Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Provide a complete service

The Open Net contractor came to install the connection to my home. They found an internal pipe was blocked. They asked me to get another contractor to fix the problem. This created a problem of communicating between different sets of contractors.

It would have been better if the Open Net contractor had arranged with their sub-contractor to do the necessary work, and to quote a reasonable fee for this work. The home owner does not want to spend the hassle of engaging another contractor and making the coordination. The problem faced by the home owner became the problem of Open Net anyway.

I face a similar problem with installing a telephone line. The contractor will point out what they do not do, and ask me to get another contractor to do the additional work. It would have been better to have reasonable rates set for the additional services.

This type of "pushing responsibility" around is now the culture in Singapore. This is why things become so troublesome and expensive. We need a  new approach - to provide a complete service at reasonable charge. The regulator must come in to do their part, to set the right environment. By leaving matters to the market, it becomes so confusing for consumers.


6 comments:

C H Yak said...

This culture is widespread in the construction industry.

Tan Kin Lian said...

I recall that in the old days (and I am thinking more than 20 years ago), the SingTel contractor was willing to provide additional service for a small fee. But this arrangement seemed to have stopped after "privatisation". They now identify what they will not do, and ask the home owner to get their own contractor for the additonal work. So, it seemed to be that there must be some "secret" order within the system to adopt the new system of "hands off".

While there could be abuse of the old system, and some complaints, it should be balanced with the convenience and the benefit that could come out of the old system.

One part of the Singapore culture is to over-react to mistakes and worst case scenarios and to adopt measures to address them - including measures that may be impractical or cause more damage!

But, sigh, this is a Singapore culture - which gas been escribed as "kiasu" and "kiasi".

C H Yak said...

Mr Tan, you are willing to pay for "complete" service, but not all are willing to pay; especially corporates who prefer to cut corners and budgets. Corporates also have habit of pushing away or shifting the costs, even though there is a "black and white" contract. Cost cutting measures pushed contractors to limit their scope of works. Also everything is expensive. When employers also cut costs by lowering deserved wages, Theory X & Y sets in; and workers just pushed away their own personal responsibilty. This is a serious cost-spiralling issue in the construction related business. You have the 5 values. Not all has them in the commercial world. Private and public projects included.

Tan Kin Lian said...

Hi Yak,
The additional service is optional. The Open Net contractor could have told me that there is problem with the internal pipe and their have their partner who can do it for $X. If the $X is a reasonable sum, there is no need for me to hire my own contractor and face the headache of coordinating two contractors. Most house owners do not have their own contractor for these type of strange work anyway.

ron said...

You see, he may offer you his contact who can do it for a fee.

But this is not allowed in the terms of employment and he will be diciplined for doing business on the side.

Enterprise is not allowed.
Suggestions ignored.
You do as you are told.

C H Yak said...

In my case, they did a pretty good job.

At first, they asked me to engage a ceiling contractor because I wanted the main cable to be concealed within the false ceiling.

But I showed them the locations of the downlights in the ceiling and they pulled the main incoming cable all the way to my TV point using the downlight holes for access. Only part of the cable was enclosed in exposed conduit at the side of my TV console cabinet.

But everything was neat and nice the way I demanded them to do it.

Probably the one who came to inspect realised he was talking to an "experienced insider" in this line.

All was free but up till now I have not subscribe to it, as I heard it is not stable.

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