Members Charter

Some us have been working on this one on and off for a while now as there was an obvious call for it. The first of which was when I instigated the “Directories” and wanted repairers to fire their details in there, the critism was that there was no control, the only code of practice that existed was the DASA one which many, myself included, felt was unrealistic and not conducive to the real world.

So, with that in mind we set about the task of making our own charter up which was achievable for any business that was offering reasonable service and actually cared about their customers. But that had to be done without placing restrictions on the business as well to any degree that would not be expected as a matter of course. I think we’ve managed it.

You can view the charter from the URL below, it is not yet activated as a download to the general membership or public until I get a bit of feedback.

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/downloads/UKWhitegoodsMembersCharter.doc

Now, here’s the kicker…

What I want to do is this. On the end of that will be a page that the principal of the business signs, dates, states their position in the company and then that comes back to me or Dave either by post, fax or (preferably) electronically along with a copy of the liability insurance certificate and CORGI if applicable. That will be done on an annual basis.

Why?

Dead simple, we cannot police the members by going around banging on doors but we can do this for little or no cost and, once the initial excercise is over with it’s dead easy to keep it current. Plus any business willing to do this is certainly going to be trying to retain business!

It also means that for any contract work you do that all that information, which they all usually ask for repeatedly , is in the one place and easily accessible for them to get to and view.

This also offers a far greater level of trust to be put by the public in us and what we’re trying to accomplish here as well as contract clients as we’re being as open and honest as we can be. And, let’s face it, there’s nothing in the information that’s revealing a state secret!

But the most important aspects are that anyone not signing up would not be allowed to advertise on the site or be a part of a little project we’re working on to use UKW as a vehicle for getting calls off the site from the general public, I’ll reveal that one in Stafford. 😉

Comments and thoughts are welcome before I make this freely available and go live with the idea.

K.