The extra mile to make things perfect (YPC's Heroic Saves)
Brett Alegre-WoodChairman, YPC Group
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I was having dinner with my father-in-law Arsenio the other night and he was speaking about 'heroic saves' - the times when his previous company American Express did something really amazing for a client. Really out of ordinary stuff -- things that really would blow their customers away.
It got me thinking about the lengths the team sometime go to.
I'll give you a couple of examples of things going wrong and how YPC dealt with them; YPC's own 'heroic saves' if you will!
The Unnecessary Void Period...
We paid out £1548 once on our rental void period guarantees because our 6 week guarantee period was exceeded. Technically it wasn't our fault - a tenant was found but the decided not to move in despite having paid a deposit and signing an AST. The wording in our guarantee meant that we weren't obliged to pay out for this, but we accepted responsibility because to some degree it was a lack of communication on our part that mean the property was void.
You see for me it's not about the Terms and Conditions of the guarantees, it's about the principle behind them and in this case we accepted that the team should have been more on top of things.
The Missed Specification...
We paid £8,000 for 18 Fridge freezers because our sourcing guys overlooked the specification sheet which said 'fridges' and not 'fridge freezers'. The developer had gone for the totally useless cheaper option and refused to budge. We made the decision to replace them with proper fridge freezers at our cost and gave the new fridges away to charity.
We would much rather fix something upfront than have a bad taste in our investors' mouths. It ended up being £450 per flat to fix it and we have updated our checks prior to signing off on deals so it can't happen again.
The Day-after-Completion Robbery...
One of our client's flats was broken in to the day after completion and all of the carpets, the build in fridge freezer and the washer dryer was taken. Technically this was not YPC's problem and it would have and should have fallen directly onto the investor but as a first time investor and the fact that they lived in Northern Ireland and hadn't met us yet, we decided to pay the £3000-odd to replace the stuff.
The principle here was not so much about you was right and who was wrong, it was about the fact that 'sh*t happens' occasionally and in these cases we saw the big picture rather than the individual circumstance.
Shoddy developer, shoddy workmanship...
We had a development which was a year old and fully tenanted which a developer we had worked with in the past. We weren't able to see the internals of the flats before buying but once we completed and people started to move out and relet then we realised the problems. Let's just say that this builder will not longer be on our preferred suppliers list (or any in fact).
We ended up commissioning Brickkickers, our building inspection company to review every flat and properly snag it. The builder wasn't interested in fixing the problems of poor workmanship so we ended up paying the bill of over £15,000 plus many hours of the team's time. Needless to say, we never take on developments without visiting them ourselves now.
Hopefully you're getting the picture. In the words of that immortal song by Vanilla Ice 'If there's a problem, Yo, YPC'll solve it'.
And we will solve it. Whatever it takes we'll go the extra mile for your portfolio, we'll do it. We've plenty more stories of the extra mile, just call the team on 0207 812 1255.
Live with passion,
Brett Alegre-Wood
ps: I will save the stories of how our competitors dealt with situations like these for another blog. :)
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