A Brighton Boy Blogs

Sometimes I get great service from a company and I’ll write about it. When I find serious fault with a company, I tend to report it on here too. If that company demonstrably puts things right, I tend to report that as well. Alas, that doesn’t happen very often. But recently I had a call from Mr John Collins, Managing Director of Kafevend Group Ltd who claimed that my previous report on Kafevend – an incident involving criminal fraud on the part of Kafevend’s sales staff – had been fully investigated and dealt with. So I allowed Mr Collins to come and tell me the story.

John Collins is clearly a chap who cares about his business. He proudly showed me numerous testimonials from satisfied customers, and post-installation questionnaires indicating a high percentage of customer satisfaction. He explained the awful chemical taste we’d had from our machine, and assured me that it was harmless albeit rather embarrassing.

I know just how hard it is, when a company expands, to ensure that those further down the hierarchy share the same vision as those at the top. I have no doubt that John Collins was truly horrified when he heard about the salesman forging my signature on the contracts; the salesman was dismissed, of course; but I’m more impressed to learn that his manager also departed the company. I doubt that the salesman could ever have thought it possible to achieve a binding contract position through a forged signature without the collusion of his direct line manager… the manager who had suggested that I was in a binding contract by default because the “trial period” had expired, and who didn’t exactly apologise about the forgery.

We questioned Mr Collins about the steps he had taken to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again. Apart from the dismissals, there wasn’t really anything new and concrete, but he was at pains to explain the procedures that are and were already in place to prevent mistakes happening. Sadly they didn’t stop one or two individuals who thought they could boost their sales commissions by forcing companies into contracts through criminal fraud. Although during the period when my blog report I didn’t receive any reports from others who had experienced the same treatment, Mr Collins did admit that there was another similar case from elsewhere in the country. However I can well believe that Mr Collins and his fellow directors will now be watching like hawks over their staff, and jumping hard on anyone who thinks that they can bring the good name of the business into disrepute.

Hence I am satisfied that the problem is now fixed, and have taken down the original posting and redirected it to this one.