Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

[Martin]

It hardly seems 6 months ago that I bought Merloni’s latest CD Rom. It cost me £85 or so, now they want more. I wish they would be valid for longer?

Martin

[brian]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

It’s £65.00 ex. vat (disc and one validation) and provides spares identification for over 40{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the white goods spares market. I don’t think that is a bad price considering the amount of information stored. (Previously you had to buy Partfinder and Fastrak).

Due to an increase in piracy, (and lets face it, every man and his dog were pirating the CD’s), security measures have had to be installed which we are charged for. Unfortunately this charge has had to be passed on.

We are looking at ways of reducing the cost of the CD and I’m confident by issue three of Partfinder II, which will probably be a DVD, the cost will be reduced significantly.

Please be aware that although the message that is currently displayed informs you that issue two will be a DVD it will actually be a CD.

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Mine cost £85 plus VAT for 2 PC’s.

Martin

[brian]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Martin,

Thanks for your comments and I understand what you are saying.

Although the disc changes every six months the change is driven by the addition of new models and the update and supercession of old parts, not necessarily just because of a price change. (Although GDA did change pricing every six months).

As I mentioned earlier we are driving to hopefully (not putting my neck on the block!!!) reduce the price of issue three and are looking at ways, in the future, of updating the CD/DVD electronically by issuing one “master” CD/DVD with updates/supercessions/price changes etc being made over the internet thus reducing cost’s.

Thanks again for your comments.

Regards

Brian

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

I look forward to that Brian and perhaps you guys could stretch the renewal period to say 9 months at least to help keep our ongoing costs down?

Martin

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

……and another thing!

Why don’t Merloni produce Trade Service Manuals for their product range? By making these available to us it will stop a great deal of animosity and resentment towards Merloni products AND more importantly for them, considerably more sales both in finished goods and trade spares!

Martin

[wcda]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Martin wrote:……and another thing!

Why don’t Merloni produce Trade Service Manuals for their product range? By making these available to us it will stop a great deal of animosity and resentment towards Merloni products AND more importantly for them, considerably more sales both in finished goods and trade spares!

Martin

Because they do’t have any, the former agents had to make do with fiches and a few barely decipherable fifth generation copies of wiring diagrams.

wcda

[Dave_Conway]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

I assume from the previous comments that brian is an employee of GDA or Merloni Elettrodomestici as they are now known.

I actually missed this thread completely due to my being on holiday and only spotted it as Martin and wcda have posted to it today.

I too have serious misgivings over the price of “Partfinder” As a spares supplier, both retail and to a lesser extent wholesale, I find it necessary to buy all of the manufacturers CD’s and DVD’s. No disrespect to Washvac and Connect, but there is many thousands of mistakes in their own software programmes so it is in my interests to get it right first time and order the correct part by identifying it from the relevant manufacturer supplied cd/dvd.

This said, there are vast differences in the prices and information supplied, Partfinder being the worst value for money overall, not just due to the high initial buying price, but the lack of information over and above spares part numbers and diagrams alone, examples:

GDA Partfinder——- £85 Exploded diagrams, parts lists and prices. Renewable 6 monthly

Electrolux TDS ——-£20 All of the above, plus, wiring diagrams, service manuals and service bulletins. Renewable 6 monthly.

Whirlpool SIOS——-£40 All of the above, plus wiring diagrams and technical information. Renewable 6 monthly but £40 cost is annual.

BSH Group———–£FOC Web-based. Parts listings, exploded diagrams and prices.

MFI Identifier———£16.25 Exploded diagrams, parts lists and prices. Renewable 6 monthly. Written by the same software company as Partfinder.

Servevast (Smeg)——£FOC All of the above, although not a programme in itself, more a folder full of individual files, only FOC to agents as far as I am aware.

So, in my estimation that makes Electrolux TDS the best value, it’s the cheapest and has the most content, GDA Partfinder is the worst value, it’s the most expensive and only has the most basic parts information.

Just an opinion as ever.

Dave.

[kwatt]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Dave_Conway wrote:So, in my estimation that makes Electrolux TDS the best value, it’s the cheapest and has the most content, GDA Partfinder is the worst value, it’s the most expensive and only has the most basic parts information.

