Bluewater Shopping Centre and UK Mobility Services

Home > Guest Information > Access and Mobility

Bluewater has a specialist service called UK Mobility for the hire of electric wheelchairs and scooters. The store also sells mobility equipment to assist whilst at Bluewater and in the home.

For an annual membership of £15, all users get free access to manual wheelchairs when they visit, and access to electric equipment for a reduced fee of £2 per visit. Alternatively non-members can hire wheelchairs for £5 per day and electric equipment for £8.

My letter of complaint:

Dear Sir / Madam

I am a 27 year old disabled lady and today, Saturday 5th January 2008, I visited Bluewater with my Mum. I have my own very comfortable and expensive manual wheelchair but, sadly, today we forgot to put the footplates in the car which meant there was no way I could use my wheelchair.

I walk very slowly with 2 walking sticks and can only manage relatively small distances before I get worn out and experience various degrees of pain.

I had checked your website yesterday to see whether I would be able to hire a wheelchair if I didn’t bring my own so when we got into the shopping centre we headed for the UK mobility services shop as your website advises that this is the place that hires out manual wheelchairs and electric scooters for the shopping centre. We had parked in the John Lewis car park which is a fair distance from the mobility shop so by the time Mum and I arrived there I was in desperate need of a seat.

On entering the shop we asked if we could obtain one of the manual wheelchairs as we had forgotten the footplates for my own. We were first asked for 2 forms of identification and 1 piece with my name and address on. This was not stated on your website and I had none of those things with me.

Because I could not provide those things we were then told that the only way we could obtain a wheelchair for our visit was to give a £250 deposit on a credit card and we would have to pay the standard hire charges. The part about a deposit is also not stated on your website. I do not have a credit card and to be honest I was astonished that I was being asked to give a deposit of such a high amount when the wheelchairs offered for public use were some of the most basic I have ever seen.

We left the store and instead of carrying on with the shopping we had intended to do at Bluewater we left.

I just wanted to take a few moments to write to you and make you aware of the poor service you provide to disabled people who need to hire a wheelchair to get around the centre. Many places including major supermarkets, other larger shopping centres and even some town centres all provide manual wheelchairs and some even have electric wheelchairs all free of charge with no deposit to pay. Could you explain to me why Bluewater uses the UK Mobility services shop rather than providing the services itself?

I would also like to suggest that information for disabled people is made clearer on your website so that in future other disabled people do not experience the same problems.

I checked your website again tonight and after quite a lot of searching I did see a small part that said a limited amount of wheelchairs were available from the Concierge within the centre, but, this was not made apparent anywhere within Bluewater itself and after waiting 10 minutes at the concierge desk to make a complaint and not seeing anyone we decided to give up.

I hope that the service we received today is the exception rather than the rule and would appreciate you looking in to this matter so that future visits by disabled people wishing to use this service go a lot smoother than my trip did today.

Kind regards…

I’ll keep you all posted on the outcome of this

Update 29th February:

To date I am yet to receive even an acknowledgment of my complaint from Bluewater and today I have written to them again requesting that someone get back to me about my original complaint. I’ll let you know if/when I hear something!

Update 1st March 2008:

I finally received a reply, though I am not really sure just how much of an apology this is!

Dear

Thank you for visiting the Bluewater website. I’m afraid I’ve been unable to locate an e-mail from you on the 5th January.

I am disappointed to learn that our facilities have not lived up to your expectations.

Guest feedback is very important to us, as it helps us to maintain the standards of service and facilities that you have a right to expect from Bluewater. I am therefore extremely grateful to you for your comments, which I will pass on to the relevant management team for their immediate attention.

I do hope we can welcome you back to Bluewater in better circumstances.

Kind regards,

Julia Proporowicz

Guest Services.

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

I am in full sympathy with Talj’s blog. My husband was in need of a wheelchair when we visited Bluewater as he had torn his achilies tendon. The people in the mobility shop where extremly unhelpful not only to us but to an Austrailian family who were also in the same predicament. There were plenty of electic scooters there but because we hadn’t pre booked them they would not hire them out. They did nothing to assist us in getting the wheelchair out of the shop and it felt that they were doing us a great favour in letting us pay and hire one of there chairs.

Comment by jane — February 29, 2008 #

Reply
Clearly Bluewater and UK Mobility Services have not changed their ways. I decided to visit Bluewater and I found the National Federation of Shopmobility listed a shopmobility schene there. I rang the number given to find out what facilities UK Mobility offered and their location. They had only 3-wheeled scooters not the safer 4-wheeled ones. They said they were located in the yellow car park.

On arriving at Bluewater from the M25 I found none of the sign posts had any reference to a colour coding for the car parks. It took three telephone calls to UK Mobility before they gave a correct description of their location which was in a car park labelled once you were in it as the Blue parking area. After driving round thids car park several times I found an insignificant sign for yellow parking area and shopmobility although there were no signs to the office.

Whilst I waited in the car my Partner went to the office where he was told that before I could hire a scooter I must register. My Partner explained that I am unable to walk so could he bring a scooter to the car so that I could get to the office to register or perhaps they could come to the car to register me. Both were refused by th Manager. Instead she offered the loan of a manual wheelchair for my Partner to wheel me to the office. He pointed pui that there is a steep ramp from the car park to the office and because he suffers from back problems he could not push me up the ramp. Their response was that neither could they!

I had to abort the visit to Bluewater and drive the 40o miles home.

I have sent e-mails to UK Mobility, The National Federation of Shopmobility and Thhe Deputy Manager of Bluewater. The only response has been an acknowledgement from UK Mobbility promising a substantive response but none has been received. Thhus acting on advice I have written to all three under the terms of he Disability Discrimination Act requiring a reply to specific questions about the steps they intend to take to comply wwith ther Act.

I will let you know how they respond

Mikke

Comment by Mike — March 1, 2009 #

Reply