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Del, you should make that point on the Merloni thread as, with that hit rate, you’d need to be being paid well in excess of £50 a call to make it pay. I had already sussed that their hit rate wasn’t brilliant from feedback from retialers, they ain’t at all happy people with Mr Merloni.
You’re right I think, it’s short term, at best a three month stint over the busy period in an effort to take the pressure off, I just agonise over how many of them will swallow the party shit and do it though. Also, the rates seem set as a bribe, it’s only when its all over that the true cost will be counted. (Apologies for the cliche)
Martin, we’ve been reading that kind of shite for years and we all know it’s bollocks. 😉
K.
Re: Merloni
Just so you all know and are in the loop…
I got a bit of info last night on our Mr Merloni that he doesn’t know, yet.
You will remember that I was going on about British Gas recruiting more engineers, well that appears to be going ahead and they have about 23 or so to employ for Scotland. Last night I got a glimpse of the names and skillsets of the potential engineers as well as where they were coming from. From memory…
3 from Electrolux
4 from Whirlpool
A few from other places, like two BSH guys and, wait for it…13 from Merloni/Hotpoint!
And they think they have problems now! Worse if you extrapolate that over the UK they could easily be losing 50-60 bodies to British Gas in the next few months or maybe even weeks and, these guys are irreplaceable right now.
When you measure that against the general discontent in the camp that has been shown by those currently employed by them or recently employed by them this ain’t looking good for Merloni one little bit.
But here’s where we should get political about it, the NESN thing is doomed to failure as the contract hasn’t even been agreed or signed by either party and, frankly, neither of them could organise a piss up in a brewery. CDSL didn’t get it because they wanted a 2 year contract which Merloni refused to give, that shows the level of commitment doesn’t it? Expert got the fridge work alright, but inherited a backlog of work with it, the contract was hurried through and work commenced almost immediately, 700 calls in the first week alone with many customers waiting over three weeks to get that call!
So here’s what I would suggest to all those offered this work… DON’T touch it!
If we keep refusing to do it they will eventually have to admit defeat and capitulate to terms or commitments that they currently will not as they will be left with no option. Hotpoint as a brand name is already being tarnished by this shite, let’s let them continue to ruin it through bad service. Eventually they will either see the light or see their sales tumbling and that will provoke a response.
Whether they go direct or not is, in all honesty, irrelevant so long as we get the right deal.
K.
Re: Merloni
As you all know I never signed the contract with NESN and since I started with them again they have paid me in full each month.
They sent me MERLONI work at the begining of the week and I phoned them to say that I could not handle any volume and If they insisted on sending the Merloni work, then I would have to withdraw from the network.
As I only get about half a dozen inspection reports a week, which are first time hit’s I’m not that bothered either way and they know it.Del
Re: Merloni
It would appear that those that have read what has been posted on UKW have fed some knowledge back to NESN (perhaps 😕 )
As mentioned in the merlonipoint thread by Ken, they’ve done the correct thing by knocking the work back. Trouble is though, they are so desperate for work they’ll take anything at the moment, which is a concern, if merlonipoint can get away with ripping the piss and getting the work done with no regard for what will be left in their wake when they pull the work by screwing anyone in their path by landing them with excess spares/vans/engineers.
Best left well alone IMO untill Merloni negotiate a proper deal.
Dave.
Re: Merloni
I for one am happy to say to you all that I will not be doing any of the merloni work…direct.
However if it was to come to me through CDSL in the future, I will, because of the safeguards that I know will be in the deal. If it were offered through another source I not so sure, it would require in depth scrutiny to ensure guarantees are in place.We in the waroom are in a brilliant position to control the work out there. We have secure communication, instant reporting, common ground, we don’t sit on each others areas meaning we can work together without fallout. We all also ask for fair reward for our labours….so lets unite quietly and discuss offers openly and collectively promote each other.
Kwatt can list the waroom members in a seperate sticky at the top of the page so you all know whos who. A common theme should be raising our renumeration for what we already do, not on the back of improved admin/engineering.your thoughts please….in another thread Ken(you can shift the relevent part of this.)
kevin
Re: Merloni
I have made it more than clear to Dave Parker, I will NOT touch any Merloni Hotpoint products. If they come to me with that lot I will pull out of CDSL. Dave assured me if they did go that route, CDSL would set Merloni up as a seperate skill set, and therefore would pass to selected agents.
