Having enjoyed 4 years of top class service from Air Products I have to say my first experience of dealing with Air Liquide is that the transition is chaotic. I've basically just spent 2 days housebound due to their ineptitude. I ordered 2 replacement cylinders plus a new tube for my concentrator last Friday and after 4 calls and numerous unfulfilled promises of call-backs I've just received my cylinders which were promised for yesterday-there were no orders on the delivery for the tubing. I've missed a hospital appointment and been fobbed off and have concluded that their customer "service" is unfit for purpose. My delivery technician confirmed this and apologised profusely. I bet there's somebody high up in the NHS or government who's patting himself on the back for saving a few quid. We were promised an improved service; we have been lied to. Welcome to Camerons' NHS 2012 - it's safe in their hands?
A Backward Step: Having enjoyed 4 years... - Lung Conditions C...
A Backward Step
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That is awful
What area are you ?
North Warwickshire. What's more, when the delivery finally arrived the portable cylinders are a different size and don't fit properly in my bag, and the technician said they'd not got a back up stock to replace the existing bag. This rather defeats the object of portable oxygen. The whole experience has been unnerving as this is healthcare not consumer durables we're dealing with. It's not like I can go to a different company next time as I no longer trust them.
Lets hope things improve we went from Air Liquide to BOC they did have teething problems but seems ok now Val
No better transition than we have had in the south east we tranfered from air liquide to Dolby Vivisol at the end of March, It was an utter shambles imposible to get through to customer services for the first few weeks, not much better now!. Far from improving the service they now require 3 weeks notice for holiday oxygen supply it used to be only 2 weeks under Air Liquide.Under the new contracts it should onle be 3 days notice for holiday oxygen. We should be able to order for normal delivery next day but we can't they want 3 working days notice. Once again it is a postcode lottery. It is not fair to treat vulnerable people like this
I'm happy to say we haven't had a changeover here, so I am still with Air Products who have always been first class. We did have a letter a few weeks before the bank holidays advising us to order by the Tuesday evening for anything we would require over the Bank Holidays (remembering that the Tuesday was a bank holiday too), otherwise deliveries other than emergencies would not be done until the Wednesday at the earliest. In a sense, as you didn't order until the Friday pre Bank Holiday, your Wednesday delivery of your cylinders were, all things considered, a next day delivery. Auntymary. xx
i have had simmilar problems their seems to be no coordination at all, my also find that the cylindeers are too tall for my wife to easily carry them up stairs, it is fortunate that i had extra cylinders for a short break i was going on so the non delivvery of my portables made no difference over the week end as they took away the portables i left out and didn't leave full ones as agreed, this is the transition so it can only improve, when they were changing suppliers did they contact any users to see their point of view, i would have thought this was important
We changed from A/L to BOC and it has gone reasonably well, although it was a month before the everything was changed from one to the other.
What seems to have been missing in all this is no contact from the incoming supplier to let us know what to expect but perhaps I am being a bit obtuse here in thinking that customer service and satisfaction were of paramount importance? Silly me!
Do please complain to the commissioners in your areas - the suppliers don't like it but it is the only way sometimes to bring about changes.
Good luck!
M
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