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Went to a Bosch T/D WTA3002GB/01 yesterday, this is a Whirlpool built Bosch. It required a new element which from Connect cost me £18.75, this being a genuine Whirlpool element. I put 30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} on the cost of the heater which made the heater £28 plus my labour £50, job done for £78 total. 😀
What I want to know is how the hell 👿 can Bosch charge £96.50 BEFORE Vat & carriage for the same element that they have brought from Whirlpool for a Dam sight less than what I had paid Connect.
They are sure to have a mark up of at least 550{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} on this particular part 😯
Whirlpool are charging £43.47 before vat and carriage so I cannot work out how Bosch can charge more than double the Whirlpool price when they had no manufacturing cost to bare.
Bosch carp on about how green they are, what a joke, who is going to have appliances repaired at these prices!
What criteria do Bosch use to come up with a price like this, are they such a badly run inefficient company compared to Whirlpool that this is the cheapest price they can do?
For me these large manufacturers are up there with the bankers and the politician,wrotten to the core and its about time the public vented their anger at them. Rant over, feel better already 😆
GrahamRe: Bosch Parts Price Rant
Repaired a 10 year old Meile the other day required a drain pump, part cost £248 from Miele. So cat amongst the pigeons, a company called Ramsons offer a compatible at £75.
This is what I bought and fitted but charged the full amount plus fitting, did I do right or wrong?.
Two years away from retirement done it many times before so don,t tell me I’m wrong now, still struggle to pay the taxman at the end of year.
If it’s wrong for Bosch to charge more for a similiar part did I do wrong also?.
On an expanding note is the UK just to tax expensive to try and make a living?.
silverbroomRe: Bosch Parts Price Rant
Yes Silverbroom, I do think you were wrong to charge that sort of money. When a customer gets ripped off we can all potentially suffer because that person may never bother trying to get any appliance repaired again.
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
remember years ago pricing a blower motor for a hotpoint 95 series washer dryer when i arrived at the wholesalers to pick it up (ah those were the days )i was told that a pattern version had just come out and would i like a look . Got both motors on the counter one in a nice shiney hotpoint logo d box the other in a brown box took both motors out and they were identical the only difference was the price 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} less for the pattern version guess which one i bought 😉
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
Silverbroom my post was comparing genuine parts at wildly inflated prices not pattern verses genuine.
However I think you are wrong to take that amount of money off a customer for the job you describe.
It is no wonder that Miele want to keep restrictive practices in place if the independent trade is going to behave in this way.
GrahamRe: Bosch Parts Price Rant
silverbroom wrote:Repaired a 10 year old Meile the other day required a drain pump, part cost £248 from Miele. So cat amongst the pigeons, a company called Ramsons offer a compatible at £75.
This is what I bought and fitted but charged the full amount plus fitting, did I do right or wrong?.
In the fullness of time only you and your conscience can truly answer that question. :rolls:
If you found that someone had done that to a close friend or family member what would you think of them. Or more to the point, if you discovered that someone had done that to you what would your reaction be, ‘do unto others as you would do to yourself’ 😉
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
silverbroom wrote:This is what I bought and fitted but charged the full amount plus fitting, did I do right or wrong?.
I wouldn’t have done that in all honesty. I would have priced it, probably, about 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of Miele’s price and been happy that I’d made a good profit but still been a great deal as far as the customer was concerned.
I wouldn’t do that to a contract customer either.
And, I’ll tell you why…
If you get caught then you’re really up the creek without a paddle. There’s no excuse, especially if you’re ever asked to produce an invoice to substantiate the charge.
If you mark up by XX{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} on cost then that’s fine, even if you were given the wrong price it’s fine, mistakes happen. But if you’re way off base, especially repeatedly, you’ll get caught out at some point.
What I’d say is that, if that customer goes off and hunts about on Fleabay or whatever they’ll likely get that pump for about £100 exclusive, so you look as if you’re ripping them off.
Same goes with contracts really. The worst thing you can do is assume that customers are entirely stupid, especially now with the amount of information that can be delivered in a fraction of a second by Google etc. They don’t have to be smart, they just have to be able to access the internet. (I accept that there are pros and cons to that however)
That all said, there’s the other side of that coin…
Askoll pump. Fan element. Door seal.
All can have “alternatives”. We all know it, we all use them and wherever possible we use these to try to claw back a bit of margin if we can. We’ll use a standard part and chargeback the genuine price.
That’s where we make on spare parts.
But, it’s not so much that we make on the spares, we make on the fact that we know what to fit to make on it.