I’m sure we can control this especially as D.P. knows there is an ill feeling about the contract.
2 of my Currys superstores are telling me 3 weeks delay no matter what!!
Alex
Re: Merloni
It should now be quite evident that this site is doing the job that was intended, of fully informing the members of this trade with most of the relavent information they need to come to a commercial decision of wether or not to take on new commercial work.
I fully stress that the final decision will and should, always remain the perogative of the principles of the individual companies approached.
But is’nt it fantastic to see the members sharing information with each other so that some other poor sap doesnt fall into the same trap.Nesn are desperate for work and they must have thought that they had landed a big fish with Merloni, when they got £37 per job they must also have thought that the deal was done and dusted.
It is blatantley obvious that enough members took the same line that most of us did.
They decided that to be used short term and then dumped with no safeguards over their buissiest period of the year was quite simply not on no matter how big the bribe.Do any of us really think that Nesn did this off their own back, I dont think so.
I have no wish to see Nesn fail, but when they next go looking for work they will now be mindfull that the trade will not just accept any old terms and conditions and might even start to enquire what is required by us, instead of presenting us with a deal that we had no input towards.
They must be aware that they now appear to look like Dickhead’s as far as merloni are concerned. The one good thing to come out of this particular debarcle is that as Ken has suggested the bar has now been firmly set at a minimum of £37 for any new work coming from any W.P.
So where do poor old merloni go to now, and who really gives a fuck unless the deal is right and the safeguards are in place.
Regards as ever Del
Re: Merloni
Bloody hell, you lot have been busy this morning!
To address the direct/indirect question, we can do this and make it work FOR US not for anyone else and this is the line I propose that we take with offers like Hotperloni, for smaller brands it’s not so important…
We take the same line as the likes of CDSL, we insist on a minimum term with guaranteed call volumes as in a minimum call volume across the network. We also insist on a 2 year contract with a review at 18 months to renew that contract or to arrange the discontinuation of it. 6 months gives us a lot more time than we’ve ever had to re-organise things and return stock etc., which would of course be built-in to the contract as well.
Remember, we’re the ones with the power here as we have what they need, we do not need them anywhere near as badly as they need us and we have to realise that and take charge of the situation. This is the reason that I said that the door was open for Merloni to talk to us, note US! Not to put too fine a point on it, the people that can read this forum have the ability to control a god bit of the independent repair trade, certainly enough to make a big difference as has been repeatedly shown.
What we can do is simply forward any proposal of work offers to the industry to the Advisory Council and work in conjunction with the Directors of UKW, that should allow us here almost full, if not total control of the situation whilst looking nice and smiley on the outside.
We can do stuff like that directly Kevin, we just build in the same or better safegaurds as those offered elsewhere and, in fact, it’s safer in some regards to go that route if it’s done properly.
Alex, never say never. 😉
If I thought I could screw Merloni for you and others it would take me a heartbeat to think about it, but as you all know I will never force anything on anyone, it’s not my way. What we can do is get a deal that suits us and makes us money as the shoe’s on the other foot now. GIAS are another one that will soon have serious problems and I’ve already had several calls from them wanting bailed out on a call-by-call basis. I have refused and will continue to do so until they put something sensible on the table.
IMHO, NESN or any other WP would be incapable of handling the volumes on direct OEM service and CDSL would struggle as it’s done on a shoestring with no spares mark up. Sticking any kind of handling or admin fee on that kind of work is a non-starter. CDSL may be in a position to deal with it but I very much doubt that any volume manufacturer ould go that way due to the costs and politics unless it suited them to have CDSL handling their spares distribution too.
All of which is moot until whatever one of them decides to come talk to us, but we have got the pieces almost in place to cope with being able to at least talk to these people.
K.
