Xline Reach and Wash system

[xline-systems]

As you read through this Andy, remember that YOU asked!! 

I pop by for a cuppa with James at the shop (the old shop, not where you are now) and  talking with James I ask the question 'If you know anyone looking for staff put a word in for me, dont care if it's WFP or Trad, I just need to work' 

James then proceeds to tell me about his franchise plans, and how he will rent me a van and system for £150 per week along with £500 of work.  

Well that's a winner, I landed right back on my feet and happy days.. 

'I just got a few things to tweak will be ready next week'  James says. 

Well next week comes, I call him up 'Oh yeah, just tweaking the round will be a few days'  

Disappointed but still excited, 'No problem' I say

Call up a few days later but no answer, have to leave a voice mail...... 

Same again the next day, and the next and on it goes.  

Finally someone at the shop answers asking to take a message claiming he's not about.  

Now in a position where all my money is gone and there is literally not even a can of beans in the cupboard to feed my wife so I phone my old workmate at the commercial firm and ask if he can hook me up some trad gear, he gives me a squeegee, applicator and a couple of scrims.   I go next door to my neighbour and ask if I can borrow the ladder he has bolted on the wall for a couple of weeks, he obliges.  From there I literally start walking the neighborhood knocking doors offering to clean there and then.... a couple of weeks later I have a battered old Bora with roof bars and rock and roll,  another month passes and I put together enough to buy a van and system, cant afford factory yet so DIY will suffice.  

Driving along, my phone rings, IT'S JAMES!    Hello James,  'Who's this?' he asks 'Darren Green' I tell him.   'Oh sorry' he says 'miss dialed' 

I ask what happened to the van and work we had shook on?  He gives me some bull about how his dad (Steve) had given it to an old school chum instead.  

I hang up the phone and that's pretty much the end of my relationship with X-Line, to the point that I drive an hour past them just buy squeegee rubber let alone anything of value. 

Darren, Andy here, thanks for taking the time to reply & explain and yes I did ask .

Its good to know that your business is doing well now and you are back on your feet, i say this genuinely, as no one wants to see others struggling or failing in this industry (at least I would hope not).

It is disappointing to hear about your story about the window cleaning job experience you had with James, I am sure his intentions were genuine at the time, and I'm sure you would agree before this experience you would have classed him as helpful and friendly.

From an internal point of view I would say this was probably caused by a lack of communication between James, Steve and yourself.

Its difficult for me personally to comment anymore as I work for Xline Systems, which is as you know is separate to the window cleaning business.

I was keen to hear why you felt our customer service 'was beyond a joke' and if this was from your experience of purchasing products from us, then having to deal with us afterwards regarding a customer service issue, but from your explanation above this does not seem to be the case.

The original question asked was about Xline Systems, and asking for feedback about our water fed pole systems and product range, I don't think its professional or helpful if every time someone asks this type of question on this forum you respond slating us without actually explaining the reality of the situation.

Taking a conversation over a coffee about a job coming up (in a totally different company to Xline Systems, which ultimately got filled by another person), to then commenting on our customer service level bares no relation in my eyes. I also don't see how this is helpful to the guy asking the question, as presumably he wants to hear from people who probably have experience using our products, or from actually dealing with Xline Systems customers services team (even if these are positive or negative).

If for example, you had another/separate business to your window cleaning one, and me and you were talking about a job opportunity at that business for me, if for whatever reason I did not get that job and I felt like I was somehow wronged, you probably would not appreciate it if I starting trashing your other business online at any opportunity just to ruin your reputation.

I can totally understand you are probably still bitter about what happened, but I think its been a few years since this happened and I would hope you could be more understanding and less critical, or at least take the time to explain to people why you are being critical.

I do think its a shame this one instance would stop you doing business with us again, as you are local, and we have changed a lot over the last few years. It would be nice if there was a possibility of repairing the relationship and us having the opportunity to prove to you that we do have a good product line up, and that we do actually care about our customers, their feedback and their true opinions.

Its true, our customer service reputation has probably not been the best in the industry in the past, but we have made and continue to make efforts to focus on this, improve and take steps to make sure we don't have repeat issues.

Again from an internal point of view I am keen to here feedback from people who like you say have spent thousands with us on a system to only find the customer services none existent. We do always aim to answer every call, respond to every enquiry, issue or message, we have dedicated phone lines for each department and dedicated people to take those calls. We are continually taking on more staff to cope with the demand as we are growing, but yes sometimes something may slip through the net, this is not intentional and is by no means like you say us screwing people over.

