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I posted a response to this editorial but think it might get a better airing on here:
Quote kwatt “Our advice is to ask where the applince was made, what is the expected lifespan and what the service response times are. I should think that many retailers will struggle to answer those simple questions. But when you buy a new car or most other major items, do you not research just exactly what it is you’re buying?”
Quote mikem “Interesting this should be posted as I was having a conversation with another UKW member about it just hours before.
The comment “ask where the applince was made” is one that interests me. Is there a league table of the best and worst countries to buy domestic appliances from.
Ok a league table is asking a bit much, how about a traffice light sceanrio:
Green: No issue in buying from this Country
Amber: Would buy with reservation.
Red: No way.
If the results come back as I think then I”ll tell you an interesting little story.”
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
Well, the point that was being made is to try to get consumers to actually ask about what they’re buying rather than just assuming, as they do, that Hotpoint or Hoover are a UK machine. Beko is German was another I’ve heard as it sounds German. Low end Bosch machines are actually Balay, made in Spain. Loads of Whirlpool (now I think) and soon Merloni will be produced in Russia. Haier and it’s many guises. 😕
In fact there’s very little that comes from where the customer expects it to come from, it’s all assumption on their part. Of course the manufacturers don’t exactly want to advertise that they buy in products from some sweatshop in the Xing Bling Province of the People’s Repblic taking advantage of the fact that Health and Safety are virtually non-existant, there’s no minimum wage and much of the legislation that they would face in an EU state is removed. Or that they use some other low-labour rate country to knock out the product as it would devalue it in the eyes of the customer and there is a growing breed of consumers out there that are purchasing or not based on this. Just look at what the sweatshops did for Nike.
K.
Oh and BTW, I’ve been banging on about this for a long, long time now. Cheaper appliances are being predicted in the short term due to increased buying from China and the Asian sub continent, just look back in the news a few months as there’s loads of stuff in there about it. Essentially customers think that the service levels on these products should remain as they are for more expensive European products but the repairer is generally being paid relative to the price of the product in many cases as that funding is based on a percentage of spares.
Which is fine and dandy IF the failure rate remains controlled, but on Haier product in Portugal the failure rate quoted to me was 55{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of product failed in first year. Not good odds for us or the customer and, in addition to that, much of it was repeat visits which casts doubt on our abilities to repair it as well as on the product brand itself.
Don’t believe me, look at Servis UK and, IMO, that was a better quality of rubbish than some of the Far Eastern rip offs.
The reason it got up my nose was finding out that three brands that I cover for repair are to buy in Haier as well as one we’re already doing. Get ready for the Chinese only this time it’s not a take away, it’s throw away!
K.
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
Chinese throw away…….its good that.
Whilst we’re at it, why not read your service agreements carefully to see what level of guarantee you(the repairer) have to put against the repetative fault, thats down to poor quality of material. Also, how can we (the repairers) guarantee that the appliance won’t breakdown again within a month.What we should do as a service to all our members is……
Buy one of these, pull it apart and point out the good and bad bits for all of us repairers to see. Or perhaps for subscribers to see and use the funds to make the purchase….
Sorry digressing…….
but cheap is bad, for us IMO.
Kevin
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
Taking Kevin’s points one stage further:
Every time we call back to a product that has an endemic fault the Makers are not aware fully of the quality issues as we are guaranteeing the repair; not submitting paperwork on every occasion as there is no value in £/p to be put on the invoice. If they don’t see all the reported calls, they can effectively bury their heads in the sand and pretend they were not fully informed.
If we fit a spare part, then of course an invoice is raised; but why should they care as there is no labour fee and we are subsidising their goods in effect.
A dour note for what is supposed to be a time of good tidings & joy.
Alex
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
Alex wrote:A dour note for what is supposed to be a time of good tidings & joy.
Oops. 🙂
TBH I went to a Haier in disguise the other day and it’s not that bad to work on, yes it’s cheap and nasty and boy does it show, yes it’s a pain to get into anything as you have to drop the bottom panel off, no the screws don’t line back up right and yes, it failed again with something unrelated to the reason I was there. Oh and to test it you have to screw it all back together, only to take it all apart again if you find something wrong, brilliant!
Oh hang on, maybe they are that bad! 😆
But in fairness the lady admitted to opening the door mid cycle to retrive the odd knife or whatever, so the overflow problem thing looks to be correct and that causes the base to fill with water. Okay so there seems to be more leaks on some of these that the Titanic has, but that’s another tale. But the “modification” is a classic, an absolute peach. You raise one of the little grey overflow pipes by 25mm on the left and then, instead of the base flooding, the water runs out the front! So you get either the complaint that it blows up or it leaks… a stunning bit of Chinese ingenuity that is.
I would also like to know why, if as mooted, these things are coming off the line for £40 or less, it’s costing me £80 odd for a recirc pump? 😕
Then people wonder why I’m not impressed with these products.
K.
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
This trend certainly isn’t country or continent specific mikem although I agree with your sentiments regarding customer awareness.
Cheap products in the market place are one thing and one that is of no help to either us, the repairer or the consumer in the long term, as has been mentioned.
What I personally find abhorent is consumers/customers (whichever term you prefer) being led in to a false sense of “quality” by a brand name which has been purchased on the cheap and used as a sales tool, or more recently “household” brand names buying very low quality products and rebadging them. Both of the above are hand in hand to a certain extent.
MFI purchase HAIER dishwashers at around £30 a throw and sell them for over £300 !! This is of course not their whole range as many of the products sold with MFI kitchens are of a good quality, it’s just an example.
CDA were also thinking along the same lines I believe until they asked a few peolpe about reliability 😉
They of course are not the only culprits, B&Q do exactly the same as do many of the larger kitchen companies.
