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Had a guy from Indesit visit today, very interesting.
They reckon that they have 270 idiots… sorry, franchises, up and running across the UK and Ireland.
He wasn’t too happy though as he wanted to be able to post adverts for franchise engineers and for existing sole traders to take on extra work from them. He wasn’t happy because I more or less (literally) told him to form a sentence from the words off, right and f**k.
I reminded him that Indesit had sh*t on agents big time not so long ago and that one of those was a close colleague, Sean.
Then they tell us to feck off when we want technical but, if you sign up to the terms that they have you can have it… big whoop!
I told him that their business plan was complete bollocks, literally. Mostly because that’s the kindest description that I could give it, from top to bottom.
Dropped a few bombshells on him too along the way that obviously shook him up a bit, he wasn’t prepared for someone that was methinks.
And, after two hours of trying to pitch me and sell me the idea that money could be made doing calls for £17.50 he was still hopeful!!!
Even though I told him that 30 calls a week at that rate would lose me at least £30K per year.
They really aren’t living in the real world and the plans that they present are at best extremely misleading as well as not taking into account a ton of costs and his answer to that was, well it’s additional work the guys already have to pay all the rest anyway!
That was the clincher. There’s no way would I endorse the franchise thing, additional work or pretty much anything else.
Parted on good terms though as he got it I think/hope.
K.
Re: The Man From Indesit
It now looks like they are either ready to sh1t on their own franchisees to make their own KPI’S look better or their own franchisees have finally discovered that you can’t run a business on £17.50 a call.
Perhaps you ought to let them advertise Ken and then let the lads tear them a new a$$hole in the forums with the joke payments and conditions.
At least their franchisees will know why they will be getting even less work than they are now, if there is anyone daft enough to take the work on that is.
Sean
Re: The Man From Indesit
Na, sod that because I’ve deleted ads from BG and others.
If you let one you have to let them all have a free reign and I don’t much fancy the idea of them all trying to poach engineers from the indies.
I got a chuckle when he slagged off BG when I told him that as he said that the jobs there weren’t very good. I couldn’t help but think, “Yes mass’a, old garnpappy got paid more pickin’ cotton back in the day…”
And they say slavery is outlawed in the EU but reading the T&Cs for that lot I’m really not so sure!
At any rate, Indesit engineers aren’t exactly cock a hoop either.
K.
Re: The Man From Indesit
Well it was 11 years ago I binned Merloni at £26 per call, and I was losing £2.10 a call.
The national service manager at the time (Neil Taplin) told me I was crazy in terminating. As they were 40{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of my workload, I could see his point to a degree, but they were 28{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of my income so quite simply, the figures didn’t stack up.
Within a year of my termination, the whole strategy of using agents evaporated with the amalgamation of the Hotpoint side of the operation. So I pre-empted their final solution.
Upshot of it all is, despite Merloni telling me I have made the biggest commercial mistake of my life and that my business would fall on its sword within a year, quite the opposite happened.
I suspect this visitor you have had the pleasure of the company of is straight out of university, or at least come from a totally different background.
Ken, get your kettle on, next visit will be from Candy I suspect.
Alex (In clover, or happy as a pig in sh*t)
Re: The Man From Indesit
Believe it or not the guy that visited has been with them for 22 years.
I suspect not that long in management or, well and truly brainwashed with the company doctrine as he genuinely seemed to believe what he was peddling.
My impression is that Indesit think that we should all fall over ourselves to grab a slice of the action and make money from all this “add-on” work that comes with no cost attached. It wasn’t till I pointed out that, regardless of the removal of all these costs on a spreadsheet, that they did still exist and had to be accounted for.
I told him that if his franchises were operating at a loss for any extended time and could not be shown to be in profit that they would be trading illegally as insolvent businesses, he wasn’t aware that was illegal.
I elected not to help them any further and let them know that under EU Directive that they were more than probably illegal as over 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the franchise’s income and work was from one source and, therefore, they require to be given the same rights as employees. I’ll allow them to find that out the hard way.
He didn’t seem best pleased when I told him that if Currys decided to pull their own service work in house that 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or more of all their work would disappear making a nonsense of his numbers.
Also not too enamoured when I pointed out that if the cover+1 deals fell apart that the whole financial model that they and others have for service crumble to ashes.
Then I asked him what guarantees on workload and income investing in a franchise would offer. I suspect you know but the answer was, none at all.
To which I said that, if I was going to invest a large sum like that I would want guaranteed that I would see a return on it one way or another, especially in light of all the things that could go sideways or it simply wasn’t worth it. Along the way pointing out that all the risk was on the franchisee and sod all risk to Indesit so why would anyone that wasn’t clinically insane even look any further?
I think I told him (can’t recall) that the whole affair had more holes than a cheap Swiss cheese.
I did tell him point blank that the franchise thing wouldn’t last, it would fall apart sooner or later. Which it will as it is desperately flawed from the ground up.
K.
Re: The Man From Indesit
If you really want a chuckle here’s a copy of the pitch that’s being made to the engineers…
http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/downloads … crobat.pdf
K.
Re: The Man From Indesit
A chuckle…. I nearly choked reading that but look on the bright side, you get paid and extra £10 for gas work and £16 for regasses and only have to pay £7.5K for the stock.
Who would be stupid enough to take this up??
If this was posted in the trade forums I would expect it to become the new longest thread very quickly.
JohnRe: The Man From Indesit
It’s like a number of things that come my way, I can’t publish it without compromising the source.
I have to say though, I was stunned at how bad it was.
K.
Re: The Man From Indesit
Found it!
This can invalidate a lot of these so-called franchises as well as some agencies depending on how HMRC want to look at it…
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employment-status/index.htm
K.
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