No assistance when 97 year old man falls

 Dear Heloise, 

We understand that during times of stress that our clients and their loved ones may say and act in a manner that is not reflective of their normal character and our staff are trained and prepared for this.  However, we cannot condone that persons, such as yourself, call our response centre after the event and abuse and threaten our staff and then publish false accusations about AidCall 24/7.  

Our response centre, when receiving a call, needs to ascertain the extent and seriousness of the injury to correctly tri-age it and relay the information to the necessary parties.  It does this by asking questions regarding the situation and this practise is applied to all medical emergency services.  There are a finite number of ambulances and they cannot be utilised for situations which do not require an ambulance.  We cannot send an ambulance where there is no apparent injury, when there may be a call when someone’s life hangs in the balance.  I have no doubt that you would have been very upset if your father required an ambulance for a significant injury but because ambulances had been dispatched for non-life threatening or non-serious injuries, we were not able to dispatch an ambulance to attend to your father.  

The operator had the chance to only ask one question, please see transcript below 

Call Answered: 10:41:51 ________________________________________ 

[00:00:03.000] - AidCall 24/7 – Responder 

Aidcall 24/7 you're speaking to ******** what is your emergency? 
[00:00:08.800] – Caller: 

My dad has fallen and I can't get him up. 

[00:00:12.400] - AidCall 24/7 – Responder 

Okay. Is he bleeding? 

[00:00:17.760] – Caller: 

Bleeding? (audio not clear) 

[00:00:22.800] - AidCall 24/7 – Responder 

Is he bleeding ma'am? 

[00:00:25.690] – Caller: 

Can you just hold on, (Caller on cellphone call: “ Is jou seun dalk daar? Kan hy my kom help my pa het geval en ek kry hom nie op getel nie. Alright, dankie bye ) you are currently not able to assist so I've got my neighbours to come and assist but I will speak to your company tomorrow because you're not answering the call. Nothing is happening. 

[00:00:54.940] - AidCall 24/7 – Responder 

Ma'am. I answered the call as soon as it came through, ma'am 

[00:01:00.260] – Caller: 

I can assist my dad. Your assistance has been non existing. 

[00:01:06.020] – AidCall 24/7 – Responder 

Is there anyone that I can call, ma'am, to help you and assist your dad? Hi. Good day, ma’. 

[00:01:25.270] – Caller 

No Response 

Emergency Call Ended: 10:43:36 

 

At no time did we say or indicate that, as you claimed “However, since he was not bleeding, this was of no concern to them”.  You simply did not give us an opportunity to assist.  

You then called back just over 10 minutes later and the same operator answered.  You stated to the operator that “I want you to take a second, think how useless you are” and “So, I will tomorrow speak to your managers to find out what the f*** I’m paying for”.  Despite this abuse, the operator continued to try and assist and asked numerous times if your father was injured and needed an ambulance. 

The supervisor called the following morning and was exposed to a similar attack, being told that “It doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to sue the F***ing hell out of you people.”   Following that call, a few hours later, we received a cancellation with immediate effect. 

Later that afternoon, we received numerous emergency calls from your father’s device.  Despite having received the cancellation, we continued to respond to the call.  Each time we connected there was silence and each time we called his land-line, it was answered and the phone was put down.  We made several attempts to both your father’s number and yours.  When a responder finally spoke to you, you would not answer the question regarding if your father was having an emergency.  Eventually, out of concern that your father may need assistance, the manager called you and again was greeted with the same aggressive response and finally confirmed that you had checked that your father was safe.  Making numerous calls to an emergency response centre when there is no emergency puts others at risk. 

The manner in which you have treated our staff is reflected in your original heading for this complaint which read “F*** you old man”.  We have only treated both you and your father with respect and we do not deserve that you imply that that was our attitude.  In fact, despite the abuse and aggressive responses from you, our response centre and its staff have only been concerned about your father and his safety. 

You also make reference to our advert showing someone falling and medical personal attending to the patient.  You have clearly decided to omit or disregard the voiceover which states: “What would happen if you had an accident at home and no-one knew you needed help?  In the case of an emergency the AidCall 24 hour response centre can talk directly to the person in need anywhere in their home.  AidCall 24/7 can contact family or friends to alert them of the situation, and if needed an ambulance can be dispatched for medical attention…”  

Our staff work in a stressful environment and care tremendously about their customers (look at our customer reviews), knowing that they can be instrumental in preserving our customers lives and as a responsible company, we cannot condone such aggressive interactions to our staff or misleading statements about our company.  

We welcome your cancellation, but we are saddened by the fact, that should your father need assistance, that we will no longer be able to offer him such as we have to thousands of our customers.