On a positive note

My wife and I had purchased some Indian solid wood furniture from Tikams (Msida) in 2003. This year we noticed a defect that had not been immediately apparent. On phoning up Tikams, the manager was unavailable and his representative said that she would make a note of it.

Some time later, the owner/manager, Michael Bharwani, called us to follow up on our original complaint. His position was that too much time had passed for the defect to be assigned to the manufacturer. Although we initially disagreed, we finally understood (not accepted) his point of view but still asked him to help us out with fixing the defect (which had to be sub-contracted to another company).

Mr Bharwani very efficiently made arrangements for the collection of the furniture and its delivery to the sub-contractor at no charge. To our surprise, when we got it back, again at no charge, we realised that, apart from having the defect fixed, Tikams had ensured that the piece had been restored and finished to its original showroom condition.

It is indeed refreshing to see such attention to customer service and satisfaction. Tikams has ensured that we will be making many more purchases in years to come. (Adrian Zahra)

I thank Mr Zahra for sharing his experience. As can be seen, in such cases, the consumers end up with a better impression of the trader concerned than they would have had there been no problem in the first place.

On a "one good turn deserves another" basis, I would like to feature a letter I received from Mr and Mrs Spiteri Attard on having successfully used this column. It is very refreshing to receive such a "thank you" letter:

Firstly, let us congratulate you on your excellent column, which we find of great interest and enjoy reading every Sunday.

However, now we wish to thank you for your very valid assistance in our case, which we tried to solve ourselves since the beginning of January, by phoning the person responsible for this dispute direct on numerous occasions and by mail but to no avail.

We also instructed two lawyers to assist us in this matter and also made inquiries on how to proceed with the police to claim our goods from the person responsible.

But then we decided to ask you for assistance, which resulted in this case being resolved very quickly, almost to our complete satisfaction.

We therefore thank you and you alone for so speedily resolving this case. (Mr F. and Mrs A. Spiteri Attard)

I thank Mr and Mrs Spiteri Attard for their kind letter. It is greatly appreciated. However I took the opportunity to feature this case to highlight the fact that this column is here to help consumers.