We have recently called up and surveyed every one of our system customers to ask them for their feedback on their experiences dealing with us and also how they have found the equipment. The vast majority of the people we were able to speak with were positive in their comments, any negative feedback was collated and new processes have been implemented to reflect these. Again we would not be hiding from the truth or not wanting to continually improve if we were only wanting to screw people over.

I did want to take the time to reply to yours and other comments on here, (even though we have not really spent much time talking with people on here recently) I wanted to do this in part to prove that we do care about our customers and our reputation, we do want to mend any broken bridges (if thats the correct way of saying that!), and that we are willing to raise our hands when we have failed.

Hopefully you will take my reply positively and not in any way argumentative. I'm also hoping we can let bygones be bygones and move on.

Andy

 

[xline-systems]

x line are pants for customer service, from what I've heard grippatank, wcw, and the cleaning warehouse are a lot better

Hi, can I ask if you have personal experience dealing with us, or if you are just relaying what you have heard from others?

 

[xline-systems]

I keep hearing this about xline, why do they have such a bad rap?

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Something I am keen keen to understand and striving to change.

Nice avatar btw

 

[xline-systems]

Xlines stuff looks great but customer service is a disgrace

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Hi Daniel, are you from Ireland? Again I am keen to hear from your experiences dealing with our customer services. I have searched my emails and can see a conversation we had back in March this year regarding an enquiry about our trolley systems, but struggling to recall any other conversations or issues.

 

[xline-systems]

I’ve recently brought xline and had a problem with reel leaking contacted xline problem sorted next day all good.


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Glad we had managed to resolve the issue quickly for you - Good to hear, hope everything is going well with the system for you.

 

[P4dstar]

@xline-systems You have the wrong site. The address you were looking for is trustpilot.com  :1f602:

 

[xline-systems]

Well said that man! I'm still waiting for  a return call regarding some stuff i bought from them in june 2016 well they took my money in junye around £1300 but my order didn't arrive until 6 weeks later trying to ring them was pointless as no one anwered the phone when i finally got through no one seems to be able to find my order then when it arrive i had to solder the fuse wires myself! needless to say my money goes to the proper suppliers of the industry now and i usually get my delivery within 48 hours of placing it! 6 weeks is a bit of a wait with lots of loss in potenial earning so i won't be using them again! 

Clearly we did not do a very good job on your order. Yes 6 weeks was far too long, I can only imagine your frustration, but cannot imagine how your order was delayed for that amount of time, did you get an explanation?

Regarding calling us, sometimes, when people try and call us we are already speaking to other customers, and the only way we are aware that someone is trying to call us is if they leave an answer phone message, but the majority of people do not do this, instead thinking it might be quicker to just try us back 2 minutes later, finding the phones busy again. We are not sat there ignoring calls, we do always aim to listen to answerphone messages and return calls as soon as possible.

I am not aware of any return call you are waiting on, especially one from June 2016, but i would like to get to the bottom of what went wrong for you so that we can make sure it does not happen again. The vast majority of orders placed before 1pm get sent out that day, it would only normally be an item out of stock that would cause a delay, but we always try and explain this to people when they are ordering something that is out of stock at that time.

Again sorry to hear about your experience dealing with us, its not what we want to happen, or hear about.

 

[Green Pro Clean Ltd]

Darren, Andy here, thanks for taking the time to reply & explain and yes I did ask .

Its good to know that your business is doing well now and you are back on your feet, i say this genuinely, as no one wants to see others struggling or failing in this industry (at least I would hope not).

It is disappointing to hear about your story about the window cleaning job experience you had with James, I am sure his intentions were genuine at the time, and I'm sure you would agree before this experience you would have classed him as helpful and friendly.

From an internal point of view I would say this was probably caused by a lack of communication between James, Steve and yourself.

Its difficult for me personally to comment anymore as I work for Xline Systems, which is as you know is separate to the window cleaning business.

I was keen to hear why you felt our customer service 'was beyond a joke' and if this was from your experience of purchasing products from us, then having to deal with us afterwards regarding a customer service issue, but from your explanation above this does not seem to be the case.

The original question asked was about Xline Systems, and asking for feedback about our water fed pole systems and product range, I don't think its professional or helpful if every time someone asks this type of question on this forum you respond slating us without actually explaining the reality of the situation.

