Okay, over the past week I have been fortunate enough to experience some great service and unfortunate enough to experience some not so great service....
Starting with the great service, and this was truly great... Back in mid-October I submitted my dissertation IRB to the ethics review people over in the Human Subjects Office here at UGA. Their office has been understaffed for most of the past year or more, which has resulted in the 4-6 week turn around time taking much longer (six and a half months for two of my IRBs from the Spring in fact). As I was hoping to begin my dissertation data collection, I submitted it two months prior to my prospectus defence date, figuring that with previous approval I could simply submit an amendment with the changes made by my committee.
A little over two weeks ago, I met with one of the staffers in the office - to ask a couple of unrelated questions and to unofficially see how my review was coming. In the time that I had submitted it to this visit, another person left their office and my IRB had been left unattended for much of the past six weeks. Anyway, this staffer committed to me that she would have my IRB examined prior to the Christmas break and that she would even wait until after my prospectus meeting (which was occurring three days later) to account for any changes to the study before reviewing it.
Friday, the day before Christmas break, when many of the employees at UGA had started their holidays and many of the rest were looking forward to easy and slower than normal days, this staffer calls me up to let me know that she is in the process of reviewing my IRB. Three to four hours later, I receive the message with the requested changes, so I make those within the hour and send them back to her, waiting for approval when she returns in January. On a day which for most is a fairly relaxed day, this staffer worked extra hard to maintain her commitment to me that she would have my IRB reviewed before the Christmas holidays. That's what I call service. I was so impressed, I felt the need to bring her efforts tothe attention of the Vice-Prsident for Research and Associate Provost, who is the head over her departmental structure. He even wrote me back to say he was happy to hear of such dedication in the people working in his unit.
Now, on the other side of that coin, you may recall that in my entry
Trump on Elton I alluded to trouble with my car. You may have read on Lisa's blog that she was involved in a collision of sorts (see
Where do I begin?) and we left the car at a body shop when we went to Toronto (two Wednesday's ago). While they weren't supposed to be able to take it in until Monday and normally it would have been finished on Thursday, this guy at
Patton Brothers convinced me that if they just had it with no pressure of a deadline, they would be able to get it in and do an hour here and an hour there prior to Monday - basically while they were waiting for parts for other vehicles or waiting for other vehicles to dry and such. By doing this, he expected that my car would be ready for Wednesday when I returned to Athens, Georgia.
So, Tuesday night I'm playing on their website and they have their pretty cool feature that lets you look at pictures of your vehicle as it is being repairs. As I didn't have our service number, I clicked on all 30+ of them and didn't see our vehicle there are all. So, I figured they must be finished - as the numbers were sequential but some were missing. Wednesday rolls around and we are in the airport in Toronto after Lisa renewed her visa and I call up
Patton Brothers only to find out that the vehicle won't be ready. I call around to Enterprise, as my insurance deals directly with them and I have loss of use coverage, only to find that they close at six and I won't leave the airport until 5:30pm (and if I use the airport one there is a fee to return it somewhere other than the airport which my insurance doesn't cover).
Out of the goodness of his heart, my buddy who picked us up from the airport let's us use his second vehicle for the next twenty-four hours, as I had been lead to believe that
Patton Brothers would still be able to make their original Thursday deadline (as it was supposed to be a four day job). Late Thursday, I get another call from
Patton Brothers telling me that it won't be ready today and ay not be ready on Friday (and they close early on Friday for Christmas). The call came so late that I was again too close to the 6:00pm closing time of Enterprise. So, my Christmas angel (otherwise known as my buddy Mark) lets us keep his vehicle another day. Around 9:00am on Friday I get a call telling me that my car will be ready by about 10:30am and I can come by and pick it up anytime after that.
Now they open at 8:00am and I got the call on Thursday about 30-45 minutes before they close. So, in about two hours of working on my car it went from not sure if I'll even get it back before Christmas to it'll be ready in an hour. The funny thing was that
Patton Brothers came highly recommended to us by both my insurance company (who had four companies that they recommended) and by Lisa's co-workers. Needless to say that after being jerked around for three days, if we are ever in need of autobody services again or are in a position to recommend a company to others,
Patton Brothers will not be on our list.
