British Gas…time to tell all

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

Martin wrote:not a scooby doo how to fix it, no spare on his van, calls back 4 weeks later with the wrong part….for fuck sake 👿

Martin
cont. and every week for the next 4 weeks until we get called out then takes 2 visits to sort because everywire has been pulled off and put back in the wrong place, and then we gat a claim from the punter for flood,flooring,cabinet damage or loss of earnings ?

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

Repair & Care, appeared from nowhere and sold out to BG.

Shortly after they asked me to do some work, I told them to fook off basically as we had enough and I didn’t need or want the grief across multiple brands. Plus they just passed the shite.

So I gave them Mike’s number in Ayr, stupid Kiwi will have anything, he’s even taken on NESN and Walter’s number. 😆

Needless to say the stuid Kiwi bought vans and allsorts to do it then got fucked and Walter, well he prolly fucked it up anyway and lost it, never did hear.

It will fail I’m sure but they have invested so much into it that they just cannot u-turn on it for now, just like Comet although there will be a day of reckoning sooner or later.

You see it always happens when you do multi brand work in these sorts of volumes, you just can’t get the first fix rate to sustain it and the engineers don’t ge the experience on the product. Apart from which you just cannot carry the stock required in a 3.5 tonner let alone a Berlingo! When you branch into multi-brand it’s fine so long as you’re small and can spend hte time, like Chris and Martin, but employees just don’t give a fuck, they order the motor and module and worry about it another day especially if they have thirteen calls on and one’s a Zanussi washer dryer rear half change.

Can you blame them? It’s no ineptitude or even laziness, it’s reality.

K.

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

If someone starts it outside of us, i.e. the trade, Martin then fine, but I don’t think that we should be seen to do so. It’s nothing to do with upsetting BG, in fact I’d like to ream them but…

For a start it’d look like sour grapes since they took a load of work off the independents and beyond that it could be construed as us being inflamatory. At some point I’m quite sure that some of the public will pick up on it and post the gripes on here, at which point it becomes open season on BG in public. Ideally there would be a few posts on it that kicked it off so we’re only commenting on “what we know of BG” in relation to the complaint.

Just remember that it doesn’t take too long for Google to index stuff and BG’s name has appeared on a few occasions now. 😉

K.

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

I keep getting letters from British Gas asking for references for engineers they have poached from me so I faxed them a letter.

———————————————————————————
For the attention of Jackie Hulmes, British Gas HR Dept.

I have today received a request for a reference from you for an ex-employee of mine who now works for British Gas.

I hope you will forgive me for not send this reference back as this will be the 5th engineer you have poached from me in the last year with a 6th coming your way next month.

I have a small company in the midlands employing 10 engineers in total and it seems as if I am employing non trained or partially trained personnel and spending 1 year to 18 months training them for their new career in British Gas.

I have also noticed that when an engineer leaves me for British Gas that some of my remaining engineers get a call from your management trying to encourage them to join you.

So can you please make a note not to send me anymore more reference forms to fill in as you can guess where they are going to end up.

Regards,

John McKenzie

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

Just so you know, there is at least one representative of BG on the site who have access to the trade forums 😉

Dave.

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

This is indeed a serious problem, and it bothers me. The likes of our esteemed work providers fail to grasp the point that we cannot afford to get near the wages being offered by the big boys. Whether this is a secret agenda by Brit Gas I don’t know, but if they pull away all our staff, that in turn undermines us and they will pick up the pieces.

The reason for this diatribe is; one of the members of this site, “fly_on_the_wall” approached me for a job after I posted I was looking for an engineer. He lived over the border in an area I did not cover for Service Force, so I interviewed him and he seemed experienced as he had worked 3 years Gias & 3 years Euronics AEG agent.

As he resided out of my area I was a bit reluctant, but I got wind of the news that the engineer my Service Force neighbour that worked that area handed in his notice. I spoke to MR. Fly on the Wall and advised him if I can capture his home patch; we were in business. He was enthusiastic. So, after a few phone calls and meetings pouring over maps, I got the area and took this guy on. On top of that I spoke to Dave Parker & we were talking about another 10 postcodes.

Taking this bloke on meant, kitted out van, meters, special tools, phone with blue tooth, uniform, a bit of Lux training. We even put him with the other guys individually for a week to get to know the paperwork trail. So he was up & running for 1 week then Christmas. He dropped the bombshell as soon as he came back after the holiday that he was contacted by Brit Gas several times over the Xmas period and he was off. A mate of his worked for BG and passed on his phone number. Then comes the kicker, this bloody mate then handed in his notice with BG as he was pissed off with the running around.

There was a good side, which is the reason I’ve not made this public. Mr Fly on the Wall was a total disaster. For every 3 machines he repaired, 4 came back as a recall. He kept “losing” stock, failed to get serial numbers or insurance details, sometimes failed to collect the money. All in all glad to see the back of the tosser. But it has left me with a larger area, including a city and less coverage. The result of that is; chargeable customers are voting with their feet and cannot wait a week for us to call.

The moral of the story is, bloody Brit Gas is still screwing me 3 years after they pulled the plug.

A well pissed off Alex

See you at the meeting

Re: British Gas…time to tell all

Martin wrote:And Dented Porsche may be our man ‘on the inside’ :rotl:

Martin

Not if I can help it.

In this room only, I have set him up to talk to Steve Harrison the service Force agent from West Wales who has recently gained Swansea from the defunct Cardiff operation that was run by TR services of Bristol.

The reason I prefer to keep it in here is because if you read his post, Dented Porsche is about to leave a small family business, a bit like some of us; and I don’t want to make it look like UKW had a part in it. After all we don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as B/Gas.

If this works, it will be a little payback for stealing one from me. I’m not looking at using D.P. as a pawn, I’m thinking of his interests as well, and Steve Harrison is a decent guy.

If there is likely to be a guy on the inside, I asked “fly_on_the_wall” to keep this forum updated, particularly on the B.G. front. I think he is nieve enough to do so as well.

Still pissed off though.

Alex