Create An Emergency Contact List Before You Encounter An Emergency!

Why is it that we normally wait until we are faced with a crisis or an emergency before we anxiously start telephoning around for references, trying to find the best service provider to assist? We recently moved into a new home and encountered a couple of difficulties and I am sure that the following illustrations will illustrate my point by specifically referring to a plumber, painter, locksmith, electrician and an alarm repair guy!

Before we moved into the home we noticed that there was some water damage on the ceilings and decided to, just for incase, have the rooftop properly sealed and painted before moving all our valuable assets into the home. We have never been home owners and have therefore not required the services of a builder or waterproofing specialist before and we simply made use of the first person referred to us. About a week after we moved in we had a tropical thunderstorm and 5 of our 10 newly painted ceilings were soon leaking with water! If we've taken some time to check testimonials and referrals and compare companies, this could have been avoided.

We also remarked that the burglar alarm system in the home was defective. We replaced the battery, gave it some time to recharge and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the system remained completely dead. I then grabbed the phone book, did a quick search for "alarm repair guy" and a day later a young professional arrived, only to tell us that he was not familiar with the particular burglar alarm system and that we needed to contact a different person. That might have been acceptable. if he didn't charge us a call out fee just to come share that bit of pointless info with us!

Next on the list is our electrical contractor. The electric motor at our driveway gate just stopped working one day. We found the number of a local electrical contractor in our community newspaper and he quickly arrived with a shiny new toolbox and a big smile. He literally had to plug in one loose wire which took him about 12 seconds, and then gave us an invoice for an hour's work, as that is apparently his minimum charge.

The only two suppliers that we had no issues with, was a locksmith and a plumber. As the previous owners of the home vanished with some of the home keys, we decided to have all the locks changed for security purposes. The locksmith was well-mannered and professional and even gave us an extra set of keys at no extra charge, while the pluming company quickly fixed our leaking loo and left the bathroom cleaner than what he received it!

There is only one thing that I want to show you through this post and that is that you cannot delay until you are in trouble before you anxiously start your search for a locksmith, electrician or plumber. Ensure that you have an emergency contact list ready by speaking with friends, colleagues and family. Word of mouth is in my opinion still the most effective way of finding service professionals!