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As an ex-Zanussi agent and still having a certain affinity for the brand…
What the hell are the marketing department on?!!!
£179 for a 1200 spin machine in Comet, are you insane? Just what do you think that will do for the brand? It’s like selling an Audi for Skoda money, someone wants to be asking som serious questions in the sense of it.
Not only are you devaluing the brand, the perception of the brand but also devaluing the service behind it.
Well done in further devaluing our industry. 👿
I very rarely watch TV and seeing this advert on Channel 4 this evening just riled me.
K.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
Small comfort for you Ken, it’s only Comet doing that one.
That said, their cheapest machine is a 1000 Beko at £160. Oddly, the cheapest Servis is £230! Who’s fooling who here?
Curry’s are doing the 1500 Servis for £179, so we’d better brace ourselves for bearings and modules in about nine months time……
Miller Brothers have the Beko at £169, an Indesit under £200 and a 1000 Servis for £180.
Apart from the confused signals at the bottom of the market, the only plus as far as I can see is that these all appear to be plus delivery.
Cheers,
Chris.Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
It really is stupid this whole notion of fighting on price, especially in this industry which is saturated and oversupplied as it is. But then the bean counters, as usual, think that the measure of success for a business is it’s expansion of turnover which is all well and good so long as the margins are not erroded.
But to start erroding the branding is a dangerous, dangerous path to walk and one which, if/when it goes wrong, will haunt the business for many, many years if they can ever recover from it. Just look at Servis as you mentioned, even the punters know it’s crap now. Look at what happened to Philco, ten years on and still nobody wants to know about them!
I actually do not know that many of the manufacturers have actually asked their customers what they want, I talk to customers daily and what they want often bears no relation to what’s on offer. But they got what they didn’t want at a good price. 🙄
K.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
It is a joke.
We are now seeing 1200 spin washers going out cheaper than a Dyson cleaner.
No wonder there is no money for the likes of us.
I was hoping for a better 2005.
Alex
the manufacturers are really only interested in shifting units, there is a war between elx group and merloni for the top spot in the league table of who is shifting the highest volume, elx currently holding this postion but merloni by their own admission at one of their product launch shows back a few months ago staitng they want the top spot. hence the deals that both manufactures are offering indpendents as well as the sheds are reflecting in the retail price. taking aside the cost of raw materials increasing, expect more of this aggresive pricing from these manufactures in 2005.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
This certainly makes a mockery of these manufacturer spare part prices!!!!
How they can charge the high price they do and not be subject to some sort of government “rip off” watchdog is beyond me.
Kevini agree but then if you as a manufacturer want to keep volume of new sales up the easiest way is to make spare prices hideously priced so the viability of more and more reapirs becomes less attractive to do. there should be some kind of govt intervention imho just like there was to reduce the retail costs of goods to consumers., after all they bang on about the environment and energy saving etc etc enough, so the mountains of appliances being scapped and the impact of manufacturing isnt helping but then its all political point scoring, just look at the new energy laws coming into place this year regarding gas appliances etc. i will get off my soap box now.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
I can’t quite believe Electrolux for doing this 👿
I actaully sat in the same room (as did a few others here) last year with someone pretty high up within Electrolux who quite clearly stated that they were making a stand against this “price war” cr@p.
OK, he was in the service side of the industry and sales will have had the upper hand no doubt, but for fooks sake !!!!
And yes Kevin, I agree, someone in HM Gov should be looking in to this a little harder than they have I think. I know contact has been made from UKW on the matter last year, I don’t know what the outcome, if any there was 😕
Dave.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
Dave_Conway wrote:And yes Kevin, I agree, someone in HM Gov should be looking in to this a little harder than they have I think. I know contact has been made from UKW on the matter last year, I don’t know what the outcome, if any there was 😕
No comment. 😈
K.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
Should we not put pictures and retail prices of finished goods and the main spare parts for the very same appliances on the front page of this site.
We have had over 2 million hits in less than eighteen months, so there is now enough of an audience to start asking some very obvious and serious questions re the spares pricing conundrum of domestic appliance manufacturers.
Perhaps if their spares were realistically priced they would not be able to discount the appliances so heavily. Or should we wait till we are all either out of a job or just delivery boy’s
Del
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
is it feasble as a collective group ie ukwhitegoods to contact the govt on this, at a guess as i havent looked into it, the dti maybe ?
or perish the thought, watchdog?
from a consumer point of view folk end up buying alot more machines in their lifetime than they did 20 yrs ago and it invarialy isnt the case that the poduct is a wreck but just not vialble to fix forcing their hand into buying new.
we all know how the industry has changed from the days when a hpt would last 10-14 yrs and be fixable at a realistic price.now its 2-5 if ure lucky and not economically fixable which is where we alll loose out.
so a consumer programme could maybe work in our favour from this aspect?
what ya think ?
Not Watchdog. A one off semi-hysterical piece and no follow up is not what we need. An on going campaign featuring “Most Expensive” spares up front on UKW will get attention. How you get a Govt. agency to act though is not something any of us can predict.
Cheers,
Chris.Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
The Govt. acts only when the press shames them into it or enough people contact them directly with enough repetivity to become a pain in the arse.
Del
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
i was thinking more on he idea of some media coverage to how the public and that includes us, is being manipulated by the manufacturers throgh their pricing strategies and in essence being ripped off, i agree a hysterical approach thats isnt sustained is of no use , unless you can use likes of these programmes to get an awareness on mass and to get people thinking, then to back it up with hammering govt as well.
sometimes takes an unauthordox approach to get issues heard and questions to start getting asked.
just something to think about 🙂
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