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I was told a few weeks ago about one of our fellow repairers that charge a sundries charge for calling mobile phones, after seeing for the fourth time this morning a “please call mobile before going” I wondered if anyone else was doing this and if there’s any milage in the idea?
What I was told was that this chap was charging £1 per call to a mobile number, which seems fair since you have the charges and then of course the admin to bill it, log it etc.. Given that in some cases a lot of calls are billed at under £30 this strikes me as being fair since we are not often recompensed for it when it does happen.
Comments?
K.
K
The situation of phoning customers has gone from the sublime to the rediculous. To where we were taking sometimes as many as three or four numbers for a customer rather than risk an abortive call. and as sod’s law states it’s usually the last number you ring, that you get a response. We recentley finished with Merloni, who’s customers for whatever reason ? seemed to be the worst offenders of giving multiple contact no’s. Our average phone bills whilst working for Merloni was £900
per quarter between B.T. & Vodaphone this has now reduced to £440.
Admittedley our turnover has reduced but we have actually found that our NET Proffit has increased. From these facts it can be prooved that this is a cost that we the service providers are faced with and which, imho should at least be shared by the work provider.Flipper wrote:Billing who the customer or the manu/network that has passed the call ?
The manufacturer or network primarily, but this chap also just added it to charge call’s bills too.
K.
Del wrote:Our average phone bills whilst working for Merloni was £900
per quarter between B.T. & Vodaphone this has now reduced to £440.Here’s a question I always pose to a manufacturer or a WP though, how many calls do I have to do in real terms of profit to make up that difference doing your work? 😉
Silence or a bit of waffle is the normal reply you get.
K.
kwatt wrote:I was told a few weeks ago about one of our fellow repairers that charge a sundries charge for calling mobile phones
I’ve been doing this for a while now, or perhaps it’s me you’re refering to 😉
Chargeable customers are told when they book the call that we will not contact them on their mobiles to give the usual 20-30 mins notification before arrival unless they accept the surcharge. Mostly they are agreeable. The worst offenders are work providers who take a mobile number ONLY, even when the customer will almost certainly have a landline/work number as well, then there is no contact options apart from SMS messaging. The charge is then passed back to the work provider.
The problem ultimately though is the mobile networks excessive charges to the landline operators, which has recently been reduced by the Competition Commision, but not enough in my humble opinion.
Dave.
charging
You should be building in the cost of all your expenses into your costs per job.That way you are automatically covered for calling mobiles,abortive calls etc etc. It really is the only way to do it.You charge to cover your costs and produce a profit and this figure is never constant, neither is your profit.
regards ted
Mobiles
We tend to absorb the costs these days, the calls come out a lot cheaper than in the past and we use it to our convenience. It saves having to give the customer a time slot, we try & book as home all day & happy to offer the service of phoning ONE number prior to visit. We will not phone a customer on a mobile if they have a parts query though, they usually spend 10 minutes looking for a model number, not know what they want and then say no when faced with the price.
Interesting to read about Merloni. Someone once posted something about being finacially better off without them on a related forum, he received a phone call From Merloni a few days later I seem to recall.
Merloni
That Merloni thing mentioned above, sounds like it was me.
We were agents for 3 years, we had to fight tooth & nail to get an increase UP to £27 plus an enhancement for gas.
My accountant advised me their was a serious problem and he identified that the Merloni account was costing too much to run. I was losing £2.10 per call on their work.
When I approached Merloni regards this prior to resignation, they told me to change my accountant. Arrogance or what!
After I posted a thing for the benefit of fellow members on the whitegoods group E-Mail forum, some GIT forwarded it to Merloni. If I ever find out who that was I will post his name on as many web pages as I can find. I’m not bitter mind you as I’ve always said the quality of work has improved greatly without the agency.
Nothing is forever, and we must always move on.
Yes it would appear that some people don’t like any critism at all, much less the agents (i.e. us) all talking to one another for some strange reason. They must have something to hide or summat, I don’t understand the problem there at all as, if the work is that good and the company that good to work for, what’s the issue with discussing it?
K.
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