0800 HANDYMAN: 0800 42639626 spells 0800 Handyman!

0800 HANDYMAN: 0800 42639626 spells 0800 Handyman!

0800 Handyman takes delivery of fantastic new van

0800 42639626 spells 0800 Handyman!

Unlike the USA, where it is common practice for consumers to spell out the name of the company they want to contact, by using the letters on the keypad of their phone, in the UK we have been slow on the uptake.
However, this is fast catching on and we are finding that more and more people are using this user friendly facility.
Next time you call us give it a go! Just key in '0800handyman' and you will be straight through to one of our call centre operators.

Check credentials of other handyman companies!

It has come to our attention that companies presenting themselves as professional operations are really merely job 'brokers,' in other words, they get the business via their website, and then farm it out to self employed contractors.
In itself this is not an issue providing the customer realises the situation and it is made clear that the sub contractor will be doing the work and will be taking the responsibility for the quality of work. If something goes wrong with a contractors work, who will put things right?
Some things to always ask when making a booking with any handyman service, or builder for that matter.
Do you employ the staff, or are they self employed?
Are they fully insured for public liability issues?, (we have £2,000.000 of PLI)
Are the staff uniformed, i.e. can they be easily identified when they arrive at your door?
Are the staff (or contractors) checked for criminal records (CRB checked)? This is a must do if someone is coming into your home. Ask them!

Do they ride clean, safe and fully insured company motorbikes or scooters?
Do they have proper office premises with call centre staff ready to take your call from morning to night? (If the number on the website is a single stand landline or a mobile number you should be concerned about the size of this operation. (It’s easy for ‘one man bands’ to hide behind a website.

Do they provide a free 0800 number for you to call?

Follow these steps and don’t afraid to ask the questions that will give you peace of mind when booking a handyman to come into your home.

Summer

We have noticed a real upturn in demand over the past weeks, possibly the better weather is something to do with it but whatever the reason, it's real.
Maybe the recovery in the economy is finally showing itself to be reality.

Interesting and unusual jobs

As a handyman service we often receive calls from customers who have unusual jobs for us. Perhaps the strangest of these was a call from a lady doctor asking us to send a handyman to replace the light bulbs in her very up market dolls house!
When our man came back to the office he said that the 'bulbs' were the size of grains of rice. With his fingers being like medium sized sausages he had quite a job completing the task!!
We have also been asked to bring down Christmas decorations from a loft, and recently, to bring a suitcase down one flight of stairs to a waiting taxi.

New Honda S-Wings

Our new bikes arrived today and they look absolutely beautiful!! Honda S-Wings in a brilliant red which is our corporate colour, with distinctive branding.
In a day or so we will post a picture, but if you see one on the roads of London you will like it for sure!

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Busy!!

We have the distinct impression that things are changing out there and business is on the up. Don't like to use the 'Green shoots...........' expression, but definitely people are coming out of their hiding places at last and having work done on their homes or in their business premises.
Is this the beginning of the end????

T-Mobile

Here is an update on a post we made back in 2007. First the original post below;

This is priceless: because we now have a certain number of lines with T-mobile, we have been assigned our own "account manager".

But we can't get hold of this person (no direct line, and if they are unavailable, and presumably most of the time they will be on the phone to other customers given that that is their job, we have to leave a message. We have been waiting a day and a half for a call back so far), so we can't place an order for more lines.

Best of all, the ordinary people in the call centre are NOT ALLOWED TO HELP US. Only our account manager can now access our account. Last week (before we hit the magic number of lines which entitles us to this "improved" level of service) ordering a new line meant making a call, sending a confirmatory e-mail and handset would arrive the next day. Easy.

Now we have to wait for our "account manager" to call us back to carry out the trivial task of adding another line to our account. Just awesome.

I think it is only correct to say that the situation with T-Mobile has improved a great deal since the original post was made. The young lady who is our account manager has either been available or will call back within minutes and has been able to help whenever needed, because she knows the details of our account inside out.
Overall, we find this set up very efficient. Just thought it would only be fair to point this out as the original post did give them a fairly hard time.
Need any odd-jobs doing? Check out 0800handyman.

Female Handyperson

We are often asked why we don't have women on the workforce. In fact we have employed women in the past, but they did not seem to take to the job as well as we hoped they would.
One thing people underestimate is how physically hard the work is, it is very demanding to be doing 4 or 5 jobs a day, every day, the way we do.
Do you think there would be a demand for women if they were available? It is often said that female customers would feel more comfortable with a woman coming to their home, I wonder if that is true?

Charging for motorbike parking

Some boroughs in London have started to charge motorcycles for using the previously free parking bays in central London. This seems like a really negative approach, especially when one considers that commuters are being encouraged out of their cars.
Why charge bike riders, many of whom are car drivers who have left their cars at home?
Just another way of earning more revenue at the expense of the motorist.

Hot weather!

With changing weather conditions we find that the nature of the work we do also changes to reflect this, to some extent.
Not surpisingly, we are getting more and more calls asking us to build flat pack garden furniture etc. but also trampolines and table tennis tables.
Clearly customers are determined to take advantage of the hot weather while it lasts!

Smartness of appearance - how important?

