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There have been a few questions about what’s going on with ISE, not as many as I expected, but a few.
In order to try to clarify what is going on presently I need to tell the story so that you can understand where we are and how things got to where we find ourselves now.
ISE was bimbling along quite nicely, not exactly making money but, it did okay until 2012.
I’ll give you the (very) condensed version of what’s gone on since then. Much to quell rumour and heresy as much as anything as, this is from the horse’s mouth as it were, not a third hand speculative bunch of unicorn poo.
In 2011/12 the whole Whitbread/Graffters thing haunted us, the effect of it was deep and put a hole in ISE. That year also John left, another hammer blow in many ways but, with the downturn in turnover it was the right choice.
At that time Gorenje bought Asko Sweden.
Toward the end of 2012 I got ill. I had some virus thing (still unidentified) that took me out for the best part of six months or more and, in that time we learned that the production was to move from its traditional home in Sweden to Slovenia.
It was a fact. It was happening. No choice.
Production would be closed from the end of January 2013 for three months. Turned out it was a bit more than that but, not really relevant.
January 2013 Which? gave the Eco a glowing-ish review and the sales flipped on their head from being primarily W256 to W288. We didn’t have the stock or, the stock on order to be able to supply the demand.
Tried to alter that but it was not possible.
We ran out of W288 and needed more but hadn’t sold through the stock of W256 that we had on stock. So, not enough money to replenish it.
Asko (now I call them Gorasko) said that if we paid what was outstanding they’d supply but that now credit was removed and so we’d have to pay up front to get stock. Of course they did the dirty and told us this after we’d paid up, changed the deal after the fact basically. This didn’t just cause an upset, it completely altered the business model at a fundamental level, essentially turning it completely upside down and to compensate would have required an immense investment that we simply did not and, do not, have.
Aside which it broke trust and these events tainted all that was to follow.
This was July of 2013.
Much to-ing and fro-ing later they agreed to supply one container with a partial up-front payment and that was done.
It was at this point that I/we sussed or rather, begrudgingly accepted, that this was not a sustainable model. The bottom line being that, the bottom line wasn’t good enough as ISE was not profitable and, without a massive price hike, wouldn’t be.
More debate and not a lot of info from Gorasko which dragged on and on.
Then in July/August time this year, Gorenje decided that they’d also pull the credit on spares as well (without notice, again), even knowing the ongoing issues.
With hindsight we should have probably closed the doors on ISE in July last year but, we didn’t. We carried on in the hope that a solution could be found, a compromise made using the cash that was in the business.
Alas it wasn’t to be.
Over one year later, from the initial problem of funding ISE from what was there, everything that was there as well a a whole heap that wasn’t there and had to be funded from other sources I finally called a halt to it. You can only haemorrhage cash for so long before you get the message that it cannot be sustained.
Were there mistakes made by ISE, probably but none that I can see you could avoid or make any better in that, you’d arrive at a different outcome.
Before you offer your own critique however please stop to think that, unless you have something like £100-200K to put it right and are willing to put that money where your mouth is, your opinion may not carry a lot of weight with me.
Likewise, if you reckon you can do better then do so or I’ll even sell you ISE lock stock and barrel if you like to give you a headstart. There is a chance ISE will find a new owner but, I cannot say anything about that for now as this is an ongoing process.
Let me say that ISE isn’t the money machine that many appear to think it is, quite the reverse it’s cost me a damned small fortune to try to give the engineers ISE and all it entailed. So far I know it’s cost me in excess of £70K in the past three years but I reckon it’s likely closer to twice that.
With heavy heart in all of this I had to make two people redundant the other week, a part of the job I utterly despise but sadly required. Others had to be moved into different roles. Hence the phones shut down as there are no people available to do that now.
Due to that ISE will move to email support only for the interim until a new owner is found or whatever will happen, happens. We will endeavour to support the products out there as best possible but it will be restricted for obvious reasons.
New service calls will, I am afraid, have to be suspended for the time being until new ownership in sorted out but, I would not expect that to happen before the New Year now given the time of year and trying to organise all of that.
ISE is a wholly separate business, in part for this reason, so it does not affect anything else at all, it is completely limited to ISE by design. To me, it was a hobby and no more than that to the extent that I have never drawn from ISE (other that £50 one time) so it’s not of any huge practical importance to me personally really.
There is of course more to this story and this is, believe it or not, the very, very condensed version as I’ve skipped over loads of contributory factors but this is the pertinent stuff an where it’s at now.
I know this isn’t good news and I am sorry but there’s really not much I can do about it and, it wasn’t for the lack of trying.
K.
Re: News
Sad to read all this and appreciate how stressful it must be.
I do have a job that needs to be raised on an ise10 I sold in 2009, you say new jobs can’t be raised. Can you explain this please.
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Yes, very simple really, there’s no funds to pay you for doing it.