Re: Merloni
I can tell you CDSL are talking to someone at this time and have been for a while. They did the Merloni bid 6 months ago and will take this nesn thing as an ace in their hand, given that i know that CDSL bid was for 2 years with parts distribution as well with tech back up and training along with £37.50 per call …well you can bet the deal just got stronger from a CDSL point of view. To top this I really do (know)think they are some way into negotiations with Gias, cant confirm it is gias yet but Im positive theres a deal not very far away. (November)
So if this deal goes through Merloni won’t be able to go to CDSL. I also know CDSL have several companies on hold on the understanding that when the capacity in the CDSL network can cope then negotiations will start.
As always keep stum or my info will dry up….it comes from the very top and we need this advantage, shhhhh.kevin
More when I can and when I can release it
Re: Merloni
Kevin I think you may be right. I picked up on the Gias thing a couple of weeks ago, and Dave Parker would not be drawn into a converation on it. He told me what now appears to be common Knowlege regards Merloni, how they approached etc. All about the 2 years etc. But he would not be drawn into anything on Candy/Gias. He does admit they have something fairly big in the pipeline which will kick in early January 05.
Want a laugh, Gias in Bolton tried to pass yet another call to us yesterday. I don’t understand what part of piss off they don’t understand. I’m still awaiting my reply from Tony Games re. the letter I sent August 1999 They still owe me money from the last time I helped them on a gas call. They agreed to pay £60 but only paid £25.75 & I was stuck with the bits because they replaced the machine due to their delay. I refused to pay for the parts and eventually their demands dried up. I’ll put that bit into the main forums one day in the week.
Alex
Here’s what you’re not getting I don’t think…
You’re a manufacturer and you have your own spares warehousing and distribution set up, CDSL is a CUSTOMER that pays in bucket loads of cash a year to you, would you want to hand over the reigns to them? Of course you wouldn’t as you’d then lose control of your own spares and could be held to ransom in part by them. Now, not every company thinks that way as some just want to offload the problem of spares and service, but not too many and certainly none of the big boys would want to walk that path without some serious consideration. The Italians would only do so if they were backed into a corner and forced to do it, under no other circumstances would an Italian firm operate under that policy, it’s just not their way.
Alex knows as well as I what the Italians are like, if they don’t have a controling interest in the operation then they ain’t interested without some other objective in mind. That’s not personal at all, merely the Italian way of doing business and they’re all the bloody same, from Fiat to Candy. They also operate a very effective “divide and conquer” principle in both sales and service and since it works many of the others simply follow that lead.
There are exceptions to prove the rule, like De Longhi, but they have not got the clout in the UK to be in a position to demand anything.
For a WP like CDSL getting the little scraps like LG, Elba/Kenwood and a spattering of others onboard is not a problem as it represents, to them, a one-stop solution to their woes. It gets shot of the service issues, coverage problems and any need to run an expensive spares distribution centre. As I say, fine if you’re a small player. For the big boys the rules change radically as they already have that infrastructure in their businesses and have had for many years and it is not something that they will easily give up.
Let’s look at GIAS, they spent a couple of million or so about 5 years ago on Bolton introducing new systems in the spares warehouse, do you really think that the Fumigali’s will write that off so soon? If you know the Fumigali family as Alex and I do the answer is obvious and catagoric. What they may do is some kind of deal on service work with a limited distribution on spares to get them out the hole they’re in, beyond that who knows. GIAS right now is very hard to predict as it’s been very quiet on that front of late and anyone that knows anything in the camp is gone now. We all know they have service problems, but then who doesn’t right now? The only one that’s problem free-ish is Lux and that’s only because they’ve already been badly burned and come out the other side of it, whether it’s right or not now I don’t know as I’m not involved any longer but I suspect there are still a good few issues there.
WP’s like CDSL, NESN, ISDAL et all are strong on insurance work as they can (especially CDSL) provide continuity on spares pricing, which is the big bugbear for the insurers as labour rates are easy to set, in other areas they are not so strong. In the area of technical information and training, irrepective of what we do, the manufacturer provides far better dedicated support and always will do I think. The WP’s may get better but they’ve a long way to go there.