How important is it to have smart looking employees when visiting customers in their businesses or homes?
Surely in today's relaxed and informal world this is no longer as important as it might have been 10 or 15 years ago?
Well, we think it is vital to have very smart and clean looking handymen calling on customers. People may be dressing more casually in their private lives but they still want, and expect, that when they call someone to their home or place of work that they look professional. The other point here is that a uniform does also allow the customer to immediately identify who has arrived at their door, and to feel comfortable letting them into their home. This especially applies to the elderly and women on their own.
We spend a huge amount of time (and money) on keeping our guys looking the part, and it's definitely worth it from the feedback we receive from happy customers.

Look at our website!

All we say to anyone asking why 0800handyman is so much better than any other copycat service, is Simply look at our website and compare with others purporting to do a similar job, and you will see the difference in our professionalism, the smartness our handymen (who are all employed by us, not sub contractors) and the investment we make in our company.
It’s plain to see.
We are confident when you compare you will know why we were not only the first professional handyman service, we remain the best!
That’s why so many top companies (including the BBC) trust us on their premises.

Busy!

Maybe it's the warm weather, maybe it's those 'green shoots' politicians love to spot, but whatever it is the 0800handyman phone system has been working overtime these past few weeks as we book in more jobs for our dedicated team of handymen!
Talking of staff, we employ all of our guys, no sub contracting here. We just don't believe that sub contracting out work, and the subsequent loss of control this inevitably means, is the right way to go when you are sending people into private homes or business premises.
What about the public liability insurance aspects of this for a start?
Any comments?

New Website

We are constantly being complimented on our new website at www.0800handyman.co.uk
It is amazing, and very pleasing, how many people comment on it and say that they really like the new look site.

0800handyman - New office

We recently moved to new, much larger offices within Zockoll House, Maple Road Surbiton, the home of the Zockoll Group.

Tax discs

We have had a number of tax discs taken from our company scooters and motorbikes in the past, so have taken to keeping the disc in the employee's wallet. This has worked fine for some time but the Police seem to be much more inflexible lately, insisting that the disc must be on display. We can understand the reasoning for this, of course, but the theft of the disc can be a real pain and presumably means that someone is cloning similar vehicles, a much more serious issue than not displaying a tax disc. 0800handyman will always comply with the law naturally, so we have now made sure they are on display.

Sash windows

As we move in to spring and summer many people will be opening their sash windows for the first time in many months only to find that the sash cord has snapped or the window is jammed.

0800Handyman is London's leading professional handyman service and one of the many jobs we specialise in is the repairing of sash window cords.

Replacing a broken sash cord is actually a fairly simple process and should only take an hour to 1.5 hours at the most, per window. The exact time it takes depends largely on which cord is actually broken as accessing the cords attached to the outer sash means taking out the bottom sash.

To find out more about our London handyman service and sash cord repair in particular visit www.0800handyman.co.uk/what_we_do/replacing-sash-window-cords.shtml

Or give us a call on 0800handyman (0800 426 396) our freephone number.
0800handyman the professional handyman service.

Sink waste disposal units

Whether you call them waste disposals, garbage disposals or insinkerators the are the same thing and they do need repairing, servicing or even replacing after extended use.

0800handyman, London's first and best professional handyman service, can repair or replace your faulty waste disposal.

So if your waste disosal is making a strange noise, is blocked or is completely dead give us a call on 0800 426 396 for help.

You can also visit our website at www.0800handyman.co.uk

0800handyman will be able to help your waste disposal unit working.

Unusual jobs

Often we are asked what is the most unusual job we have been asked to do. We have many jobs that come under that category, but today’s call from a very well know company to 'construct a 6 mtr long whale' takes the prize for most unusual to date. Apparently it comes in many parts and needs to be put together 'like a giant jigsaw puzzle.’ The tail is 2 mtrs across, so you get an impression of just how large this is.
A small crane is then used to lift it into position.
They don't come much more unusual than that!

New uniforms and new bikes

At 0800handyman we believe that if you are going to allow workmen into your home or office you have a right to expect them to be clean, tidy and generally look the part of a professional handyman.
With this firmly in mind we have recently introduced all new items of clothing for our guys. Now they look even smarter than before, with bright red polo shirts, black cargo trousers and black blue tooth enabled helmets.
If you would like to see how this all looks go to our web site at www.0800handyman.co.uk/pattesting
Regarding the blue tooth helmets, we have introduced these because we want to be able to communicate with our handymen at all times, even when they are on their way to a job. This means that we can keep the customer fully informed about expected time of arrival (even on motorbikes and scooters it is possible to be held up by the traffic). We feel that this is just another way of keeping customers informed and fully in the picture.
In the next month we will be introducing a fleet of new Honda S-Wing scooters all painted in the 0800handyman colours of course.
These bikes are brand new and are in the paint shop as I write.
Pictures to follow.

Are the cowboys coming back?

Interesting articles are starting to appear in the press recently reporting an increase in the cowboy element resurfacing because of the recession. The thinking is that guys that have been made redundant recently are seeing handyman services as an easy option to make a living.
The reality, of course, is that doing handyman jobs for the home or office is just not the easy money that some think.
Our advice to anyone thinking of taking on a cut price operation is to ask the following questions.
How long have you been in the business?
Do you have a website where customer comments are listed?
Do you have full public liability insurance, and can I see a copy?
Are you and your workmen CRB checked? (We know of one company where at least one worker has a criminal record)
Are the people you use sub contractors, or 100% employees of the company? (Sub contractors tend to work to their own agenda, which may not fit in with what you want)!