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Re: CDSL
Pre-Booked calls.
We have been on pre booking since Jan 06, and to be fair it has worked a treat. It has saved us getting the grief from the customer regards, “What time” or “Not until then” so the onus was on Connect.
Anyway this last month or so it has gone tits-up on that. We have had a few that were out, and in all cases we billed Connect. Normally we complete the call down on the spot, get the Connect labour fee then refuse to call back until we get either a new job number from Connect with labour included, or c/card out of the customer. If the customer pays we open a new job ourselves.
Yesterday we had 3 that were out. We billed all 3, and told Connect. 1 of them has now been removed from us and assigned to another repairer, which means we cannot get money from them or the customer as she is still getting a repair.
The upshot of that is I have refused to accept direct booking calls, and they have agreed to my wishes. So, if any of you are on this, and would rather not, you know the means of coming off. Just be clever about it and it should work.
BTW I haven’t posted this.
Alex
Re: CDSL
One of the things I’ve never agreed to is direct call booking.
It’s not for me, but that does not stop CDSL booking a pre book and sending it through as an ordinary call 😥
The customers get so wound up when we refuse the “pre” call and arrange one that suits us, of course we give them connects number so they can complain.
KevinLeft a message on G.A’s phone telling him the Heds of agreement is a waste of paper, apparantly sourced own spares has been knocked on the head overnight ! ! ! No letter or waning ! Thats the £4.00 blown out of the water on most jobs now, thats there stats blown out of the water, and probably a lot of peed off service providers. Good decision Roy or Deppers ( Leopards dont change there spots )
Been trying to get auth for them for a couple of days now, but been told staff off – should have smelt a rat then.
Re: CDSL
They pull you in… they get you hooked…. BAM! You’re fooked!
You can bet that this is due to some people taking the p1ss with it though and I know one (in particular) or two that really where going a tad over the top with own spares.
Thankfully, for a change, I’m not involved. 😀
I am a bit disappointed if it’s network wide mind you, they should target the guilty as, with their stats, the culprits should be easily identified.
K.
Re: CDSL
Have to say it was more or less expected. I did know of some that were taking the pi55.
They may well shoot themselves in the foot though, they are desperate for all agents to keep the stats as good as possible, and KPI’s are their main criteria. So much so, they have a little competion running at the mo. Therefore they can now say good-bye to a fast turnaround as up to 3 days will be added to ALL jobs they keep the bits for, maybe longer if they don’t.
So, the answer is those who are on pre-booking ask to be removed as it will be no good trying to call day after tomorrow on a pre-booked job when you cannot have the part in your hand guaranteed until the day after that. I can get Distriparts bits tomorrow, provided ordered before 3.30. If CDSL have to get the same bit from Distriparts, such as a glass door, there will be delays. Blows pre-booking right out of the window.
Shall speak to R.F. tomorrow. Pi55ing against the wind no doubt though.
Alex
Re: CDSL
TBH though Alex losing that facility will probably impact quite hard I should think, harder on the SF agents than many I should expect.
The way I always put this argument to “them” is thus, but obviously reworded slightly…
The engineer, who is in the customer’s house, doesn’t give a give a flying cluck where the part came from, who’s invoice it’s on or even who made it. All he cares about is that it fits, does the job adequately and safely and completes the call.
For me to tell him that he can only fit a part supplied by XXX only will only serve to hinder him in his job, lead to more admin time wasted, lead to more complaints, lower service levels and upset the customer in many instances as he will, quite rightly, say that he can do the job now but he is prevented from doing so because of the rules.
Therefore, if or when you get invoiced for more of a particular part than has been supplied to us by you that is because we’ve automatically re-ordered it from the original supplier under the part number used. Who that is in all honesty I couldn’t give a toss about so long as the call is complete and the customer happy thereby making MY company look good and, by way of inference, your company look good.
If you have a problem with that policy I suggest that you ask your customers (or client as the case may be) what they want, quick efficient service or one ruled and ultimately delayed by the red tape that you are creating. I would then ask YOU to explain this to the customers or client as it is purely a situation of YOUR making and therefore your place to offer an explanation, not mine as we are merely contracted to carry out the work to YOUR specifications.
Therefore, please realise that any complaints that are derived from the installation of this/these policy or policies will be direct to your main customer helpline number as we are unable to inform your customer as to why these delays and/or rules are in place.
That usually makes them see sense, but I fear that in the case of CDSL, much like the old Mastercare fiasco of yore, that sense (especially preceded by anything common) will slip by unnoticed as it doesn’t fit the plan.
I just play them at their own game, put it in writing so there’s a record and, if they insist on this policy as one or two have done in the past, when we explain to the customer that there’s a delay or whatever due to the rules, I simply roll out the letter and say, “there you go, I informed you of our position, you did nothing, you deal with the problem”. After they have a few moans clogging the lines or their a$$ kicked from on high the message starts to sink in.
Obviously any moans I get are immediately passed back to the WP or whatever. This is where NESN and I came to blows over the CDSL contract with the original Whirlpool thing and I took that line then, they soon backed off with this crap.
The point is that CDSL look to want to lock in as many people as possible to be buying virtually exclusively from them, this is just another way to achieve that as, if you buy a sh1tload of stock from them you can always pull out an invoice number. It’s not exactly morally astute but then I wouldn’t expect that from CDSL really.
