To give up and book someone else?

[WeWillAllGoTogether]

I'm trying to arrange a home-based service for later this year.

It is something that can get very booked up, so I started looking into it last month. I Googled for nearby providers, looked at websites, read reviews and then picked one which seemed promising and sent them an enquiry via email.

Person A replied promptly, confirmed availability for my dates, requested my phone number so their colleague Person B who is the actual provider could call to make further arrangements (home visit, paperwork) and also provided me with B's phone number so I would recognise it.

I then waited several days but no call came from B. So I sent B a message along the lines of "Hi, this is WeWill, I've been emailing with A, please let me know how to make arrangements and when would suit you!"
I got a friendly reply a day later "Hi, sorry for slow response, very busy. Your address is in BlahBlah right? Are you around any daytimes for me to come over?"
So I replied "Yes, we're in BlahBlah and I can do X dates next week or if too soon Y dates following week."

Then... nothing. The dates came and went. It's been over 3 weeks since that single message from B.

Several days ago I sent a chaser message "Hi, just catching up to check on when would suit you? I know the service isn't until later this year so understand if you want to leave it a bit, but let me know timescale so I can arrange. Thanks, WeWill"
I can see it's been read, but no reply.

I was going to send an email to Person A today just checking what the situation is, but TBH I'm feeling a bit reluctant to chase - I'm trying to give these people my money for goodness sake.

So: WIBU to give up and contact another provider?

Of course you are not!

Depends when you're trying to book them for. If it's past say the end of May then you can't really expect them to prioritise you now when they are probably dealing with sooner bookings.

I totally accept that the timescale may be too far in advance for how they run their service - but they haven't given me any indication of what would be suitable, like even a "Too soon, home visit only X weeks before event" would be fine!

It's the total incommunicado that is

Absolutely find someone else. Whether you're booking for next week, next month or next year is irrelevant, you're the customer! Once you have booked someone else, I would contact person A to let them know what person B did not get back to you. It depends what the relationship is but I'd be fuming if a colleague of mine was so unprofessional.

Yep- move on. I have learned this with tradespeople. If they don’t send me the quote I’ll send them one reminder and then move on. I think sometimes they just don’t want to do it but for whatever reason don’t want to tell you.

Why do they do this stringing you along/ghosting thing? I cannot understand it!

I literally think they don’t want to explain why they don’t want to do the job- like I had a roofer come and quote ( spent ages here, did drone pics etc) and then just ghosted me. Having spoken to other companies who declined as too big a job for them, I imagine it was that but why not just say??

I’ve experienced the ghosting thing with tradespeople plenty of times 😠 but this is a different type of service and I naively thought they would behave normally!

I'm probably being a wimp, but I've decided to try one last time - I'll email Person A today and ask whether they have in actual fact booked me in, with a bit of wide-eyed "I haven't had an update from Person B for a while"...