My hopes have been dashed ... and then restored!

I began today full of hope that the engineer from the stairlift company would be able to repair mine so that I could use it to access the top floor of our house ... but the reality has not quite matched my expectations, as the following blog post will relate!

The engineer arrived at 9.30am, and by 10.45am he had replaced the carriage (i.e. the mechanical part of the chair that moves it up and down the fixed rails) and upgraded the software to enable it to cope with the sharp bends the stairlift has to negotiate. He tested it, and it worked perfectly ... and then he dropped a verbal bombshell!

When I checked about the carrying capacity, it turned out that according to the technical specification for that model chair, I am too heavy to use it safely! As my weight gain was cited as the reason why the chair needed to be repaired in the first place, it sounded as if replacing the carriage and upgrading the software had been a massive waste of time.

He then telephoned the technical department and checked with them, and they advised him to tell me not to use the stairlift until I had had a phone call from the customer service department. I duly waited for that phone call ... and I was told that it was unsafe for me to use the stairlift until I was within its safe weight-carrying capacity! Needless to say, after waiting a month for this problem to be solved, I was not very happy about this and made my displeasure known.

That phone call had barely finished when I received a second phone call from somebody else at the company asking if an engineer could pay me a visit on Friday to fix a faulty flipper switch on the stairlift! When I explained the situation, they seemed as bemused as I was, and promised to investigate why a heavy-duty stairlift chair that would be able to cope with my weight had not been installed. (At the time, I thought that I knew the reason; the rails on my stairlift go round several sharp bends and the heavy-duty chair listed in the company's catalogue can only go in straight lines.)

Some ten minutes later, I had a third phone call from the customer services department. The caller apologised for all the confusion and told me that the stairlift was safe for me to use. Apparently, the new carriage was an upgraded one with stronger rollers and bearings that were designed to carry a heavier weight than the previous one. They also arranged for the engineer to come on Friday to fix the faulty flipper switch.

So far, my day has been one of emotional ups and downs ... and I have yet to try out the refurbished stairlift!