Fixed Cost Repairs Are Dead

In a conversation with Sean today it kinda highlighted a topic that I’ve maybe strayed away from or avoided for a long time as, frankly, I don’t care as I’m not directly involved with any repair work now and, nobody pays me to help others.

This is bad and this is good. It’s bad in that I don’t bother with it too often and good in that, when I do nobody can say boo to me as I’ve no stake in this.

I am very sure that this will be a topic at the next conference but in advance of that I thought I’d open this out first of all by insulting you all as, I look at this from an angle you don’t.

There’s a lot of really dumb people in this industry when it comes to charging for service and, a large part of the reason I bailed out of it.

Fact is, with more complexity, longer test routines that leads to vague sometimes guessed at diagnosis often meaning multiple calls that cost you, the repairer when it’s fixed cost repairs… you’re all doing nothing but buying yourselves a plot in the company graveyard.

Factor is the loss of margins on spares, the loss of premium rate insurance/extended warranty work that many now do (stupidly) for warranty rates or little more and the demise of chargeable work and it’s not hard to see why there’s less and less repairers every year.

You’re all metaphorically killing yourselves, all the above is commercial suicide.

Some literary killing themselves running about like headless chickens trying to scrape up enough to pay the bills every month.

Both include employed field techs as well as self employed ones.

It’s not sustainable.

Now I could go into the reasons why it’s a total crock of **** these days and break down the hour plus to fix a stupid tumble dryer, hours to diagnose a daft “smart” washing machine, fridge or whatever, having to disassemble a kitchen to get an integrated piece of **** out, hours to track down parts, your life wasted on paperwork and admin and all the while dealign with completely unrealistic consumer and client expectations but, I’ll let you all do that off the back of this.

Fact is, doing all that for a fixed price these days is just mental, total insanity.

Is it any wonder as many people have bailed, they saw the light.

If manufacturers, insurers and customers don’t change their attitudes then yes, as has been discussed on other threads, repairs will become “not commercially viable” and, we’re not a million miles away from that point. Myself and others have been warning for years of this.

But, what you have to realise is, you guys have the power to change that as, where else is anyone going to get stuff fixed? The ball, as they say, is at your feet.

Nobody that needs repairs can conjure up people to do it, I know, I get the adverts every day from people looking to recruit staff.

The first thing you have to wrap your head around is, fixed cost repairs on modern products… forget it, that’s a total waste of time and you sure as s**t ain’t gonna win playing that game.

K.