Have had this serice for 3 years. This years service is terrible. Didnt show up at all today. Use to plow a few times a day to clear driveway in morning and after city plow. Not anymore. A bunch of us are leaving next year.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $400.00
- Company Response
Thank you for your feedback. On 02/14/15 we received a total snowfall accumulation of 5 cms of snow (our minimum snowfall limit). Whenever we receive this small an amount of snow we will do 1 PASS ONLY after the city plows have gone by on the side streets. (It has always been this way.) Although 5 cms had fallen by 5 PM on 02/14/14, the city did not go out to plow until after midnight that night (4 AM on 02/15/15). We took a chance, started our work at 2 AM anticipating the city would be working overnight and it took us 13 hours of WAITING for the city plows to complete their work once they started. Had we started at 5 PM on the 14th the drivers would have been waiting for 22 hours for side streets to be plowed. I cannot justify having my drivers wait 22 hours for a 5-cm snowfall!
The city plow schedules represent a much bigger challenge than you take into consideration. In years past we could count on them being out as snow was subsiding, making it easy for us to be right behind them completing our work. Now, we complete our work within a 6-hour time frame and sit there scratching our heads wondering whether the city plows are going to appear and if so, when. The city refuses to supply any information regarding their schedules to the private contractors, so we learn of their whereabouts only by sitting and watching. There is a limit to how long we can realistically expect our drivers to do this, don't you agree?
You might think that the most logical course of action would be to have our drivers start their pass as soon as 5 cms is down, complete their work, and go home. In theory this works; in practice it does not. Many of our drivers come from as far away as Merrickville, Gatineau, Cornwall, and Gananoque. Calling them in for a 6-hour shift, sending them home, and bringing them back whenever the city decides to show up (which could be 2 hours later or 10 hours later), just isn't feasible. I would have drivers quitting left, right, and center.
If you check our Service Logs (https://www.kodiaksnow.ca/service-logs-2014-2015/), Kodiak has already been out on 17 separate dates so far and performed a total of 24 visits on each client's driveway. There has never been a time in the history of Kodiak (10 years) where service was not provided and I think it is unjust that you make this statement now. In this case, service was provided, just not as quickly as you would have liked.
A common theme behind many of the negative reviews we receive is a lack of understanding of our internal processes. Key to our operations are our drivers. They are not machines and we cannot treat them as such. In almost all cases, they go above and beyond what is reasonably expected. 20+ hours of waiting time for 5 cms of snow is not reasonable and I will not ask it of them.