It’s like the old story of the guy that gets flown out o the States to fix a computer of some sort that generates over $2M US PA in profit…
He walks in, kicks it and presents a bill for $12,000. The customer kicks off and says it ludicrous and an obscene amount of money to charge to fix the computer by just kicking it.
The engineer says, it’s $2000 to get me here.
It’s $10,000 for knowing where to kick it to make it work and generate that amount in a few hours.
Just because we have the knowledge to play the system and make a little where we can doesn’t make us bad people, it just makes us aware of what we’re worth and where we can make a crust. Unlike the computer expert though our ability to generate a profit lies in the smart buying of parts, especially on volume lines as our labour rates are pretty much cast in stone. That means that, wherever possible, you have to maximise the potential in other areas.
For those of us (or many of us) that do contract work we’ve all just gone sheepishly quiet but, really, there’s no need. If we got paid sufficiently in the first place we wouldn’t have to play the system and you always have to play to the lowest common denominator and assume that every part is going to be at the lowest possible margin. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
Think on it this way, it’s a bit like the MP’s expenses thing. If they got paid what they know or think they’re worth they wouldn’t have call to play in the “grey” areas. But, in our case, it’s worse as the salaries are (in effect) much, much lower in the first instance.
So I’m not jumping in on any one side in this as I can see many sides to it and I can also see some hypocritical comments being posted to this thread from some quarters.
It does not in any way detract from the simple fact however that the price of the original Miele pump is, frankly, a disgrace to the industry. It is simply obscene to have the gall to charge that for a drain pump in the first instance, utterly contemptuous.
To compound that is, to me, wrong, but it’s not my call.
K.
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
The very fact that you’re asking ‘did I do wrong’ seems to me that you’re not entirely at peace with what you did. But like others have already said, that’s for you to live with.
Personally I wouldn’t (though sometimes I wish I was capable of doing that), I’d decide on a certain amount of profit, explain to the customer how much I’d saved them and then hopefully reap the benefits in getting word of mouth passed about how fair I’d been.
But like another thread not so long ago, it can seem that I’m being judgemental, I’m not. you asked the question and I’m just answering it with an explanation of why.
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
on this i would….also
decide on a certain amount of profit, explain to the customer how much I’d saved them and then hopefully reap the benefits in getting word of mouth passed about how fair I’d been.
gets you more work in the long run…….
canufixitRe: Bosch Parts Price Rant
I try to make a bit extra on cheap parts rather than dear ones. If I pay £4.50 for a fan oven element I will perhaps charge £25 for it. That way the customer still gets a cost effective repair and I get a decent margin. If I have to pay £30 trade price for the element I generally only take about a 20{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} mark up. A £75 pump to me would come into the category of dear parts…..
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
Getting a good tongue lashing on this one, first of all sorry to Graham for hijacking his post and yes Bagman, on this one I am not entirely happy.
By way of trying to wriggle out of my decision to charge what I did, allow me to explain.
The area I cover involves driving up long one way glens, for this customer (a regular over many years) the round trip is 76 miles x 2.
The first trip was to diagnose the problem and the second to fit the part, taking in the drive time factor this was most of my morning on one call when I can usually fit in four plus.
The customer was informed of the price and gave me the go ahead, when driving up the second time to complete the job I mulled it over many times “should I reduce the price or keep the original” well you know what I did.
On a journey like the one above my time has to be covered, so I give you another example.
To-day up another glen to another longstanding customer (big castle), Zanussi w/m not starting, requires 3 tag interlock, 10 min job and done in one visit but still nearly a three hour round trip, the bill ———- £88 plus a jar of heather honey.
I drive round some of the most scenic countryside in the UK and love it and yes sometime have to charge the customer more, guilty as charged.
silverbroomRe: Bosch Parts Price Rant
silverbroom wrote:I drive round some of the most scenic countryside in the UK and love it and yes sometime have to charge the customer more, guilty as charged.
Bless me father for I have sinned………..I thank you for your honesty and forthright admissions……….the holy ordinance has looked upon in judgement and found it wrong…..fear not my son for your heart is in the right place……go with the grace of god……say three hail mary’s and leave a donation on the plate on your way out…..may your god go with you! 😉
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
Thanks for that Martin, I,m not religious but will comply, does that mean I will be dissolved——–sorry absolved.
silverbroom
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
i say fair play to you lad. the truth is we know what we are doin and they dont, so if they agree to pay for the job when quoted a price then let the bu**ars pay. 😀
Re: Bosch Parts Price Rant
You only tell us half the story to begin with. We lay on the lash. Then you tell us about the mitigating circumstances. Now we have to feel guilty about having given you a good whipping when perhaps it wasn’t quite deserved.
Glad I didn’t get involved in this sado-masochistic nightmare. 😆
Mike.
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