And, there may also be no spares availability depending on what may be required.
K.
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I thought pre whatever were covered by an insurance and post whatever by a reserve fund / pot?
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Yes, that is what has been used to fund service calls etc of the past year or so as was intended from the outset with that.
Also do keep in mind that sales fell off a cliff last year so, in reality, it only had little over a year or so to build up. Hence much has had to be funded out my pocket and the reality is, I cannot by any means afford to continue doing that.
K.
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It may well be but there’s no staff or process currently to administrate it and, even after that, you still have the spares issue depending on what, if anything, is needed.
Hence, until someone takes it on if that’s possible we’re kinda stuck.
K.
Re: News
Very sorry to here about this Ken and such a shame after all the time and effort you’ve put into this.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HDRe: News
When you say ‘it may well be ‘ I assume you mean yes it is insured?
So ISE paid the insurance company an amount to insure the machine for the 10 years.
So if I contact the insurance company they surely must sort it out?
If not then… It falls back to me as the retailer?
So therefore if I can’t fix it or get spares I have to give the customer a new machine?
Maybe you could kindly let us retailers / engineers know exactly where we stand?
Thanks.Re: News
TBH I don’t know as I don’t deal with the day to day minutia of that stuff or admin of ISE, in fact, I have virtually nothing to do with it so it’s not that I don’t want to give you definitive answers, it is a case of, I cannot do so as I do not know.
The staff that would administer this are no longer there other than David who is re-tasked at the moment due to other events, nothing to do with this. Quite how up to speed he is on I don’t really know.
You can try to contact that insurer but, if you have as much luck as we did with the much publicised events of a few years back, best of luck to you. Some customers have tried as well and none have gotten anywhere. Essentially, massive big company and this is not worth the bother to them or, that’s what I got from it all.
Obviously however you’ve not been reading up the consumer law stuff, which as a trader, I’d have said knowing the basics was a prerequisite to trade.
But, no you are not liable to give the customer a new machine at all. That’s what every single one will try for but, it ain’t happening unless you don’t know what you’re doing and let them get away with it. Given that also as a retailer I have more at stake than any of you I need to know this stuff off by heart, chapter and verse, luckily I saw fit to research most of this years ago.
Some light reading for you…
http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buyi … -help.html
A number of articles there tell you what your responsibilities are, what you can and cannot do and what the customer is actually entitled to. Written by me, checked by Jackal for the most part, scrutinised by what was the OFT among others to boot.
The only thing missing there, that I have yet to research fully, is that if you sold to a business then the buyers rights under the SoGA are different, diminished in effect. One of the reasons I was always very hard on that.
I would suggest a bit of study. Knowing these basics can save you loads of hassle as well as a heap of cash.
K.
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Hi Ken,
Firstly thanks for giving us the heads-up on this most unfortunate set of events and believe me when I say I feel for your situation. For me ISE was a great concept and one that found resonance with many customers. I would like to step back to when ISE was first drawn to our attention and we became involved with ISE.
My Initial concerns with ISE was that of warranties and how they would operate, we were advised by both Kevin, yourself and later John that in the event of an agent ceasing to trade that ISE would pick up the warranty claims and assign the next adjacent ISE agent to remedy the claim, in the event that ISE ceased trading then the whole scheme was backed and supported by a insurance the three pronged approach that the customers could have confidence with.
All of our sales were based on this warranty scheme to give peace of mind to both the customers and the agents most who are small businesses.
I think that from reading through what you have said that basically ISE are not accepting any warranty claims and that spares are questionable and that the insurance backing is now not in place, have I got this right ????If so, this creates a substantial set of issues for us as agents as you are aware and as yet I am not awareif we as a retailer are liable for the issues that will follow and I like others will need clarification on where we stand.
I would also have thought that ISE would have contacted all its agents to firstly let them know what was coming as opposed to finding out by discovering that ISE were unreachable by telephone and that emails have gone without being answered. This is not a criticism of you in anyway Ken or David, far from it, but a reflection of how we have now found ourselves due to the circumstances described and the only reason I have today found this out is that we have been out and attended a ISE 10 websale which it now seems likely we will not get paid for?
As you have had the benefit of being aware of the Legislation regarding liability of these warranties and the benefit of having Carl check the position of the same, can you for speed and clarity provide here the key points that you have referred to as to how we as agents can proceed without being exposed to any consequences some of which Tim has already raised ? We are not lawyers but engineers when all said and done but some useful guidance would I suggest be useful for what I am guessing are worries for many of us who are now contemplating that as far as our ISE customers are concerned that if ISE is unavailable as it seems the insurer is, we as the retailers are the only entity visible to our customers !
As of todays notification are we now to refrain from accepting all ISE service calls which may arise and if so where do we point the customers ????
