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I’m curious.
How do you guys deal with no fault found (NFF) calls?
I know it’s PITA and many don’t want to talk about it, it’s a taboo subject for a lot of people and companies.
But some people are aware, a select few I will admit, I have been doing a heap of research into consumer behaviours, habits and so on as well as warranty fraud, retail fraud and return fraud. It is a growing problem and there is scant academic research into the area but, what is there, seems to concur with my own assumptions and findings.
Given that the bulk of you guys will do some agency work at least how do you deal with this? How are you dealing with it as the instances increase is what I’m getting at because, in the past it’s not been a huge problem really. A major PITA to deal which I grant you when it did happen though.
For the Feb conference in March I’m trying to piece together the best and worst ways to deal with such things across various industries as some (believe it or not) have it worse than we do in this regard.
Some service centres get all aggressive about it (very bad), some are a bit lacklustre about it which usually comes back to bite, some just defraud the manufacturer (I expect not many will own up to that) and some just seem to have a way to navigate through it and deal with it very well. The last option is what I would like to see for WTA members obviously. The others, not so much for what is mooted as the creme de la creme of the industry, I’d far rather that the value of clients choosing to use WTA businesses is sacrosanct. So, I’m trying to get a jump on this.
All the more so as there’s possibly new legislation coming online that may well make this a massive issue for us and many other industries. Therefore it may well prove to be very, very important indeed.
Couple what may well happen, even in a diluted form, with how we deal with this stuff could be hugely important to repairers so my intention is to explain this stuff in a way that really isn’t doable without writing a really boring essay about it all.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’d rather pinch tips from you lot. 😉
All the while, I want to know what you think about what manufacturers and retailers do to either help this problem, ignore it or cause it. Then with enough information, I can beat them up about it.
K.
Re: NFF
K
I speak only for us.
Before we do anything we understand exactly what the manufacturer wants to do with such calls, some will say a catergoric no, some will say call us and we will review on a case by case basis, one says just get the customer off our back and keep them happy.
Before we attend the call, we speak to the customer and have them agree to certain things, like the charge to be paid if they are out, the charge if it’s misuse and the charge for no fault founds.
This conversation is recorded for evidential purposes. The customer is fully aware if this from the outset and we take there full name as part if the process.
On attendance, the engineer asks them to sign his job sheet showing he attended, and the time he arrived, this document also forms part if our terms and conditions of business and two clauses within it which join the customer in joint and several liability for the debt being created for the call.
In the event if a NFF the engineer simply records this on his job sheet and asks the customer to sign to accept that is the case and then leaves.
We do not charge the customer at this point.
The next working day, our admin centre review the overnight engineer updates and,depending on the client, will either contact them for authorisation to bill a NFF, or automatically bill it to the client or send an invoice and letter to the customer for payment.
Should the client decline the request to authorise a bill for a NFF we then just the customer.
If the customer doesn’t pay up within seven days of the invoice, we issue a LBA letter before action point out we will proceed to court unless payment is received within a further 7 days, and that costs will be added to the account.
10 days later we issue proceedings if the bill is not paid.
By joining the customer to the original liability and getting them to signing the job sheet and having the telephone recording the customer does not have a defence to the liability and if we want to really get down and sh1tty with it vomits an act of fraud by obtaining goods and services by deception.
What we find is most warranty providers decide to pay us then block the customer from further warranty calls as they know full well what we will do and the problems our actions cause.
Thankfully we have very few that cause an issue, perhaps 20 or so got escalated to court summons being issued in the last year our of 36000 jobs.
We have more cancel the job before we attend than find problems later. which we assume means they have gone away to resolved it themselves!
I firmly believe in getting the front end sorted first, we stop problems at the end of the job. However, it costs a lot of time, effort and money getting the systems into place to do this.
HTH
Jackal
Re: NFF
Jackal wrote: However, it costs a lot of time, effort and money getting the systems into place to do this.
This is where I think the problem would be for some engineers. This, and the grief of trying to invoice the customers for something they think should be covered under their warranty.