Taking a conversation over a coffee about a job coming up (in a totally different company to Xline Systems, which ultimately got filled by another person), to then commenting on our customer service level bares no relation in my eyes. I also don't see how this is helpful to the guy asking the question, as presumably he wants to hear from people who probably have experience using our products, or from actually dealing with Xline Systems customers services team (even if these are positive or negative).

If for example, you had another/separate business to your window cleaning one, and me and you were talking about a job opportunity at that business for me, if for whatever reason I did not get that job and I felt like I was somehow wronged, you probably would not appreciate it if I starting trashing your other business online at any opportunity just to ruin your reputation.

I can totally understand you are probably still bitter about what happened, but I think its been a few years since this happened and I would hope you could be more understanding and less critical, or at least take the time to explain to people why you are being critical.

I do think its a shame this one instance would stop you doing business with us again, as you are local, and we have changed a lot over the last few years. It would be nice if there was a possibility of repairing the relationship and us having the opportunity to prove to you that we do have a good product line up, and that we do actually care about our customers, their feedback and their true opinions.

Its true, our customer service reputation has probably not been the best in the industry in the past, but we have made and continue to make efforts to focus on this, improve and take steps to make sure we don't have repeat issues.

Again from an internal point of view I am keen to here feedback from people who like you say have spent thousands with us on a system to only find the customer services none existent. We do always aim to answer every call, respond to every enquiry, issue or message, we have dedicated phone lines for each department and dedicated people to take those calls. We are continually taking on more staff to cope with the demand as we are growing, but yes sometimes something may slip through the net, this is not intentional and is by no means like you say us screwing people over.

We have recently called up and surveyed every one of our system customers to ask them for their feedback on their experiences dealing with us and also how they have found the equipment. The vast majority of the people we were able to speak with were positive in their comments, any negative feedback was collated and new processes have been implemented to reflect these. Again we would not be hiding from the truth or not wanting to continually improve if we were only wanting to screw people over.

I did want to take the time to reply to yours and other comments on here, (even though we have not really spent much time talking with people on here recently) I wanted to do this in part to prove that we do care about our customers and our reputation, we do want to mend any broken bridges (if thats the correct way of saying that!), and that we are willing to raise our hands when we have failed.

Hopefully you will take my reply positively and not in any way argumentative. I'm also hoping we can let bygones be bygones and move on.

Andy

I suggest you stop digging that hole and put your shovel away.   

I don't know you Andy so dont take this personal to you but I do know the Daykins (Owners of Xline for those not in the know) 

But I will say to you HOW BLOODY DARE you try and belittle what happened as lack of communication, between 3 people one of whom being me who was constantly phoning about the work i was PROMISED.  

HOW BLOODY DARE YOU say let bygones be bygones when I dont even have food for my family -- no dramatization litterally not a damn thing but 2 slices of bread in the kitchen. 

HOW BLOODY DARE YOU when my family are facing having to sleep on the streets all because I was promised work so stopped looking for a job and then F****D about for a fortnight!  

Did I mention that in the midst of all this James is busy bragging about his new build home, his £1000 pup he just bought the Mrs and the three sofas he got a discount on.......... the discount alone being £1500......  Yes he's entitled to those things but to sit there and flaunt your wealth when a starving man is asking for a job is not exactly good form is it? 

YOU ASKED ONCE and I chose to ignore you and not to reply and open old wounds..............but you asked again, you got an answer and then you try to make it as if I AM IN THE WRONG!!  Again HOW BLOODY DARE YOU. 

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Moving on....... doesn't matter what I have to say because all you have to do is look around and for every 1 positive comment on xline you will quickly find 10 negative ones.  

Sorry Andy but if you want to carry this on I will retort but dont you dare try to play down what happened as failings on my part, I got SCREWED and thats that.  

 

[Daniel Perkins]

Hi Daniel, are you from Ireland? Again I am keen to hear from your experiences dealing with our customer services. I have searched my emails and can see a conversation we had back in March this year regarding an enquiry about our trolley systems, but struggling to recall any other conversations or issues.

I think you guys took about a month to get back to me and by then I had gone elsewhere. I know you are on a publicity run trying to combat the bad press on here but it is not a coincidence many are saying the similar.

If your customer service has improved and this is not just a charm offensive.. that's great and but it was lousy for me and I went elsewhere. All water under the bridge now anyways.

