Here’s a little news snippet that we somehow managed to miss, Smeg have apparently set up their own gas team to operate in the south of England to install and exchange gas products.
Now this is of interest to the service guys as, if Smeg has seen the need to roll their own to install the products we’d guess that they were struggling to find installer to such an extent as there was no other option. And, given the state of gas installation and servicing for cooking products, that wouldn’t be even a slight surprise.
Smeg has just opened its new eco-conscious headquarters in Abingdon, Oxfordshire as well as expansion of its logistics infrastructure and the announcement of a planned London flagship store and growth in sales. So, busy old time for Smeg in the UK and this may have prompted the need for the installation team or sealed the deal on the need for it.
It is reported that the fleet will allow Smeg to provide home delivery and installation of all its gas-based products, such as it’s popular range cookers.
Smeg said the new fleet of Smeg branded gas vans are now operational. The vans feature all the specialist tools needed for gas fitting and all Smeg engineers are Gas Safe accredited.
Once reaching full capacity, the team will be able to service nine to 10 orders per day, comprising ‘one stop shop’ home delivery and installation orders, plus gas exchanges in the south of England.
Smeg UK managing director Mike Giddings said that, “Providing a seamless customer experience is key to the Smeg philosophy. Being able to offer a fully integrated fitting service will allow us to be part of this customer experience from start to finish, which is something that makes us very proud.
“This has been an incredible year for Smeg UK, with the launch of key new product ranges such as our premium Dolce Stil Novo range and the partnership with Dolce and Gabbana earlier this summer. We are keen to push forward and capitalise on the fantastic new opportunities that are ahead of us.”
Now we’re not being negative here but, most service companies aim to do ten calls a day, per engineer!
For most of we lowly repairers getting anything less means losing money so a mere ten installs a day seems a bit on the low side, especially if the goods are already delivered to site. If it’s delivery and install in one then fair enough, that is probably okay. That said, we have no clue what the system is here at all as there’s not a lot of detail but heh, what do we know?
For us however what this may well be another indicator of is that Gas Safe is becoming a joke for the appliance industry.
The qualifications required and level of sheer cost just makes it financially stupid to even think about attaining it for most repair companies in the UK.
That is of course, if you can even get accepted to even get qualified as you need a body of work that repairers cannot provide as, they are not gas fitters.
And so we’ve seen a huge decline in repair companies that can repair or install gas products over the past number of years and we fully expect under the current conditions set by the Health and Safety Executive that this will continue and repairers to gas appliances will become harder and harder to get.
The HSE and Gas Safe, don’t seem to give a monkey.
We can’t help but think that was most likely a major reason for Smeg doing what they’ve done here. Simply that they couldn’t find people to do it so had no other options.
