...sort of.
Good afternoon
Long time lurker here. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice or experience of this happening:
I use an invacare mirage powered wheelchair. It's an NHS wheelchair services chair and they now use a company called Rosscare to service them. They keep not showing up but my chair has had a fault for YEARS.
One night, the joystick panel exploded outwards (see picture) while it was charging. The plastic is melted/bulging outwards and cracked in places. The 'retaining ring' of plastic that fits around the rubbery bit on the joystick pinged off and broke into lots of little pieces. Someone came out to look at it but they were very unsociable and ignored me when I was explaining the problem. As they weren't allowed inside due to their policy, and they had a mask on, this gave them a bit of an excuse to be rude to me I think. They took the chair outside my house then wheeled it in saying it was fixed. They hadn't repaired the controls. Just replaced the wheels that were bald.
It seemed to be working OK so I assumed they had checked it over. Wrong. Ever since the fault, whenever I move forwards I have to reverse to the chair slightly to get it to stop moving or it continues to move at the speed I was at before stopping. That's fine if I have slowed down to stop. Today I took my dog for a run and was bobbing along. Unfortunately something spooked him and I had to stop suddenly but I was going at full speed and the chair wouldn't stop. I managed to swerve away from my dog and went down a verge and got stuck in a bush and a load of nettles. My toes are broken from the chair crushing me before the brakes engaged. The people in the nearby garden just laughed at me. I don't know what I was expecting... I can see the funny side of it now.
The problem I'm having is I have no spare attendant chair as my last one was ten years old and rusted due to never being used. I now have no means of moving around as my chair is stuck in moving forwards unless switched on - which means it now won't switch on as it's flashing thinking that somethings snagged the joystick. I've called Ross Care and got no answer. They wouldn't let me make a complaint last week abojt their engineer lying about coming to my house (I have external CCTV that proves he didn't) and said that there is no way to do that. I checked their site and it says they have a complaints policy.
Do I complain to wheelchair services or directly to Ross Care? Ideally I would like the ombudsman involved if they don't fix it soon. Broken toes can't be dealt with at hospital either so now I'm going to have mangled toes forever - I know because I've broken one on my other foot and there's nothing that can be done. No sandals for me!
Please tell me your wheelchair accidents so I don't feel silly on my own! Also ignore the state of my chair- the chair, myself and my belongings are all covered in hedge/dusty mud. I had twigs in my hair like something from a comedy sketch. Also whose fault is this? Theirs for not fixing it or mine for using the chair knowing it's broken? I'm worried I'll be in trouble.