This is the sort of thing that makes me say that I will, under current conditions, not work for them unless Beelzebub’s having a snowball fight and an ice hockey match at home anytime soon.
K.
Re: CDSL
I got this in a PM tonight:
I don’t know if you are a RepairCare agent, or if you know anyone who is who could be asked “quietly” as to whether they have had any probs with RepairCare of late – in particular to parts pricing anomalies.
As you probably know, as a repaircare agent we have to purchase our spares from CDSL ahead of the work and the cost of the spares are contra’d out of our payment for the job on completion.
We have noticed anomalies where certain price reductions to certain spare parts have occured after ordering resulting in our being invoiced for the higher amount at time of ordering but only being contra’d back the lower amount on completion.
An example – Micromark are having high volumes of glass failures on their oven doors. A replacement door was £35.99 – ordered for a job. The price of the door complete has been reduced recently to £10.00. This price has been applied to the job to be contra’d back to us -leaving us £25.00 out of pocket. Many other prices have also been reduced – too many to list.
Many of these reductions have taken place recently and unless an agent is on the ball – undertaking comparisons between order prices and invoice prices – the losses could be missed.
Appreciate it if you could find out if anyone else is having this problem – but quietly.
We have taken the matter up with Gary and it is still to be answered but it could be widespread and being swept under the carpet.Does this ring any bells with you guys who do this work ?
Dave.
Re: CDSL
Ha, I can beat that one…
To boil the basics of it down, a repaircare agent bought some vacs from someone other than Connect, how this came about isn’t really that important other than to say that Connect welched on a deal to credit the price difference (shock, horror).
Anyway, CDSL rep calls in to the shop, see the vacs from another supplier and then proceeds to tell the owner that they should have bought them from Connect even if they were more expensive as Connect gave them over £40K’s worth of business on repairs. Essentially issuing a threat over it.
All good fun really and people wonder why I wouldn’t work for them.
K.
Apparantly so. DP is acting like a headless chicken at the moment.
Little birdy also tells me CDSL are billing LG 71.00 a call !!!!! F@@king robbing barstewards…………
Re: CDSL
I thought DP WAS a headless chicken, or was that a lapdog? 😉
And, let me ask you, would you really be surprised if they were getting that from LG? Remember there’s a deal there with Currys as well so this may be part of that wrapped separately.
K.
Re: CDSL
I heard throught the grapvine a couple of weeks ago that RF was off sick and knew it was quite serious and just had it confirmed this morning that he had a brain Haemorrhage.
Word is he will be back in a couple of weeks and that the finance director is running the company.
JohnRe: CDSL
Got a call from Roy this morning, he’s back at work.
Apparently LG and CDSL have fallen out and are parting ways. More info as I get it, there should be something this afternoon from them.
K.
Re: CDSL
Roy Fisher wrote:Private & Confidential Without Prejudice
LGE Repairs
Dear Service ProviderThis email is to advise that as of close of business today, Thursday 28th June 2007 we will no longer be accepting service requests for the above company, despite much work on our and your behalf we are unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion to a new contract being imposed on ourselves which also included a failure to reach rate agreements with the manufacturer.
This decision is in no way a reflection of the work carried out by you our Service Provider network, it is a decision made we believe purely out of good business sense.
As many of you will be aware we as a company and you as Service Providers have done a great deal to enhance the name of LGE and many of you will remember when we took the contract on we did so against many peoples better judgment, regretfully those individuals were probably correct.
In respect of work that is outstanding we would ask that this is completed as soon as possible in order that the correct payments can be received and made to you, however I would ask that you ensure every detail of the claim is correct, model number, serial number and date of purchase being prime examples of where rejections could occur.
The background to our decision and facts that you should be aware of:
I am sure that many of you are aware that the rate paid to us by LGE has not changed in 3 years consequently our rate to you has fallen behind other contracts, this to us and I feel sure to many of you as a business is totally unacceptable. Added to no rate increase is the fact that we were initially mislead with the spare part cost as an average across the contract and this has further eroded our revenue stream.
In addition to the rate paid for the supply of Service Facilities by repaircare I would add that we and you have spent a great deal of time, effort and cost in training our staff, updating our systems and generally improving the service provision to LGE. During this time LGE have employed their own Service Engineers in the large population areas of outer London, Manchester and Birmingham and will I suspect probably continue to expand their own engineer force in areas where the population and job volumes are greatest, thus reducing the overall volumes of the contract.
The consequence of the foregoing is that we have for some time been working just above ‘break even’ margins with LGE and feel we can no longer sustain this position.
We have made our case and yours too, unfortunately despite our best efforts LGE appear never to be happy with the service provided by repaircare and as a consequence by our Service Providers, we have therefore taken the decision to walk away from the contract.
Whilst we understand this may be disappointing to you as Service Providers it is a decision that has not been taken lightly and I am sure that we will replace the lost volumes in the near future.
It may be that you will be approached directly by LGE or through some other work provider, however, should you choose this route please ensure you check every area of your terms and conditions and payment agreement.
In concluding can I thank on behalf of myself and our team at CDSL (repaircare) for the support and in our opinion excellent service provided on the LGE brand.
K.
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