Hero Snow Removal wants to recognize that service quality may have seemed subpar in the recent 5
days. Although it is normally difficult to manage multiple days of scattered flurries, the recent ones
showed far more difficult.
Timeline of events: As you will see from our Online Tracking, Fri and Sat (Dec 13-14) were forecasted
to have half an inch of snow, and then 2 inches was expected to follow the evening of Sunday Dec 15,
ending around midnight. Closer to Sunday, this snowfall was pushed back to occur more throughout
the night, ending around 5am. As of 5am Monday morning, minimal snow had fallen but enough
drifting occurred to complete a service route. Also as of 5am no more snow was expected until another
2-4″ fell Wed. Dec 18.
What actually happened: Another quick half inch fell Monday morning while we cleared affecting the
bottom 20-30 properties on our list. This was not enough to warrant redoing those properties already
completed, so we continued on. Nearing the end Monday around a half inch of snow was added to the
forecast for Monday evening. This snowfall actually occurred beginning around 2am Tuesday morning
and finishing right before wakeup at 6am. We measured this snowfall as 1/2 inch, however we noticed
that some areas experienced closer to 3/4 or 1 inch. As of 6am Tuesday morning the forecast called for
scattered flurries Tuesday night and still 2 inches on Wednesday beginning around noon.
If there had been no snow in the forecast for Tuesday night and Wednesday we would have done a
touch up route beginning Tuesday at 6am. However since our average route time is about 10h we
wouldn’t have finished clearing properties until 4pm Tuesday all for it to snow again on Tuesday night,
and Wednesday. This is why the agreement we sign has the clause “the forecast must be
clear of snow for 24 hours”.
Our clause made us look very bad because in actual fact, the 2 inch snowfall for Wednesday dwindled
to half an inch as of Tuesday afternoon, then as of 5am Wednesday morning all snow was removed
from the forecast. We immediately began a route to clean snow however while monitoring the forecast
a half inch of snow was reinstated for Wednesday afternoon as of 7am Wednesday morning. This
caused us to halt the route to let the snow do its thing on Wednesday afternoon. However as of
Wednesday afternoon barely a flake has fallen.
Our thoughts: In short this is basically a perfect storm of events, and policies combining to result in
delayed service. We want to provide nothing but the best service to our customers and wish as much
as them that every time it snowed it would start at 4pm and stop at midnight so we could have every
customer completed by morning, every time. However, weather and forecasts don’t operate on our
schedule, we are forced to operate on theirs and we must do the best we can with what they give us.
Hero Snow Removal acted on the best information available at the time and made judgment calls
based on this information. Our calls were wrong, and we take responsibility for that.
What we’ve done to fix it:
-We’ve added this Journal page to our website to give even more transparency to our service
instead of being limited to the 140 character limit of our live update feed on our tracking page.
-We’ve sent our feedback to TheWeatherNetwork on their performance so far this season in hopes
that they will be able to work out any kinks that exist in their models.
-We’ve contacted another local and small weather organization and will be following their weather
calls to add more information to our arsenal. They are extremely eager and local to Winnipeg so we
are optimistic that they can help us help you.
Final word: We have experienced barely any complaints–if any–as a result of this recent service
issue. This shows that our customers understand the nature of winter. However, we want to assure
you that our quality of service means everything to Hero Snow Removal, and it doesn’t take a flurry
of phone calls for us to realize there is a problem, or to take action to correct it.
Thank you for choosing Hero Snow.