The main theme of this thread needs to be customer awareness, manufacturers have factories in many countries these days, you can’t hold the factory and/or the country to ransom.
Dave.
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
I find this incredibly interesting.
Why would a retailer or manufacturer want to sell a product cheaper? All it does is lower margin in the vain hope that volume will increase, but you’re trading in a stagnant market. I just don’t understand the logic.
Surely the sensible thing to do is to push the prices up and therefore, by default, the margin on the product. Or is that just too much common sense?
Competing solely on price is a falicy IMO arrived at by bean counters that take littte of no notice of consumers or consumer retention in the long term and the whitegoods industry is a long term industry. It is often cited as moving at glacial pace in terms of product advancement as it takes so long to change people’s views and get new features into the home due to an extended replacement cycle.
The danger for the bigger retailers and brand names is that consumers are now smarter and more informed than ever they have been, it’s going to be tough pulling the wool over their eyes for much longer as many are now too are now looking at things on a global scale. It is happening in other industries, it’s only a question of time before this one catches up with the rest of the pack. And there’s always the new kids on the block that will offer the consumer something a bit different and back it up with a warranty to match.
If you ask me, the price war is over. We all lost, let’s lick out wounds and move on.
K.
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
Dave_Conway wrote:This trend certainly isn’t country or continent specific mikem although I agree with your sentiments regarding customer awareness.
Thanks, thats what I was getting at, I have worked in both environments and for those who are interested I will share with you what I know about it.
I stress that what you will read below is based on a European manufacturer producing for the European market.
From the outset of this thread we have been talking about two different scenarios. I agree that Chinese or Indian machines intended for their own domestic markets have no place in Europe. The local price of these machines reflects the cost of living in the area and also the level of after sales service. (For example I was in India late last year and saw a fridge being taken into the repair “shack” on the back of a cart pulled by a camel. Nuff said!)
BUT
Imagine if you will a major European domestic appliance manufacturer (not saying who) and compare their operations in Western Europe and say China.
Take Western Europe first: Due to price pressure in the market place and a need for increased flexibility, the state of the art production units have been dismantled and replaced by manual labour. The labour however is generally the cheapest available and is predominantly unskilled immigrants and students working for minimum wage. These workers will be new arrivals in the country, speak very little of the local language and are often working all the hours available to support an extended family or subsidise their schooling.
The Chinese factory is purpose built with little compromise on space and layout. Again using manual labour but in this case the employee considers his job to be prestigious and by comparison well paid. In short he takes pride in his work and is proud to be associated with the company. Due to the location of the factory he will live rent free on-site in a dormitory (normal practice in Asia), enjoy medical facilities and have the use of sports and social facilities at the factory, again sending money home to support an extended family. As the labour is comparitively cheap there will be almost 1 quality inspector per 2 operatives, in short quality is over-killed.
While we are at it I’m glad the Nike sweatshop episode was mentioned, many people are unaware how it has greatly improved life for the local workforce. These days nearly all manufacturers supplying product into western countries from Asia will have some form of code of conduct dealing with Social Compliance. This legislates for: Working conditions and hours, living conditions, outlawing the use of underage or prison labour, medical cover etc., not only for the factory concerned but also its component suppliers.
Now looking at these two factories, who produces a better product?
Right now, on the whole there isn’t much in it but the fact that a product carries a “made in China” sticker on it doesn’t necessarily mean it is of inferior quality.As for the price war being over I reckon theres more to come (Zanussi washer £179??)
Mike.
Re: re: CHEAPER AND CHEAPER
mikem wrote:Now looking at these two factories, who produces a better product?
Right now, on the whole there isn’t much in it but the fact that a product carries a “made in China” sticker on it doesn’t necessarily mean it is of inferior quality.As for the price war being over I reckon theres more to come (Zanussi washer £179??)
Ah, but you forget to mention that whilst there are policies in place that are supposed to stop the exploitation of the workforce, the use of child labour, dangerous practice etc. that it does in fact still go on in many industries throughout the Asian continent and sub continent as well as most of the Asiatic islands. Quite simply there seems to be, shall we say, at best a rather relaxed enforcement by the local authorities. That said I would agree that at least they have some policies in place.
I would contend however that they are there primarily to allow certain corporate figures to sleep at night without worrying about a member of the press banging on their door in the morning. 😉
It also seems not to apply to the smaller third party local suppliers from what I hear, but I’d love to go out there and see for myself. Same with Mexico, the third world… with tacos. 😕
As to the best production lines, well it was Europe but Asia has quickly constructed newer, faster, better lines, I could bore you with a history of European manufacturing and why the Japanese, Italians and Germans didn’t win the last major conflict but went onto win the economic battle but the basics are that we bombed the sh1t out them then paid to rebuild their factories andinfrastructure so that they could in turn, produce better goods faster than we could. Good plan, I think not.
Now we see the same thing happening again, only this time it’s the Asians that have won the war and are pumping out goods as cheaply as they can, with the huge advantage on labour costs but a disadvantage on getting them to the consumer. But worse still, they copy the Western manufacturers, not seeing that the Western boys have lost their way in this industry. Fine on brown where the leading edge technology is easy to see and they’ve destroyed optical disc already, they’ll destroy LCD just directly as LG/Samsung fire up plants as if there was no tomorrow. But again a lot of people miss many of the points of merit to brown over white in such circumstances.
So anyway, they churn out goods as cheaply as they can with poor quality design and components, just as the Europeans are doing so they can compete. How they screw it together is irrelevant really, it’s still crap. Yes, I know that they offer different quality levels, three from Haier I believe, but everyone wants the cheapest so they can play the price war game.
The thing is that in a price war, no-one wins. Except the customer to an extent and even that’s debateable.
K.
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