Requests to the only repair desk

In Port Fouad, if a certain make of air conditioner breaks in August, there is one place that will fix it. The maker sells its parts only through its own service desk, and the desk knows it.

The owners have opinions.

They would like a visit in the evening, when someone is home, rather than a window of a whole day. They would like to hear the price before the cover comes off, not after. They would like the technician to bring the part he will obviously need, instead of coming back three days later. Most of all, they would like to buy the part themselves and let the neighbourhood repairman fit it in twenty minutes.

None of this is difficult. Some of it would save the desk money.

The requests have been made for years, on the phone, at the counter, in reviews. Nothing moves. It is tempting to blame a lazy manager or a rude clerk, but that is not what is happening. The desk is behaving exactly as its position allows. Whatever it does, the next broken unit comes back to it.

We like to believe that good feedback improves a service. On its own, it does not. Feedback is worth something only to a business that can lose you.

What would change this desk is not a better-worded complaint, or even a rival brand. It is a rule that lets the local repairman buy the same part from the same shelf. The right for someone else to plug into what already exists. The week that happens, every item on the owners' list becomes urgent.

Until then the requests can keep arriving, accurate and reasonable, and the desk can keep thanking people for them.