- This topic has 2 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I started to write up an article or, it may have been a presentation, a couple of years back that I must try to dig up that basically explored what would happen if independent service agents started to disappear to the extent that it was not possible to form a UK wide network of repairers.
Now, before you think the unthinkable actually think about it. 😉
I would like comments but, read the above sentence before you respond.
One of the things that’d happen, to throw you all a bone or two, is that in especially outlying areas the cost to deliver service would either go through the roof or it just wouldn’t be possible to do it. The third option is of course that you just exchange the product… but as I know all too well, that often isn’t the cure and can lead to further problems. Meanwhile the cost spirals out of control.
Another one is that, as you have to rely on one business in a particular area, what happens if they go bust, lose engineers, go sick or whatever else can befall them?
What happens if you have to pass work back to an appointed agent who you’ve already had a run-in with? It’s a small world, things like that tend to happen in life. Do you do the work, do you not, do you just charge a lot more?
I think I’ll try to dig what I wrote up and do a little presentation on this with the costs thing at the meeting in September as it’s quite an interesting discussion and one that repairers should perhaps be aware of to better consider their position both now and in the future.
Where it’s actually a lot more interesting as a discussion is where you look at agency work, as in pukka, 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}, manufacturer work as opposed to work on behalf of a retailer or insurer under an extended warranty. Then you start getting into looking at volumes and all sorts of stuff and, as I have said for many years, this “trade” is totally the wrong way around and it’s gotten there by having a glut of people that would do stuff on the cheap.
There’s not a glut now.
K.
Re: What Would Happen If…
Have you talked to the people who control the industry and included their take on the future, after all they are the ones reducing the rates and forcing us little agents into reducing costs or going bust.
I ask this because I doubt anybody on UKW would argue your wrong, me included, which is why I’m registered with you for Amica work, you pay more and the more you pass me the less I would do for the others.
Reading between the lines on the D&G thread and the ridicule Lee thread I feel you believe I support doin the cheap calls, I don’t, which is why I’m pushing Amica/ISE sales info to all those that listen.
Its not eay though, one agent I use with over several hundred rental properties gets appliances from Howden’s at around £105 a unit, he buys around 4-5 appliances a week from them, I do around 15 calls a week, as he buys so cheap, so the repair costs have to be lower, I won the contract a yr ago as the agent he used was charging £65.00 to unblock pumps, this was not viable, so I under cut him and got the work, lots of it actually.
Its bloody hard though with retail prices, the crisis and people attitude.
I’d love it if UKW got enough support so that our interests could be put in large enough volumes to actually take notice, my opinion though comes from years of working close to management above the service dept’s, so I’m aware how much it would take for notice to be taken, probably why I accept cheap call charges for a percentage of my work, no matter how proud I may be I still don’t have enough weight to dictate, the door will simple get closed.
😥
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.