D&G

Re: D&G

John,

I had this with a samsung customer who would not let the engineer in, when we arrived to a 1st call at 0825.
Told D&G we would not reattended customer, dragged this out for 2 months, Currys were involved as they sold the appliance. The call was 38 miles from my base in the Derbyshire Peak district. Despite everything D&G would not pay an extra call or the customer a wasted call fee.
After 2 months I did the call, no one would exchange the customers appliance as they had been in the wrong, D&G pleaded with me to do the call, so I did on the understanding I would never return to the customer again for D&G. Therese would not pay an extra call despite me pointing out that going twice through the fault of the customer was not in my contract or in the spirit of the contractual agreement between us. They expected me to lose money on the call and except it.
Booked an all day call for a Thursday and made sure the engineer went in the middle of the afternoon.

We eventually got customer care (samsung) on the phone who said if we’ed asked them they would have paid us an extra visit.

Try asking Samsung direct.

Kevin

Re: D&G

I take no prisoners on abort calls. I’ve had them with D&G, MFI Smeg & Service Force. I will NOT re-book unless we get a credit card payment over the phone from the offender for £28 + vat.

If D&G or whoever give me grief, I tell them that it costs me £26.95 to get an engineer to the door, if the customer isn’t paying me for this, are you?

We have an MFI one on the go, engineer goes to the call in the sticks, note on door, ” Cooker man, please phone …… and I will come home”. He phones and bloke says I will be there in about an hour. Engineer says I can’t wait that long, you need to phone the office to re-book, customer tells him to piss off, so he did. I am insisting on a new job number and confirmation that MFI will pay again.

We had a Beko customer that told an engineer who was on his doorstep to eff off, that was early in December, as he was going out. Eng did eff off, and this guy was without his cooker over christmas. I enjoyed my turkey.

I have never climbed down yet & I aint going to start now.

Re: D&G

To digress, on topic…

That “Judged Fairly” thread obviously hit a nerve as I got a call over it and, it wasn’t (or certainly didn’t start) that pleasantly at all.

Apart from being accused of telling everyone (on “your blog” which really annoyed me as it’s wrong) that Beko Service was moving to British Gas (which was factually incorrect and wound me up more) I then got lambasted for daring to post this in a “public” forum (again wrong).

But this was two days ago and I’ve been thinking about it.

Apart from the fact that I had documented proof of no response from DAG of no response, which had to be apologised for, no apology on the Beko thing.

I don’t mind being accused of things I actually do but to be accused of things I haven’t seems a tad rough.

That aside, the point on Beko was laboured and I can’t help but wonder what’s so sensitive?

K.

Re: D&G

Reply sent a few minutes ago regarding the new contract…

kwatt wrote:Hi Vicky,

I’m sure you’re sick of this already but I’ve just read through ours and have a few issues with it that I would like to clarify. Firstly though, thanks for the rate increase.

I’m also getting *LOADS* of people asking about it. A few people don’t want to post anything in the forums on it for fear of retribution, just so you know about it.

But I’ll go through the stuff for NWAR as I’m none too bothered about other people’s issues on this.

First thing is that we are in Scotland and some staff are contracted to take Scottish bank holidays, we do take the English ones as well and this is taken from their annual allowance but I have to (by contract) respect the holidays that have already been agreed with staff.

Can you clarify 4.2.5 please. So far as I was aware there was no method to invoice DAG electronically as we have asked to be able to email in invoices etc. in the past.

In the Services Schedule, point one, as above we have obligations to staff on holidays and also working hours and we only work until 3pm on a friday and have done for many years. I cannot alter this without a substantial cost impact.

Point three, can you clarify what it actually is that this clause relates to in more detail?

Point four, this is not always possible due to the geographic area that we cover. Attached is a general guide to our postcode areas with normal anticipated lead times however we are looking at dropping FK and ML codes completely as, with the rising cost of fuel, they are becoming no longer viable to cover. This may also affect other low population density areas as they are uneconomic to cover with the low rates in the industry generally.

Point five, due to the above it is very unlikely that we would be able to comply with this stipulation as per the contract.

Point seven, we update customers as best we can with the information that we get however our systems have no way to flag up calling a customer for no reason. That would make this incredibly hard to comply with per the contract.

Pointy sixteen, as I have discussed in the past on several occasions, this is at best impractical and more often simply not possible. Field engineers do not have the information on hand to be able to do this in real time as they would require a very good internet connection to look up and then price the job which, in our geography, is mostly not possible outside of the city and major town centres as it is a largely rural area. Asides which the cost of moving that amount of data remotely could prove prohibitive.

On the last schedule point 1.5, with the reduction of spares markup in view of increasing costs (fuel costs especially) I do not feel it fair that we are burdened with offering a warranty that extends far beyond that which we receive from suppliers and manufacturers. In other words, the margin does not negate the potential risk as it would be required to cover not only the cost of the spares but also of the labour. Whilst I appreciate that instances of warranty calls is not especially high, they can be very expensive especially in relation to electronic controllers etc.

This is even more of an issue with the spread of products which has become very much more diverse over the years coupled with a seemingly dramatic drop in workload in recent times.

I know these are minor points in the grand scheme of things but, what I don’t want to do is sign a contract without clearly stating that there are points in it that we find difficult or not possible to comply with. I feel it better to make you guys fully aware of where I am on this and what things could cause a problem and that, in the current form, it is difficult to sign up for.

Regards

Kenneth Watt

See what they say but, some of it is just stupid.

K.

Re: D&G

And, there’s one of the things I’ve been fighting since i started this bloody site!

Bully boy tactics.

Seems to me that this “contract” is the usual take it or leave it affair. It’s not a negotiation at all or even in the spirit of working with the agents, it’s a “you’ll do as we say” document and I don’t much care for that.

But I might have primed the latest from Whirl4 with a bit of a wind up. As in, I might have explained the impact if you’re playing it by the book.

That aside, if we source spares smarter then that’s our concern not DAGs. It’s up to us to maximise the profitability of any work we do and I don’t think that’s dishonest at all, just smart. Plus, we don’t win them all.

I said to David this evening, if they want to pay me £50 a call then they can have a zero spares mark up and source it all themselves, just send me the bits and we’ll go fit them. Saves me a shitload of hassle and means I don’t have to warranty the parts either.

But, the double visits are on the increase making DAG, even with the fast payments, less and less attractive. I don’t think it would take too much to tip a few people into telling them to stuff off especially where the volumes are low.

K.

Re: D&G

We in Service Force land have had this pushed upon us for some time now.

OK on Lux goods as the engineers have lap-tops, but they still have to phone the office for all prices as there are so many variations and typical of an engineer will not add sundries etc. Also they don’t know the charges in regards to whether gas, a range cooker etc.

With obscure makes, much about the same thing, they phone the office, get the prices etc & then call D&G with the breakdown of cost.

PIA but we live with it.

Alex