We recognise that it may sometimes be necessary to complain about the way AMDO, or an individual, has provided a service. AMDO has a formal and transparent complaints process in place to handle those situations where a member of AMDO, an industry stakeholder, pet professional or a member of the public is dissatisfied with any aspect of their experience of AMDO.

If you have a complaint about the way we operate or the services we provide, please let us know as soon as possible in writing, by post or email. We have a 3-stage process designed to deal with complaints quickly, effectively and fairly.

The complaints policy does not cover:

• complaints by employees of AMDO that are covered by AMDO internal policies or other procedure covered elsewhere
• complaints from any party with which AMDO has a trading relationship.
• complaints about AMDO’s service if they are not made within three months of the incident taking place.

Investigation

Stage 1

Complaints will be investigated by an appropriate individual (investigator) appointed by the Chair. The investigator will review your complaint and aim to respond within 10 working days. If this is not possible, they will write to you and explain the delay, informing you when you may expect a response.

Where investigation involves speaking to a number of different individuals, this may take longer, but the complainant will receive regular updates and we aim to resolve all complaints within 2 months of receipt.

Stage 2

If the initial response from AMDO does not resolve your complaint, you have 28 calendar days to ask for your complaint to be escalated. To do this, please respond to AMDO in writing explaining why. Your complaint will then be escalated to a director (or an alternative director if the original investigator is a director). The director will aim to respond to you in writing within 10 working days.

Stage 3

If you are not satisfied with the director’s decision, please let us know in writing explaining why and your complaint will be escalated and discussed at the next AMDO members’ meeting to review your compliant. Meetings take place monthly so our response at stage 3 may take up to 6 weeks. We will aim to respond to you with our final decision in writing within 10 working days of this meeting taking place.

Customer remedies

Where a complaint is upheld, the action AMDO will take to put matters right can include any combination of the remedies set out in the list below. The general principle we follow is that a complainant should, so far as possible, be put in the position he or she would have been in, had things not gone wrong.

The remedy chosen will be proportionate and appropriate to the failure of service and take into account what the complainant was looking for when making their complaint. An apology is normally appropriate, but other action may also be necessary.

Possible remedies are:

• a sincere and meaningful apology, explaining what happened and/or what went wrong
• remedial action, which may include reviewing or changing a decision relating to the service given to an individual complainant
• provide the service desired by the complainant
• putting things right (for example, a change of procedures to prevent future difficulties of a similar kind, either for the complainant or others)
• training or closer supervision of staff or volunteers

An apology is not an acceptance of liability under Section 2 of the Compensation Act 2006.

Where a complaint is not upheld, the complainant will receive an oral or written response by the appointed investigator as appropriate, explaining the reason and outcomes.

Implementing lessons learned

The insight and learnings from customer complaints should be included in customer service or process improvement initiatives to produce better future outcomes.