This, I feel, may lead to some engineers taking the easy way out and “inventing” faults. Which takes us back to the old “wire off the pump” scenario.
My personal view on it is that the Manufacturers/Wp’s should be paying the engineers regardless( maybe a reduced rate) and invoicing the customer themselves. After all the engineer’s contract is with the Manufacturer/ WP and not the customer. The Manufacturer/ WP also have the leverage of “your warranty will be suspended if you do not pay” whereas an engineer taking a morning off work to attend a small claims court to recover £50 is not economically viable.Re: NFF
I agree with bazza. (Not a reduced rate though).
Its not the engineers fault after all.
I had a no spin call yesterday due to the spin selector being on no spin setting. I checked the machine over, cleaned it out & told the customer what they had done wrong. I charged my normal labour rate, why should I reduce my rate to fit their stupidity? I know this isn’t directly the same as in-guarantee work but its still my time getting there and doing the job.Re: NFF
I get that but, I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here and trying to point out some of the complexities involved here…
What if you’re the retailer?
Manufacturer sends the bill to the customer and either cancels the warranty due to customer breach of contract or threatens money with menaces from the customer. Customer kicks off (as is to be expected) storms back to the retailer and has a go at them after screaming down the phone or launching snotty emails to the brand owner/manufacturer. In part because they got a bill that would be inflated to cover admin and collection costs after all, the manufacturer has had to spend the time invoicing, then chasing etc.
At that point the retailer has no option but to plead the case with the manufacturer, pony up or, tell the customer to get lost and pay the bill because the repairer is still wanting paid, rightly so.
But who pays out on it?
It’s not the manufacturer’s problem, not a warranty issue.
Not the retailer, bog all to do with them really although I’m sure some vocal customer groups would argue otherwise.
Not the repairer’s fault either, they just did as asked.
Meanwhile the retailer vows never to sell that brand again and moves on, customer vows never to buy again from the retailer or brand and starts polluting the internet etc with verbal abuse about both.
It may seem a simple thing but sadly, the reality is that it really isn’t.
If you’re the retailer, you’ve just gotten a load of abuse and lost at least one customer but, quite likely, everyone that the aggrieved party can possibly tell about it. Whereas, if this is a service seller type setup then would it not be better that you had the option to be able to come to some other arrangement?
Of course, if you’re not servicing a product you sold you may take a different view or indeed if you are just servicing then the view could be different yet again.
Just for the sake of argument, say you sell a Stoves cooker, a Miele or a Bosch or a Hotpoint washer and there’s a call that is not covered. Stoves or whoever charges your customer and then demands money with menace then the customer comes back at you for that money to pay the bill or whatever. What do you do? Do you pay the bill for the customer, tell your customer to get lost or is there another option I’m not seeing?
In all of the above the rate charged is really a moot point.
I would point out that I am neither agreeing or disagreeing with anyone’s opinion or view on this, I’m just exploring the options and thoughts of others as it’s been a thorny subject since the dawn of time.
K.
Re: NFF
your questions ken can be answered but in 3 ways
as a retailer we would always get cx to ring us 1st on any product we sold so we could either advise over the phone or make a call and let the engineer make the decision over charging if the cx had made the mistake we would get something off them to keep their trade but not a full charge as to upset them.
as a repairer working for a manufacturer we would always report if its a nff and pass all the information back to them and let them make a decision on charging.
now the big one as a engineer working for a service provider I will admit to finding faults even if its a customer error as most providers will not pay for cx not in or no faults found this is the way it has been forced upon us by the sp they under pay us ,charge back sometimes several months later , refuse credits on returns and basically screw us on every job they can so why expect any favours from us if they want honest reports from us then it has to work both ways but this we all know will never happen and any cx will sign as pump fitted to avoid a £50-60 chargeRe: NFF
if I was a manufacturer, then I think i’d tell the service provider that I would pay for all nff call outs in return for a chapter and verse report on the appliance, the call and possibly the customer.
