Business ProfileforCiardelli Fuel Company, Inc

This experience, described here in three chapters, is that while some of Ciardellis work is excellent, it cannot be relied upon either for satisfactory work or, perhaps more importantly, for Ciardellis interest in rectifying problems with both its work and its financial interests.

1.     The subject is a simple job of reconfiguring piping associated with a functioning Rinnai propane water heater.  Following advice from Ciardelli’s Rinnai excellent servicing person as well as concern to compact the unit’s external piping in its place in a bathroom the work was scheduled as a simple job and therefore understood to be paid for n an hourly basis.

As scheduled, two Ciardelli people came to do the job and were shown the prepared wall space intended for the improved arrangement of piping (in its former space) adjacent to a sink and its accessible drain for its new external overflow tank and run off.  This was not a substantial change from the arrangement that had served the unit well for some time, but was to make the arrangement visually less imposing. It was to share a 4 foot wide alcove-like space with a compact toilet sitting closer to its opposite wall.

 

A person who understood the logistics of the job and the construction of its site

introduced the two to what was to be a straightforward. They talked briefly about

             the job and I too talked briefly with one of them by phone about what seemed a

preposterous alternative suggestion: putting the piping in a closed in cabinet to be hung,

somehow, from the ceiling. He clearly had no plan of how, and I heard it in

bemused non-committal disbelief!  They needed onsite advice from a more

experienced Ciardelli supervisor and/or the person who introduced them to the job (by

then available nearby and by phone) about whatever problems there might be and

therefore the advisability of this extraordinary solution, and to suggest a more realistic

approach to, in fact, a non-the problem. Someone of experience was needed on site to

point out, for instance, the problems their plan would encounter including displacing  

a live electric light and its fixture as well as the possibility of encountering electric wiring

and piping in the ceiling. Their idea looked bizarre, but worse just plain DANGEROUS!

 

But they were apparently oblivious of the dangers and proceeded with what seemed at

 best to be a bad joke!  Missing a visit from ‘responsible person’, they were apparently

acquiring a 3’ x 4’ piece of plywood which, as seen and photographed on his next visit to

site, they nailed to the ceiling, indeed removing the light while leaving its fixture in

place and again they were nowhere to be seen.  On his next visit, a neat job of repiping

and including indeed a rather large tank had been completed, and again the two were

nowhere to be seen.  But the remarkable contrivance was photographed, completing a

record of the job from beginning to end.  And did they really think their job was

successfully accomplished? 

 

2.      Rather than revisit this dumb and dangerous job with reparation in the bathroom, I unwittingly then agreed to moving the Rinnai unit to an inconvenient site 2 floors below in the cellar.  The Ciardelli two returned together with a third (in two trucks) for part 2 of the job, to refit the same Rinnai unit on an already prepared wall and new piping connections to the piping in place 2 floors above.

 

The move and the new re-piping was neatly accomplished in about the time they had lavished on their bad joke upstairs.  But because Ciardelli had locked the propane supply (owned by me) because, they claimed, I had not paid up for the (totally unsatisfactory first job) their work could not then be tested!  So could they really expect me to pay for the work of part 1 that surely no fire department could certify as well as for work of part 2 that had not yet been tested? 

 

Surely, in any case, they could not claim that I owed anything for the misadventures of job 1 (and perhaps also take account of their damage to the light and ceiling?).    

 

3.     Nor was their communication about this work satisfactorily informative about what they did and did not understand about the job.

- For example, both the Keene office and the Milford office were sent the photographic evidence of before, during and after job 1, together with an account of their work in the bathroom. That should have been a serious and well-acknowledged concern to them, but no – rather, was it in some way my fault? 

-They (-and I) should have wanted an agreed change order for job 2 following from the misadventures of job 1, but not a word. 

- Their billing processes were short on coherent detail:  name of job, dates, people-hours on site, materials used for jobs 1 and 2, etc.  One statement also looked to be a case of double billing. 

Could these surprising oversights be intentional to obfuscate billing and perhaps also reflect the quality of accounting within the company as well???

 

In any case, they fall far short of the requirements of a cooperative undertaking between service provider and customer that makes for both the trust and good service every community needs. In fact, I’ve been left wondering whether outright bullying as encountered by them in response to my would have been helpful commentary with photographs (unacknowledged) might be part of the business plan as a means to their, but not the customers’, ends!

 

I have in fact sent them half of their billing for both jobs 1 and 2, to cover the probably functional but untested part 2 of the job, believing it to be perhaps even more than fair..