HOSPITAL WAITING LIST
 
If you've seen your name apparently bumped down the list then let me explain, I certainly would not do anything so unfair.  In fact, you may not believe this but a couple of months ago I was contacted by someone who said he was a collector and wanted to jump the list and was prepared to pay for it.  I refused saying it would not be fair - and then had him offering figures from 10's to hundreds - and then thousands of pounds!  He got to £5000 with me still refusing - he then said "you are an idiot" and hung up.  To this day I really do not understand who he was or what was really going on.

I expected complaints, quite rightly I suppose - until you understand.

Although your number has changed you have not actually been moved down the list.  We had recently been finding (again by complaints from customers) that the estimated times we gave them for calling in their patients were wrong - and they were being delayed longer than we had told them - although we had said that it was only an estimate, calculated by their position on the list and how many repairs we complete (on average) a month.  So we tried to find the cause - and it soon dawned that we were counting OWNERS and not PATIENTS.  So if quite a few people gave us 2 or 3 dolls (etc) to repair, it was taking longer than the ONE we had counted (the customer).

So, we got our software to change the position number (without moving anyone - honest) so that if a person was number 20 on the list and gave us 3 dolls then the next person would be 23 (there were patients 20, 21, and 22 before them).  That way, if we then divided their position by the number of repairs we did a month we would more likely get a better idea of how long they would wait.

This is explained (albeit briefly) at the top of the list - and if you look down the numbers you will see that they actually jump, this is where the person before the jump has booked in more than 1 repair.

We did consider saying to people that they can only book in one patient at a time - but with people waiting so long anyway that really didn't seem fair.  I know the wait is horrendous for everyone - but we don't know what else to do - there are so few hospitals about we cannot cope.  We've had people say we should take on staff, make the business bigger etc - but we are both retired and this was supposed to be something to "keep us busy".  We work from home (9am to 11pm most days - including weekends) and really do not want to expand, hire staff, pay for premises (we work from home to keep costs to a minimum).  We are always happy to send people to competitors (where they exist) and are always happy to help DIYers (and we would love some more competition - there need to be more people doing this!!!).

Sorry to ramble on but I do hope you understand, we have not moved one person in front of you - it is just a way of trying to let people know just how long they have to wait.  I am sorry it seems so annoying.
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Hilary