i’d offer this for probably a year, during which time the information feeding back could be collated and fully digested.
using the information, we could formulate some pretty in depth filter questions to be asked at the first point of contact.
after asking the questions, the customer would be made fully aware that if a nff scenario was present, then a charge would be levied and ultimately warranty cancelled on non payment.
im not sure how legally correct that would be, but surely something could be worked into the terms and conditions of the sale to make it so.
peter makes many a valid point above and I think the manufacturers totally bring it on themselves when they read over and over again that the connector has been replaced on the pump.Re: NFF
Part of the reason that this has come up again and, seems to persist, is that as we all know, customers are getting worse or more demanding. Many seem to feel that regardless of what the issue is, if the machine is in warranty, that they should be indemnified from all cost or responsibility and that’s obviously not true.
There are any number of things that bug me on this topic.
One is that some repairers seem to think it’s okay to more or less blatantly lie as they feel forced to do so in order to get paid, some just appear to do it as a matter of course. Some service sellers do it as a “customer service” and so on. Some do it and “fit” parts that magically turn up as van stock or on Ebay.
It does not apply to all but, there are a number that do some or even all of the above.
Like I said though, it’s not just us that are affected. The PC service industry is worse still.
What that’s led to is a culture of mistrust in some regards which is really very sad but based on figures from SAP warranty fraud costs industry about $50 Billion (yes, billion) a year.
Even for just us in the appliance industry it’s millions per year in the UK alone so, it’s a problem that a number of brands are looking at. They’re analysing spares usage, call patterns, reported fault against claim and so on in a bid to reduce that cost.
Many I’ve spoken to are looking at returns to filter poor fault diagnosis and so on in addition to the above in the bid to cut down on exchanges.
Service providers that they find “lacking” will we say, are getting quietly dropped.
I’m concerned that we don’t end up back in the bad old days where, if you were found to be falsifying a claim you could be fined under the T&Cs of the contract. Candy and others used to do it to dissuade fraudulent claims being put through.
With customers getting worse there seems to be a rise in it. Whether that is true or not isn’t really relevant, the fact that the repairer can get put under a magnifying glass is the relevant bit whether the repairer did something wrong or not.
It may well be that the systems to detect this stuff have gotten better and more sophisticated which I strongly suspect is the case. Although there does appear to be a growth in nut job customers as well.
The danger for repairers, as I see it, is that they can be lulled into the notion that “ah, it’s only the odd one” when a manufacturer sees scores of them a week, then that call becomes just one of many that are on the “suspected fraud” pile. To be brutally honest, I do it with ISE and I know 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} that others do exactly the same thing.
Where it’s volume work, it’s just a statistical analysis thing coupled with some random sampling.
SAP, who do systems for big companies and most use it or a variant, have a module built in to detect fraud. Big Brother really is watching would be the point.
From my own perspective what we do is shunt as much work as we can to the companies that we know are sound and don’t do anything wrong. Less problems, less hassle for us as you will generally find that they are more clued up and better repairers anyway.
I’m pretty confident that others do the same.
I do know from conversations that certain warranty companies will move people off top tier or just not send them any work if they see the parts usage is too high or, the claims don’t add up in some way. But, that’s an aside here.
What I’m trying to get to is a system to deal with it that would be acceptable to everyone to try to deal with this garbage, you will never get it 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} right 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the time but, I think you could kill a lot of it.
The plan that we came up with for in warranty calls was allowing the engineer to charge in the first instance.
Calls placed on hold until that’s paid.
After a set period the call then billed to the manufacturer to be paid by them.
Invoice (much higher) sent to the customer as this gives them the incentive to pay the engineer rather than get slapped with a bigger bill and 28 days to pay it for example. If unpaid, the warranty gets cancelled and no further calls accepted.
It wouldn’t suit everyone and I don’t know how workable it is for some repairers but, it’s a starting point.
K.