As I said at the outset this is blow as we have actively promoted ISE over a good number of years and I am indeed sorry it has come to this and sorry for you into the bargain.
I will therefore pass this over to you to respond to Ken
.Re: News
Sadly this is actually really rather simple.
It is a manufacturer warranty that is given “free” with the product sale and not a separate warranty therefore, if the brand dies then in effect the warranty dies with it.
That’s it so far as the ones not covered by any insurance goes for sure.
Then the rights that the consumer have falls back to statutory rights under the SoGA. The warranty was offered (clearly) as a benefit over those basic rights as it would not be proper or indeed legal (to my knowledge) to have it replace them.
The ones covered by any insurance in place technically have a way to get something but actually accomplishing this in practise will be, at best, difficult and arduous to accomplish. This is so as there is absolutely no administrative means or process in place by which to do that and, as there is essentially no profit in it, I would think it highly unlikely that anyone would take it on and pay staff to administrate something on which serves only as a cost burden.
Like you and everyone else, nobody will do that for nothing.
However that’s merely the first of several hurdles in practise.
The second major one is spares supply. From where? Who’s going to pay for the stock? Who’s going to hold it? Who’s going to distribute it at zero cost?
Then there’s the chestnut of sales pre/post insurance from September 2010 none were insured. But even before that any machines not registered are not covered. How do you segregate and sort those? How do you explain what is and isn’t covered to both engineers and customers?
Atop all that there’s the fact that all that is in place is an electrical and mechanical warranty and, if by some miracle someone did take it on I expect that would be policed to the Nth degree. Many repairers and almost all customers assume that this is an all-encompassing warranty like the DAG ones of yore and, it is most certainly not, it is basic cover of *electrical or mechanical failure due to manufacturing defects only*.
As such, carbon brushes, bearings, corrosion and a whole truck of other things caused through wear and tear or poor customer care etc are quite simply not covered and, never ever were.
I can see it and appreciate it from the engineer’s point of view but I must ask you to realise that actually accomplishing in practice what at first glance appears or, may appear to be, something simple is most certainly not. It is riddled with issues that can only be solved by someone coming along with a pot of cash and resource to get all that done.
I do not expect many people to throw their hat in the ring to do that.
Certainly for the grief involved with no renumeration I’d tell anyone to run a mile as you very often find yourself debating the finer points of the warranty with the customer, the engineer or often both.
K.
Re: News
Hi Ken,
I am trying to get my head around this situation, as far as I am aware we have sold ISE 10 Products more or less since the start, in particular the period that is mentioned 2010 – now we have sold ISE 10 Product in the knowledge that they were covered by warranty for 10 years and we have never during this period been contacted to be advised of anything different why I cannot imagine.
So as I am reading this situation now the ISE brand has demised along with any implied warranties of 5 or 10 years and as it was free with the product there is no claim that can be made by a customer where it is the case the product was NOT insurance backed ? and this accounts for all appliances supplied to us by ISE since 2010 ???
Where appliances were backed by insurance prior to 2010 those warranties were valid against manufacturing defects during the Insured warranty period and items such as carbons, door seals, pumps etc etc etc are not and never were covered ?
As ISE is no longer and that the insurers are ducking and diving the customers have no route to claim under the terms of the insured warranties ?
This brings us to the SOGA as far as the seller is concerned, that a customer has to prove that the appliance was defective from the start and not of merchantable quality this situation being for the customer and retailer to fight out should it be ?
To be honest I have never seen sight of the Conditions of the Warranties but customers as you know and in some part ourselves will be under the impression that if say a ISE 10 stops working say due to the carbons wearing out that it would be remedied by the warranty ???????????????
Just Saying
Re: News
Hi Ken, just as a matter of interest are the parts for ISE10 machines only suitable for them or are there Asko machines/spares compatible?
Is it just that there will be no spares available warranty/chargeable full stop?Alan
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There was a whole big bust up with the insurers, very well publicised on here and on the ISE site at the time when it all kicked off in 2010.
Correct on second para if I’m reading correctly.
Correct on third, again if I’m reading correctly.
Sort of right on the next. The main pertinent point being, there’s no way by which to administrate the claims and, even were that in place, no means by which to obtain spares presently.
On the next para I’d suggest you brush up on legislation as there’s no fight to be had. Customers kick off all the time and one of the biggest issues I see is that trade as much as public have little to no clue about what the law actually says. No offence intended but, not knowing this stuff is a recipe for disaster in the modern world.
I am never done advising people that they *NEED* to know this stuff if they trade and Jackal will tell you exactly the same thing. You must have knowledge of the law in regard to selling anything, be that service, spares or finished goods.
If you do not then yes, you can get taken for a ride by the many Wikipedia solicitors out there.
The T&Cs were on every warranty certificate and published on the website. I know this is going to sound harsh but, it’s not really my problem if people didn’t read them.
K.
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