In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

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  • #10117
    kwatt
    Keymaster

    Which I can’t do until a little bit in BBphp is fixed…

    I have a request to join Repairs@ sat on my desk from a chap in Cardiff, the UKW username is dishwasherman from whom I can recall no posts.

    He obviously is a sole trader operating from home with no gas or refrigerant knowledge.

    He does have and, has supplied a copy of hise public liability as well as signing the charter. He also covers a decent spread in terms of brands, so not one of the Hotpoint and Hoover only lala’s.

    My one single reservation is that, bar his private home phone number (given on the form) her operates from a mobile only and has no number listed in the YP database.

    Thoughts would be appreciated.

    K.

    #138396
    Dave_Conway
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    He hasn’t asked for and isn’t a trade member either 😕

    What’s his trading name ?

    Dave.

    #138397
    johnmac11
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Couple of thoughts spring to mind,

    How many cowboys out there even bother with PL insurance? This guy has it.

    If there is no known negative feedback from established UKWG members or trusted sources in the trade do we asume innocent till proved otherwise.

    the big BUT is operating from a mobile. Customers will be wary of this so why dont we insist on a land line number for all trade members that use repairs@ ?

    John

    #138398
    Penguin45
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Anyone else in Cardiff we can ask for info on the guy?

    Chris.

    #138399
    Del
    Moderator

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Should we ask for a business address to be supplied along with a landline as a requirement. Customers need to have a solid point of contact with a service provider in the event of any compaints or legitimate enquiries.

    We need our database to contain only cosher service providers dont you think, or it might reflect badly on UKW in the event of poor service recieved by one of our members.

    Thoughts please.

    Del

    #138400
    Martin
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    kwatt wrote:He does have and, has supplied a copy of hise public liability as well as signing the charter. He also covers a decent spread in terms of brands

    He’s ticked all the right boxes in my book, give the guy the benefit. Who knows he may turn out to be a great asset to us all. Besides if you have record of his home address and phone number, what’s the problem 😀

    #138401
    kwatt
    Keymaster

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    He is trading as “Keith Fowler Domestic Appliance Repairs”.

    He has included a copy of his certificate from Marshwhich has a £1M indemnity on it so he’s legal and above board as John rightly says. And the policy was renewed on 13 April, effective from 1st May so it’s obviously an ongoing thing.

    He’s not being stupid in the request at all, in fact it all looks totally kosher bar that telephone number. 😕

    We may have to ammend the rules a little to reflect this I think as, in all honetly, I never gave this a thought.

    K.

    #138402
    kwatt
    Keymaster

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    I’m inclined to agree Martin, but you know what the bloody public are like! 🙄

    There’s many, many traders that operate from a mobile these days, plumbers, sparkys, joiners etc. so it’s nothing unusual now.

    I guess what I’m asking more here is, what do we do or how do we handle such instances now and for the future?

    K.

    #138403
    Alex
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Very difficult. You could ask too many questions, or require too many boxes to be ticked and put some people off.

    Is he vat registered? Not a criteria I know, but a bit of a clue regards size of trading.

    What about references from associates, customers or suppliers. (Bit of a DASA thing)

    Looks like a few more stipulations might need to be put in place to make it look like even we are taking the trouble to “vet” (albeit in a small way), the members of the repairs@. The charter goes a long way, but that is only as good as the honesty of the applicant. If they can see we are serious, we will then attract the serious candidates. Of course the ethic of us all is trust, but there are times, (maybe not in this case) where we have to be careful.

    Ken could send an e-mail or pm to Dented Porsche to see if he knows this guy.

    I’m away for a few days now, so something big will no doubt happen, always does.

    Alex

    #138404
    Alex
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    1. Taken from Yell.com

    Keith Fowler Domestic Appliance Repairs
    21, Fulmar Close , St. Mellons , Cardiff , South Glamorgan CF3 0DE
    Tel: 029 2079 8706
    Classification match only: Electrical Appliance Repairs/Spares

    2. Copied from Jeeves search engine. Didn’t put in the link as it was massive.

    Address: Fowler Keith
    21 Fulmar Cl
    Cardiff
    St. Mellons
    CF3 0DE

    Telephone: 029 2079 8706

    So he seems kosher, just not too good at telling everyone.

    Alex

    #138405
    kwatt
    Keymaster

    Yeah, I think what I’ll do is enable the trade access for the guy and put him on using that land number. It is of course possible that he just filled out that bit of the form incorrectly and it does all look sound beyond that.

    However I do think that we should perhaps think on this as a lesson learned and put measures in place to stop it should the need arise in the future. After all, we do only want good, solid repair companies using Repairs@.

    K.

    #138406
    Martin
    Participant

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Why is the AC Forum not in place anyway?

    #138407
    kwatt
    Keymaster

    The AC forum is not in place because there’s a problem with the permissions module within the administrative interface for phpBB at the moment. Trevor is on the case though and it’ll no doubt be resolved soon enough, but it is code-monkey stuff, not something that I’ll be able to resolve.

    Teh other reason is that we are about to be discussing, next week probably, a slight restructure to the forums to group all teh UKW stuff under one banner, introduce the AC forum and perhaps one other, but now may not be the time to start what would be in effect a Repairs@ members only forum.

    After that’s done we need to decide the format of the AC forum, i.e. can it be seen by everyone but only posted to be admin and the AC members, or do we open it up? Or do we really want to air our laundry in public as much of that could be argumentative and seen as a negative?

    We have to carefully consider the options as, in the end, the idea is to raise teh proffessionalism of the repairers and, more importantly to some extent, to make us all appear as proffessional as is humanly possible. We do not want to look like a bunch or arguing old ladies wagging our tongues, if you see what I mean.

    We also need to decide the future of the DASA forum sooner rather than later. My opinion is that it has run it’s course and obviously the traffic has moved on to the new DASA site, I therefore see little point in us hosting that anymore as it’s simply not used and is a waste of space.

    Basically we need to clean house a bit and get a little better organised.

    K.

    #138408
    Dave_Conway
    Participant

    kwatt wrote:We also need to decide the future of the DASA forum sooner rather than later. My opinion is that it has run it’s course and obviously the traffic has moved on to the new DASA site

    I agree, DASA now has it’s own forums, we should however offer the content be copied over should DASA want it.


    Dave.

    #138409
    admin
    Keymaster

    Re: In The Absence Of The AC Forum…

    Dave…

    I thought a posters “post” was his. Therefore Dasa are not the owners of the content, or are they?

    thoughts!


    Kevin

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