Annual leave is a terrible excuse!

[ANightingaleSang]

How many times can you get away with using annual leave as a excuse for failing to respond in a timely manner/delays?

For context I have been in discussions with a third party for over a year! I was anticipating we would have the issue resolved within 4 months, ideally sooner.

At every stage the person I am in communication with is saying things such
'I'll take a look when I get back from annual leave at the end of next week'
Sorry for the delay, I've been on leave and only returned 2 days ago. Ive been in back to back meetings since. I'm off again until 2nd October, I will take a look then.

This has not been once or twice but at least 15 times over the past year

So far I've gritted my teeth and remained polite but it's getting ridiculous. Does he ever work? If he's away so often surely he should delegate tasks to someone else? I'm being left in limbo waiting.

The cherry on the cake that pushed me over the edge was that he gave me a 2 week deadline to respond to a a report. I had to do a mountain of work and got back to him ahead of the deadline l. He then replied he'd look at it on 2nd of October (see above). I just find that rude!

I have always replied within 2-3working days. All the delays are on their side

Am I being unreasonable to think that annual leave can be used as an excuse once or twice but after that it's just ridiculous?

Does anyone have any comebacks? I need to remain professional but if he keeps stringing me along i am going to explode!

Thank you!

But you’re not furthering a solution by just keeping on contacting this chap, why the reticence to raise awareness elsewhere?

I manage a large team, if someone wasn’t doing what they were meant to be doing and I wasn’t aware of it I’d welcome someone getting in touch.

I agree with this. He's obviously not moving things along and you're just shouting at a brick wall.
I'd escalate it up or sideways within the organisation if possible. Or get a bit of legal advice if you're worried about going that route. They may well reassure you about the process and costs.
Also, IME you don't pay legal fees up front because whoever loses pays them at the end.

All legal actions have time limits. Make sure you issue in court before the time limit expires. 3 years or 6 depending upon the basis for action.

@SpyOfHut6 That's a fair comment. I've been very (too) accommodating of their processes. So far my strategy has been to let them dig themselves into a bigger hole which they have done spectacularly, now it is about chivvying things along to get everything finalised.

I'm not making excuses because I definitely haven't tried hard enough to bypass this guy, however when I have spoken to other people I've been signposted to him and he has been cc'd into the reply.

I realise I haven't dealt with this in the best way. At the beginning it was a fear of coming out with nothing that meant I went along with things, rather than stomping my feet about.

Doesn't usually work.

Anyone with any sense sets their email software to not send read receipts. And some organisations will set this as the global default. It helps prevent spam - sending a read receipt is a great way of letting a spammer know that your email address isn't just valid but that it's also monitored/active.