And the obligitory glib remark would have to be…

Merloni have to subsidise their cheap appliances somehow and it looks as if we’re the suckers in this case. 😉

K.

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Do you know I for one am delighted with the route BSH have taken in their web based information and spares ordering. I even get next day delivery on spares which they never used to before!

They even have a Technical Help Line, though very difficult as it’s always engaged for obvious reasons. We can only hope they tack a bit more info on their website to offset that problem, it would be perfect.

Brian at Merloni to be fair did stress that for the price of their new CD we are at least getting Hotpoint/Creda all included now so that’s a start. But I agree with you Dave, these manufactureres should take a leaf out of the E/lux TDS way of total information included in the package.

We can only hope they are listening/reading this?

Martin

[Dave_Conway]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Martin wrote:We can only hope they are listening/reading this?

I do believe most do 8)

To be fair GDA do have online parts identification as well at http://www.theservicecentre.co.uk/Service/fr_shop.html
So the cd purchase is not absolutely essential, but this does not cover all of the appliances on the cd 🙁

Dave.

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Dave_Conway wrote:To be fair GDA do have online parts identification as well

‘Tis true they do but only for punters as 90{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the parts are not listed and they are then forced to phone Merloni’s ‘special rate’ 0870 numbers to identify the missing part numbers?

The ‘detailed’ parts illustration comes in .pdf format but with no part numbers….. Crafty eh?

Martin

[brian]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Interested to hear you comments and views on Partfinder II compared to other manufactures CD Roms.

Just to answer a number of points and ask for your views.

The life of the disc. As I know you are all aware new models are released almost monthly and parts are superceeded daily. We have to release a new CD every six months to ensure we are as near to “up to date” as possible.
Because of the constant changes to parts and models plus the new security measures added it does make the cost of producing these CD’s quite expensive. (It’s not just the cost of burning a few disc’s…!!). The one new disc does also combine the old Partfinder and Fastrak information, which were previously sold separately.

It’s interesting to note your comments on the other manufacturers CD’s, what information is supplied etc.

I’m told that the Partfinder CD is the most user friendly on the market. Would you agree ??

What improvements could be made ?? (And yes, I know cost is an issue…see earlier post’s).

Thanks again.

[Martin]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

brian wrote:I’m told that the Partfinder CD is the most user friendly on the market. Would you agree ??

Yes definitely Brian, most user friendly. Just one small point though, using PartfinderII (issue1-haven’t got issue 2 yet) When you say look up a Hotpoint WM32W for example and click on the Part Description Box, then click on “Motor”, then view, it NEVER goes to the motor illustration (front panels I think from memory) why is that?

brian wrote:What improvements could be made ?? (And yes, I know cost is an issue…see earlier post’s)

Please can we have a ‘Technical Section’ by that I mean Wiring Diagrams, Sequence Charts, Error Codes & test setups etc. I don’t mean how to take things apart but the relevant technical info would be nice especially with Indesit/Ariston products.

Martin

[Dave_Conway]

Re: Manufacturers Parts List CD Roms

Hi Brian, thanks for the reply, it’s nice to know you are willing to take our thoughts and feedback and work with us 😀

You’re points and questions I would answer as such:

The life of the disk at 6 months is fine, would an annual fee though not be more realistic. Another possibilty is to release one new disk every 12 months and enable update functions via the internet. This would reduce the cost of security, enable almost “real time” updates as and when new models and ranges are released. This would mean the disk would require a full hard disk install, but nowadays the price of enormous hard drives is so low, it is easily a far more sensible option, let alone speeding up the “finding”.

Partfinder is by far the easiest manufacturer software programme to use, anyone who uses the MFI disk and not Partfinder will probably agree.

Improvements, as Martin mentioned, more (there couldn’t be any less ;)) technical information. As I mentioned in my previous post, the TDS disk has the full service manual for virtually every model in the Electrolux group range, even some user manuals. This would obviously then have to be on DVD as the TDS disk is, but at less than a quarter of the price presently, there does seem a vast difference in the price, I’m sure you will agree. Perhaps a secure link from the disk to GDA’s own server to gain access to that information maybe ? I know the information is available as GDA engineers are issued with a far superior version of the Partfinder disk.

You’re further thoughts would be very welcome.

Dave.

[Author]

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