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Citizen complaint of the day: Let's make a deal
By adamg on Mon, 08/18/2014 - 3:17pm
A concerned citizen in Roslindale makes a request about the bridge over the Needham Line tracks at Walworth Street:
There's been broken glass on sidewalk over train bridge for several days. I'll clean it up if you will tell ambulance drivers not to use sirens at 3 o'clock in the morning. Good deal?
The city replies:
Case Closed. Case Resolved. lol wish i could ..i sent guys there to clean up.
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Comments
Someone doesn't know how a ticket system works.
The ticket isn't supposed to be closed when you've dispatched someone to do the job; the ticket is supposed to be closed when you've verified that the job is done.
This seems to be a consistent problem with Citizens' Connect.
Oh, so you checked, and the
Oh, so you checked, and the job wasn't done?
No. Read the text
No, I did not check, and, according to the ticket notes, neither did whoever closed out the ticket.
You read the text
She didn't say they cleaned it, merely that she sent someone to clean it. And the case is closed/resolved. It is possible that she wrote this after it was verified, isn't it? How do you know it wasn't verified?
If it were verified that the requested action
was completed, then wouldn't the response have read "CLOSED - Sidewalk cleaned by DPW on 'X date' at 'Y hours' instead?
The other problem seems to be
The other problem seems to be hiring teenagers to respond to tickets
What I find just as annoying
is when they indicate "Closed - Duplicate Case (with some multi-digit number) Referred to ISD (or whomever)."
Translation - We've dealt with this one already, are too lazy to inform the relevant party that more than one person has lodged a complaint about this issue, and believe that, since the complaint was referred to another City agency, we've done our job. And if that other agency chooses to never addresses the complaint, well, that's really not our concern now.
"End-to-endness"
'zactly. Even if it's not a city issue (for example, something on state property), a reasonable response is not, "State property, not our problem," but, instead, "State property, but since we work for you, and since we have what you don't, which is the ability to aggregate issues and track them, we'll report it to the appropriate state agency for you, we'll keep the ticket open, and we'll track to be sure that the state agency is being responsive. Every quarter, we can use the data about which problems aren't getting fixed in order to lobby on your behalf for more effective state services."
That's the way classy service organizations do it... you'd never hear a business-class ISP, for example, say, "That's a local telco line issue, not our problem."
Or at the very least
This is not a City of Boston issue, but here's who you should contact (with a real contact number/person, and not a robo-line or general telephone number) to have your concern addressed.
You must not have comcast
You must not have comcast
If you actually call the
If you actually call the mayor's line, 90% of the time you get a person to have an actual conversation with within a minute. As much as I liek the tech of the app, the asinine replies and unprofessionalism are uncalled for. If anything, make a report and then call and provide the number if you need pictures.
Wow some interesting stuff
Wow some interesting stuff going on in Charlestown...people sleeping in cars and a
guy pooping in a park.
WTF?