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Good evening everyone.
I’m still alive but naturally out of the loop. I’m putting this in here as don’t want to put my name to this in the open trade forums in case the facts are not as I have heard.
Quality Electrical of Bournemouth apparently has ceased trading. Not only covering Bournemouth but the city of Southampton as well so quite a large and affluent area.
Apart from the usual stuff that this industry finds itself in with constraints etc and all the other crap that goes on, I’m intrigued what might have gone wrong, moreover who would be most likely to take on the work?
I seem to recall there is a UKW member in that area and although I don’t know who, I wondered if any info had been picked up? Being I’m now in the realms of retired old farts I would be unlikely to pick anything up but wonder if anyone might have some rapport with any persons down that way who may have heard. Also there could be engineers looking for work.
Alex
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
I hadn’t heard Alex.
Is Respond not going to snap them up as well, they may as well as I think they’re going for the full set. 😉
It’s a shame but not really a shock, there’s a number of them that have dropped off in recent years and I still maintain that a large part of that harks back to what Lux did nigh on twenty years ago. But, in more recent times, just the way things are I expect with the rates eroded through the whole DAG thing, reduction of charge work and the poor warranty rates, it’s just sucked the life out of running a large service operation. Most are just clinging onto survival it seems.
When you look though, these days, where one has failed, there’s all too often not a single company about that can take it on though, certainly not the volumes for the likes of this in a built up area.
London, Birmingham and perhaps a few others you might have a chance but, for most of the UK, not a hope of finding cover to the degree required and certainly not quickly.
K.
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
It seems (as yet) Respond hasn’t been approached? The S/F agent in Aberdeen threw in the towel and SF have had to use JTM.
Point is as you say Ken, there might not be anyone on hand to take it on when you consider size of area, population and the criteria that needs to be adhered to. Then there are the staff, unless S/F get on with finding a replacement the existing staff will become displaced.
I don’t think there is anyone down there who could take it on, Whirlpool for example are using their Bristol agent.
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
It’s not that unusual Alex.
There’s several areas of the country that are in a similar position as, it seems, the days of the large service agents is pretty much over. Others have been caught in the same way and SF themselves a few times, as you say, Aberdeen is a good example and I believe there’s “issues” there at the moment.
Even if they wanted to employ they’ll struggle although I can’t see SF going down that road again in a hurry unless there is absolutely no other way.
K.
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
I didn’t suss that this was in here!
Basically, a lot of the bigger manufacturers are screwed every way from Sunday.
They can’t replace agents, there’s nobody to take on the volumes and, nobody in their right mind would invest into service like that now, you’d need to be criminally insane to do that.
So, threat of getting rid of them outside of London, hollow.
If they go bust, like this, they’re screwed again due to the “nobody to take on the volumes” so what they’ve been doing is carving it up among what they can cobble together or, in a number of cases, *forcing* the adjacent agent to take it on. Normally proceeded or interjected with the threat of pulling the work if they don’t which, is a hollow threat again.
If a few key agents for WP have issues, they’re fooked.
If Respond falls over, Lux is fooked.
Take out anything from 3-12 agents in almost any other “network” (I seriously hate that term) and they’re fooked also.
The reality is, there just isn’t the bodies on the ground to do it.
Knowing that, you can perhaps understand why Whirlpool/Hotpoint/Indesit are so royally screwed with this recall. There simply is not the capacity to do it across all as they all run to the wire with no spare capacity whatsoever, the reverse is almost always true.
Now, with this one going pop and you’re an employee, whatcha gonna do….
a. Go to Indesit and mend 10-15 dryers a day, four weeks paid holiday and so on?
b. Take a punt that whoever takes on the SF Agency will be any better or more secure than the last one proved to be?
c. Sod it and get out?
d. Go to BG or whatever?
Bearing in mind, they’re now out of contract and have a statutory redundancy payout but, to maximise that, they want to be employed again PDQ, especially as they won’t have been paid this month.
I doubt very much they’ll be hanging about waiting on Lux deciding what to do.
K.
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
Yes I put it the War Room as I didn’t want to go public without some substantiated info. Would be nice to do some “kite flying” but I’m best keeping a low profile.
The owner (Martin Benham, tosser to the extreme) was on the fiddle. Basically among other things including poor service he was selling back to Lux more than he was buying, and that was not because he bought elsewhere. They made a visit to him and dropped some stuff in front of him asking for an explanation. Seems like that he threw in the towel on the spot.
He lost Beko about 3 years ago, and they were the best payers when I was a S/F agent. D&G had approached an independent (Christchurch Domestic) and asked them to undertake Lux work.
That would never have happened in Alan Steward’s time. So in my opinion the “High Value Service Criteria” and the reputation we all respected with S/F is now called into question. After all they are only as good as their worst agent.
As I suspected JTM are doing the warranty work, God help everyone!!
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
I don’t know him Alex.
But if he was doing that, chances are it was to make ends meet as, it’s a hell of a risk with Lux to do that.
Beko have employed engineers in some high volume areas so, that may be the reason he lost that.
No, Alan would have had them hoisted up on a cross long ago. No way that’d have happened they now appear to care more about getting a body to the door than much else. But, give control to idiot middle managers and accountants…
So SF have gone to JTM there as well, interesting. I wonder if they are aware of what’s gone on with Vestel and JTM?
K.
Re: Service Force Bournemouth
Vestel give them the bullet basically.
You’ll be happy though, Mr Feek is well pissed off about it I’m informed. 😉
They’ve lost all the Argos, Homebase, Sharp, Servis and God only knows what else, huge hit for them.
K.
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