutter removed to check for leaks