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[xline-systems]

its not that often that i agree with darren (green pro)but on this instance i do,a year or so ago i tried to organise a window cleaners meet up with a few suppliers attending,i contacted x-line along with many others(they were all for this) and all were keen to attend,all good i thought,coming closer to the day i contacted x line to confirm the dates and timings etc james was never about/never got back to me regarding this-it was as if i was being ignored or that they just did'nt care-anyway the whole thing was called off as i learned that the premises and car park area that was going to be used had an x-line pole to trial with a local windie and they trashed it within a week so wanted nothing to do with x-line whatsoever-there turnover with gardiners is around 100k a year so a sizable account to have.

x-line why can't you sort your selves out?

every time you screw someone over you leave that bitterness that will never go away and gradualy if you go the way you are going you'll end up with a worser reputation than brodex-you are verging on that by the way by many i speak to in the trade

Hi Kev, I am not aware of any conversations about a meetup that happened around that time, and I would have been involved in these as it's me that organises that type of thing. We did do one around that time with the WCM in Leicestershire. How did you contact us?

Can you elaborate on this story about someone trialling one of our poles and it getting trashed within a week? Again if one of our products was being trialled in the wild this would go through me, and i don't recall us ever doing this. I am sure if someone was spending 100k a year on poles and brushes with Gardiner and they approached us to trial our equipment again I would be aware of this. Your story just seems a little far fetched to either be undstandable or believable.

You have said we screw people over and that leaves bitterness that will never go away, but can you explain how we have screwed you over? Not getting a call back from James about an event you were planning, that never actually went ahead due to the hosts trialling a product from one of the suppliers you had invited to said event does not constitute us screwing you over surely?

 

[Lukas87]

Clearly we did not do a very good job on your order. Yes 6 weeks was far too long, I can only imagine your frustration, but cannot imagine how your order was delayed for that amount of time, did you get an explanation?

Regarding calling us, sometimes, when people try and call us we are already speaking to other customers, and the only way we are aware that someone is trying to call us is if they leave an answer phone message, but the majority of people do not do this, instead thinking it might be quicker to just try us back 2 minutes later, finding the phones busy again. We are not sat there ignoring calls, we do always aim to listen to answerphone messages and return calls as soon as possible.

I am not aware of any return call you are waiting on, especially one from June 2016, but i would like to get to the bottom of what went wrong for you so that we can make sure it does not happen again. The vast majority of orders placed before 1pm get sent out that day, it would only normally be an item out of stock that would cause a delay, but we always try and explain this to people when they are ordering something that is out of stock at that time.

Again sorry to hear about your experience dealing with us, its not what we want to happen, or hear about.

so it's my fault is it for not calling back every 2 mins until someone answered? which i did countless times! quick enough to take money from my account and far too slow explaining why my order was taking so long you  do seem to indirectly try and turn the blame for your shortcomings on the people getting stitched up and messed around don't you andy? cut the blue eyed boy act you know your customer service is dump and your on here making a terrible job of putting things right by making excuses and passing the buck. after finally getting through to a nice lad named josh he made an effort to explain that extensions where on order and was waiting for them to arrive this was after 4 weeks of waiting! so please don't try and play down the 6 week wait i know i was the one waiting for it! as for leaving a message i did and you will never guess what?? yeah no one called me back also sorry doesn't cut it i'm afraid we can all say sorry it's easy! almost as easy as answering a phone a liasing with the customers placing orders with you. anyway good luck with your damage limitation excerise like i said i won't be spending any more money with xline  :1f44e:

 

[Phildeeney]

I bought one of the xline trolleys back in Jan 2016, I have had a few issues with it, the last time I rang technical support 5 times with no answer yet got through to sales on my first attempt.

My pole I bought from you is garbage, it is a 25ft carbon which when compared to a mates slx25 comes up a good 2 foot short. It also hasn't lasted very well at all.

I was told by you that the trolley could be laid on its side which is total [emoji90] the lid leaks and ended up blowing my tow bar electrics on my car.

In my opinion the xtrolley has got to be one of the worst designs out there, to fill it up you pour a barrel in which results in water going down the back of the trolley(however careful you try to do it) . Which eventually blew my controller.

So all in all not a good experience.

 

[Jordiebarrett]

Wow... This makes for interesting reading. Having been in the game 2 years, and now getting into it even more it's clear where I will, and won't be sending my hard earnt pennies...