Also for a manufacturer, employing a couple of bodies to zip around the country monitoring the agents is no great shakes where there is dedicated agents to a postal area, for a WP it is an issue it would appear. And, whilst CDSL do do this to a degree, how well will they cope when the work is spread over two or three tiers and will a major manufacturer accept that their customer may be visited by any one of three agents in a given postcode? Simple, no they generally will not accept that as then there’s no brand loyalty by the agent.
So whilst I do believe that CDSL will continue to make great gains in the insurance market side I have my doubts on the warranty side. Then you have the politics that are played out, just look at the shit that the Lux group debacle has caused.
The other massive, massive danger for CDSL is that they take on too much and that is a real danger, frankly I can’t see their current network being able to cope with the projected call numbers currently being touted about. If that happens and the quality of service drops then you’ll start to see some true colours and frantic scurrying as to expand your business you need to be able to train, to train you need to be well enough paid, to get paid you need to be able to do the work… I’m sure you get the picture.
Only time will tell on much of this though, we’ll just have to sit back and see what shakes out over the next few months.
K.
Re: Merloni
Ken,
You say that we insist on a 2 year contract, whats to stop work providers renaging on these contracts. They don’t have to pull out of the contract they just stop supplying work as this has been done in the past. There appears to be no sure thing in this industry.
When colleges say they will not work no way no how with a manufacturer or work porvider , I personally think this is a bit short sighted. None of us should ever burn our bridges as you never know just what is round the corner. You never know what was once the worst supplier of work, be it a network or manufacturer may eventually become one of the best. Pigs might fly I know but we need to be one step ahead of the game.
Over the years we have all had bad experiences and no doubt will all go through rough times in the future, but now with better communications such as UKW we are all a lot better equipped to stand together and fight for a better industry for us all.
Re: Merloni
Dead easy Jason, you build in financial penalties to stop them renaging on their deals. Unlike most other industries we’ve been stupid sheep for far too long and it’s about time we changed that and I think that we do have the power to do that if we so wish. Let’s face it, without employed engineers or us to use as such any WP or manufacturer is entirely powerless and, in effect, at our mercy.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not on about burning any bridges at all, there’s really no need to do so. However there is a requirement to all start singing the same tune and, as has been shown by the way rates have gone over the past 18 months, all saying the same thing has produced the desired effect. There has been and, doubtless, will be more casualties along the way but likewise, sitting about maintaining the status quo will also produce casualties and probably more.
Working only under certain conditions is far easier than not working for any manufacturer or provider and also very easy to explain by citing staffing levels or the need for certain financial hurdles to be overcome. We can do that without arousing much suspicion beyond the fact that we’re all talking the same talk and yes, that is a conspiricy. Price fixing it is not as we are not setting a price, merely supporting the consensus of a suggested rate and we wouldn’t all accept the same rate anyway.
You’re right though, there is no such thing as a sure thing in this industry. But can we change it?
K.
Re: Merloni
Jason I take your point over control of the work and the fact that when a manufacturer wants to take the work away he does not stand by his own stated change over period of three months as per Merloni they pulled their work back within two weeks.
What would stop them would be if there were a clause that said that they would have to pay your average bill for the change over period just as CDSL had to pay NESN for doing sweet F.A. when CDSL wanted to do it themselves.
Surley to god we’ve all learnt a few lessons over the last 18 months in this trade. We hav’nt even learnt the lessons of our own strength yet.
We moaned about NESN, now they are a shadow of what they once were.
We moaned about GBDAR, their agents are leaving in droves and retailers dont want to stock servis as a result of overpriced spares and poor service. Plus the fact that they admit themselves they cant get work from anywhere because their reputation has been splashed all over this site.
We moaned about Merloni, we have all seen them running around like headless chickens trying to get somone to do their work, and even when they try bribery it still does’nt work, because people who read this site have taken our warnings onboard.
The only ones who have taken heed of the warnings from this site are CDSL and ISDAL who have enough sense to go to both dasa and ukw meetings to keep themselves abrest of what we are thinking.
If we ever woke up to our own strength then we would be a force to be reckoned with. I fully realise that we are not the whole trade (YET) but even now there are enough of us to make a significant difference to the plans of any manufacturer or W.P who needs help from the independant trade.
As ever JMHO Del
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