The great Team at Solar Solve are very proud to be accepted as a reliable supplier to many military organisations around the world. Not unnaturally it can have its problems when the desired delivery location is in a war zone or not known exactly at the time an order is placed because of military operations.
A case in point recently was a consignment of SOLASAFE screens for an Air Traffic Control tower at a Middle East location.
As always, the screens were manufactured and collected by the carrier on the agreed dispatch date, the order value being £2,850. However, for some reason to do with safety, the carrier was unable to deliver the goods and instead of returning them, they were disposed of. Our guys were in communication with the customer trying to sort out a solution but nothing seemed to emanate from the discussions.
There were at least 2 particular circumstances complicating the problem. The person who placed the order was based in one Middle East country and the ATC tower where they were to be installed, was in another. Military personnel are often re-located to other posts or go on leave, so the people who were involved originally, had moved on. Unfortunately, a lack of cooperation by some of the carrier’s UK based employees didn’t help.
Eventually, we offered to re-make the screens and send them to the country of order, at no extra cost. The customer agreed and said they would get them to the required location themselves.
It seems that when the screens were originally ordered, deliveries direct to the ATC could be made safely but circumstances subsequently changed and carriers put the welfare of their drivers first and rightly so.
For us, the resultant feedback was the icing on the cake. It read, “My replacement is here now and I have CC’d him on this email as he will be the one paying for this. It was great working with you.” Justin B Contracting Officer.
John Lightfoot, Solar Solve Chairman commented, “We have a tremendous amount of empathy for people working in war zones and for military organisations in general. Their jobs must be difficult enough and if we can make it a bit easier, so much the better. It’s not very often that we have to take relatively costly actions like this but we are more than happy to do so when we have. Military personnel are great people to work with.”
John Lightfoot, Solar Solve Chairman