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[Lukas87]

I bought one of the xline trolleys back in Jan 2016, I have had a few issues with it, the last time I rang technical support 5 times with no answer yet got through to sales on my first attempt.

My pole I bought from you is garbage, it is a 25ft carbon which when compared to a mates slx25 comes up a good 2 foot short. It also hasn't lasted very well at all.

I was told by you that the trolley could be laid on its side which is total

the lid leaks and ended up blowing my tow bar electrics on my car.

In my opinion the xtrolley has got to be one of the worst designs out there, to fill it up you pour a barrel in which results in water going down the back of the trolley(however careful you try to do it) . Which eventually blew my controller.

So all in all not a good experience.

like i said mate quick enough to take peoples money far to slow to want to help there customers with support the whole firm is :1f4a9:

 

[Lukas87]

Wow... This makes for interesting reading. Having been in the game 2 years, and now getting into it even more it's clear where I will, and won't be sending my hard earnt pennies...

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Fairplay mate i learnt the hard way thats why i'm more than happy to give my public opinion on this subject i paid money in good faith and recieved a terrible service and a poor standard of product! don't give them your money you could be waiting a long time for your order to arrive but don't forget its everyone else fault according to Andy the worm!

 

[tench0771]

not shore on there systems but there poles are heavy and dont last (pure  :1f4a9: never again)

 

[Clisty1989]

Hi, can I ask if you have personal experience dealing with us, or if you are just relaying what you have heard from others?

Never dealt with you myself, know a couple personally that have and all said its a joke, and to avoid like the plague, one even said they had better service from brodex, which is saying something! After multiple recommendations from them and people on here I decided not to go near xline gear. Better and more affordable gear from other suppliers, with fantastic customer service (wcw, the cleaning warehouse & Gardiners are my go too suppliers) and any issues are sorted on the spot. Hence my post earlier, in which I stated "from what I've heard". Negative reviews spread faster then good reviews, and looks like your a long way off sorting the issues you have. Playing the "not our fault" card is just going to make things a LOT worse for the company, as its a public forum, and any search for xline will probably bring this up. If I saw this as a newbie wanting to buy equipment and saw this id avoid you and go to somewhere else.

 

[adamangler]

I would never buy anything form @xline-systems

I've had absolutely no dealing with the company and only go in what I've read.

Which is unfortunate for yourselves but you seem to have dug your own grave.

Heard may a bad report on customer service. Compare that to say gardiners, can't say I've seen anything bad said about them.

It's well known your poles are heavy and unreliable. All your products imo are very expensive and you simply don't have the reputation to pull off the price tag.

After reading what @Green Pro Clean Ltdexperienced. Would anyone want to do business with a company who treats someone like that? 

I have a very negative view of xline and I've never used you, is that unfair? Absolutely it is but that is how these things work. Reputation is everything and yours is in the gutter.

Sure you can fix it but it will take some time.

The best way you can repair your reputation is impeccable service and being helpful on the forum would be a start. Coming on here and trying to argue a case, particularly against @Green Pro Clean Ltd and trying to shrug of his experience as water under the bridge is not very endearing. What would have been better would be just apologise profusely for previous failings and that's it. Actions speak louder than words just put your hands up admit you were shite and don't do it again.

Imo 

 

[Lawrence Morgan]

Hey xline I only been on the fourm a year but over that time I can say their are bad posts about xline probably more then good ones put some dame effort in search this site and you can find your bad reviews.

You are says most of your customers give positive feed back well go over this site total up all the good and bad reviews then get back to us.

I am sure you would change hearts and minds on here if you can prove more good feed back then bad.

With the amount of members on this site I am sure the sample size would be big enough.

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[Lawrence Morgan]

If you want to understand good customer service take a look at Alex Gardiner I never know a post about any of his equipment on this site go with out him personally replying to give advice to fix the problem or to tell you to talk to one of his ladies in customer service and it always gets sorted.

You say your making improvements well start by doing that every time their is a post you should be ready

Your first time at trying was to belittle active memebrs who offer more help and guidence to new window cleaners and Do It For FREE you done nothing for us so don't attack those who do alot .

adding something your selfs redemption does not come easy stop trying to blame others and earn a reputation by saying we fixed all that it won't happen again become a valued member of this community show that you know something about window cleaning. Not just taking are money

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[Guest]

Thanks Lads. Great information from you all.

I stick with the workers on here so don't think ill be going xline WCW and gardener poles for me. thanks everyone. Keep warm out there.