customer_service.jpg Customer Service Charter

Mainstay Group Limited is committed to providing high standards of service delivery to all of its customers.  We aim to be open, honest and easy to deal with, and your views on our service delivery and products are very important to us.

We recognise that from time to time things will go wrong and that we will not have provided the high standards of service that we pride ourselves upon.  When this happens, we are particularly keen to hear from you so that we can put things right quickly and to your complete satisfaction. We are also keen to hear if you feel we have exceeded your expectations.

Our Customer Service Charter below sets out our standards of service delivery to you, our customers.

Communication
You can expect us to:

 -  Answer all telephone calls presented to us during
    our office hours of 8:00am to 7:00pm Monday to Friday (as of the
    1st March 2012).

-  Reply to any voicemail messages within four working hours

-  Answer e-mail messages within five working days of receipt

-  Respond to faxes within five working days of receipt

-  Answer web-based enquiries within five working days of
   receipt

-  Reply to letters within five working days of receipt

Contractual Obligations
We will fully discharge our contractual obligations to you and manage your development in accordance with good practice.

In particular you can expect us to:

-  Provide you with a comprehensive service charge budget within
    two weeks of the period start date

-  Arrange for the service charge accounts to be externally audited
   and provided to you within 6 months of the year-end

-  Manage your service charge monies in accordance with the
   ARMA, ARHM and RICS codes of practice and at all times have
   appropriate fiduciary and Professional Indemnity insurance cover

-  Deal with communal repairs and maintenance issues using only
   approved and insured contractors

-  Make regular and documented visits to your development

-  Engage with and build long-term positive relationships with all of
   our customers.

We will endeavour to:
-  Deliver our services in a friendly and inclusive manner

-  Treat you with courtesy and professionalism

-  Give you clear, accurate and helpful information

-  Deal with your requests, enquiries and concerns promptly

-  Treat all customers equally and without discrimination

-  Maintain confidentiality at all times

-  Find new and better ways of delivering our service

To assist us in delivering this high standard of service, we would ask you to kindly treat our staff with courtesy and in a manner in which you would expect to be treated.

Complaints Handling Procedure
Mainstay strives to offer the highest quality of service to all its clients. However, we recognise that issues do sometimes arise and in accordance with good practice we have set out in this document the steps that you should take in the event that you are dissatisfied with any aspect of our service.

In the first instance if you have a complaint against Mainstay or a member of its staff, then you should raise this with the relevant property manager for your site (details can be found on our website under ‘Your Property’) who will endeavour to resolve it as promptly as possible, if necessary by arranging a face to face meeting.

In the event that you feel it necessary to take the matter further then you may do so by contacting the Head of Operations in writing at the following address:-

Mainstay Group Limited
Whittingham Hall
Whittington Road
Worcester
WR5 2ZX

You should set out the nature and details of your concerns and copy in any relevant details and correspondence. The Head of Operations will endeavour to respond to written complaints within 5 working days of receipt and aim to fully resolve issues to the satisfaction of both parties within 28 Days.

If you remain unsatisfied with the response then you may write directly to the Property Director at Mainstay enclosing full details as above. The Property Director with the Managing Director will review the matter and all correspondence and respond to you within 5 working days.

At this point if you feel the issue has still not been resolved or you have received a letter from us saying that we are no longer considering your complaint or that we cannot do anything further for you (sometimes referred to as a ‘deadlock letter’) then you may refer your complaint to the Ombudsman Service: Property.
This is the redress mechanism approved by the regulatory board of The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) of which we are a member firm.

Ombudsman Service: Property provide a free and independent service and have been approved by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to run a redress scheme and can handle complaints about RICS members. Their role is to investigate complaints fairly by listening to both sides of the story and looking at the facts.

Their contact details are below:

Ombudsman Service: Property
PO Box 1021
Warrington
WA4 9FR

Telephone: 0330 440 1634 or 01925 530270
Email: enquiries@os-property.org
Web: www.surveyors-ombudsman.org.uk


In the case of commercial property complaints, the procedure is as stated above: the right of redress would be to the RICS Dispute Resolution Service.

Contact Us
We like to hear from our customers.  Please tell us if you are happy with our service, our colleagues in Mainstay find this particularly rewarding.  Similarly, if you are unhappy with our service please let us know so we can improve it.

Mainstay Group Limited
Whittington Hall
Whittington Road
Worcester
WR5 2ZX