Re: NFF
hi ken
I think we could write a manual the size of war and peace on warranty calls both customer and engineers but the main crux of the problems are caused by service providers themselves .they all want 1st call fix but don’t give us the information to do this,(machine wont work )they also want 3 months warranty on the appliance (pump blocked last month now bearings gone). they send out second hand parts . they refuse payment on jobs because serial numbers don’t match there system. and the biggest problem is they pay peanuts. I never have put false info to any manufacture or agency that treats us with respect as its not the way we do things but service providers are are a different kettle of fishRe: NFF
One of the problems we have found is that the customers are being sold a dream scenario
“if it goes wrong then we will fix it ” just pay us your monthly payment and your problems are solved.We know that is not the case,but the look on the customers face when they have it pointed out to them that they are not covered for a blockage on their policy is priceless at times .
I had a blocked standpipe recently and was berated by the customer as no one had told her she wasn’t covered for plumbing faults.
We now have a copy of the D&G exclusions laminated so the engineer can show the customer when they have conveniently left their policy at work .
Samsung have a one strike system i.e they will allow one FOC call for non mechanical and electrical faults .
but then you have Smeg who will not cover NFF’S ,but will roll over and do a FOC repair on a machine that is 3 years old.Like Peter says you could write war and peace
Lawrence
Re: NFF
Nail on the head Lawrence to a degree.
The other problem is that people THINK that they’re completely covered either by warranty or by legislation, a la the six year rule. Then you have the idiots in the media openly telling people to try it on.
So they do.
Often with the poor repairer who all too often has little understanding to absolutely no clue about the law and just capitulates as that’s easier.
But you get the point from the rest, it’s not a simple thing at all and there’s a number of factors in play.
Pete, I’m not accusing anyone of anything, I get why engineers do what they do as I’ve done it myself, I’d be a liar to claim otherwise and I would think that most if not all have taken the easy route at times.
What I’m trying to highlight is that increasingly that is becoming an option that isn’t open and that, if you get caught at it, there could be dire consequences. My beef there is not that engineers do it but, if they get caught they’re in the cart for it and, technically, it is fraud.
For a manufacturer it’s not worth pursuing legally so, if it was me and I have done this, I’d just ditch the repairer and move on.
I guess that in part the question has to be, is it worth it for the sake of a callout?
Let me elaborate a bit, I talk to any number of people in the industry and I know who are the shining lights in most areas of the country. Now hypothetically, if it’s someone I like and don’t want to do any harm to then I might recommend the guys I know do a good job and are usually as honest as the day is long. If I don’t like them and I don’t want them using my preferred agents then I might say I don’t know or throw a few suggestions that might not be the best options. More likely in reality, I’d probably just abstain and throw a list of names and let them figure it out for themselves.
But if it’s someone that I thought was doing me over, I might not and really stick the knife in.
I talk to Manufacturer A, he talks to B, he talks to C and so on and on down the line it goes. By the tim it gets past C if you’ve stepped out of line, you may as well be Attila The Hun, at least by reputation.
But that doesn’t really matter in some measure because Joe, Dave, Kermit and Mickey have already queered the pitch for everyone by taking the proverbial meaning everyone gets viewed as a potential criminal rather than an asset.
I know the agents that I can trust, most of them well. They don’t take the Mick out of me, I don’t take the Mick out them. They call me up and ask stuff after they’ve used their noodles and I try to help as best I can.
You don’t often get a problem but it can happen from time to time but normally sorting it doesn’t involve soft toys leaving the pram. Common sense prevails on almost all occasions thankfully, from both sides.
What irks me on this is that some manufacturers/clients take the wee on this and some repairers are just as bad then you throw in idiot punters and that gives us all a bad rap.
Lawrence is correct though, knowing the rules of the game and playing inside them is the best way if possible IMO.
He is also correct in that, when those rules get shifted under your feet it just undermines the repairer and that’s bad IMO, very bad. I also suspect that this is the reason we hit a lot of the problems we do in this area.
Customer doesn’t care, they’ve moved on to be someone else’s problem.
Manufacturer/client doesn’t care, you’re not their problem any longer.
Person that stands to lose the most, the repairer.
K.
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