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Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
(quote) Cooperation through communication is the future you are seeking. By helping ourselves help ourselves the only effective solution to our success and ultimate survival.
Yes yes yes! Thats what i like about UKW and all ways have and am sure it woldn’t become a cartel as we would all be part of it and not just a few people with the pretense of “working for everyone” and keeping it all to themselves. No i’ve not been to a meeting for a while and i don’t have much input but the future is not bleak and there will always be plenty out there. This is a proffesion and recognition is good but with it comes cost and paperwork. I think recognition the UKW way will keep this to a minimum so all can be included rather than using the cost to get rid of the little guy.
Nige
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
Sean, as i have already stated, i would sooner be part of a group that has that intention, ie WTA, but i want to be sure of the intentions before signing on the dotted line. A group will have a louder voice than little old me.
As far as traing goes, over 20 years ago i use to train engineers for a company up in Leicester. I trained 4 engineers down here, 2 of which run there own repair businesses in other parts of the country, 1 still works for me and the other has left the industry.Nigel
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
Martin,
That was quite simply the best post you ever made !
congratulations
Sean
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
DrDill wrote:1) having read Aidrians post about the plan for WTA and you post saying your against regulation as it creates a mini cartel such as Gas Safe and Part P, if the WTA achieves its aims would that not be then another mini cartel?, the very thing you said your opposed too, are you for this or against it?
The point is that the WTA is a voluntary organisation, you are not forced to join it. It has no set labour rates, recommended rates or anything else other than what market forces dictate, that is set by the repairers and what they will accept as a contract rate. This is usually decided upon by the client more or less dictating what rate will be offered or, what the lowest price they can get is in some cases.
Without a culture change from the repairers that is unlikely to alter.
Despite where the WTA ends up and do bear in mind that I am not the WTA and do not run the WTA but advise them as I do DASA among others, I find it unlikely that any association would set rates and, in all honesty, I don’t think that they should.
What the WTA does look toward is forming a group of better repairers operating to a standard that is government recognised, already exists and is known and recognised by the general public. This makes them worth more than those that are not.
That may well be just a first step, who knows where it will lead. It’s not possible to guess what will happen after that is accomplished.
However I do not think that this makes the WTA a mini cartel especially since the members live or die by the service that they provide in terms of membership, therefore there is no favouritism or exclusion. If a repairer performs and meets the criteria, they’re more than welcome to be a part of the TA. If they cannot or will not meet the criteria then that is their choice and I can respect that.
DrDill wrote:2) I do feel strongly about making this trade recognised, and as i said to Aidrian on saturday i will support the WTA in its aims and would have no problems in helping in any way i can, i want to get the trade recognised and in return hopefully then the Profession can charge fair and honestly for its services. It was because at the meeting on friday these aims were not clearly laid out, now i have been told what the aims are, i understand where the WTA want to go. What is your opinion, if the WTA become recognised in a few years time are you going to decline membership because you are against regulation and mini cartels?
The trade can charge what they want now, becoming recognised in any shape or form is not liable to change that.
The fact is that if you agree to do work at a cost then you do so under your own steam. End of.
You have the choice to say no at any point.
Same, if the WTA or what it was doing didn’t suit my business or sit well with me then yep, I’d be the first one to say so and decline to be a member. But that’s my choice. To remove the choice and say that you have to be a member in order to trade creates a monopolistic model that I probably would not support.
Just as Martin says, many of us have survived because we we don’t have such a system foisted on us. It would also involve (I think) a burdensome cost to the repairers who, on the current margins that they are pretty much forced to operate with, can ill afford it. That was my view several years ago and, to date, remains the same.
All that said this conversation has been had before and the possibility of being “recognised” in some way has been spoken of many times. The conclusion is always the same, you need to fix the broken bits before you can possibly even have a shot at it.
For example, we have the problem of new blood into the trade (risen in this or another thread recently again) and once again it comes down to one simple reality, there isn’t high enough salaries to support people to actually want to come into the trade.
DASA have saved the NVQ and I had two thoughts, one was good for them and well done. The other was, what’s the point?
Now, before anyone kicks off on the last one I’ll explain, if we cannot get young people actually wanting to be repairers then there’s no demand to the colleges etc. to run the course. If colleges don’t run the course then you don’t have anywhere for people to get qualified to come into the trade.
Catch 22.
But over and above that, the businesses out there now can’t afford to train or take on trainees as they don’t have the margins to support it. So they’re not going to send anyone to get an NVQ because they can’t afford to be training staff and, even if they could scrape that out it, they probably couldn’t afford to pay for the NVQ or the time from an employee to go do it.
Another Catch 22.
Without the NVQ and/or a form of recognised qualification in the field, recognition as a “trade” is pretty much impossible.
Yet another Catch 22.
The trade at large out there are totally disinterested in getting an NVQ bar a few exceptions, I know, we tried. There’s no legal reason, no business imperative or advantage and certainly no greater reward and therefore no incentive or motivation.
I could go on but, in short, there are a mountain of obstacles in the way and unless anyone has any ideas on how to overcome all this what you are proposing is extremely unlikely to happen. Even if it were to happen, it’d take years to accomplish, probably well in excess of a decade.
In the face of all this I disagreed with the path taken by DASA, no big secret there, as I didn’t think what they were trying to do was achievable and, certainly not in the way that it was being attempted. So I left.
You need to attack the core of the problem first and the core of it is simply that the repairers are not paid enough to reinvest in their own businesses. They earn enough to make a living, some a better living than others, but a living nonetheless. Some get caught in the trap of volume and don’t actually look at whether or not they are in profit, simply working to keep people employed or the business ultimately fails.
And as a general overview I reckon that’s pretty much where we’re at.
Doing something about all this mess is incredibly complex and will take time. There’s no magic cure and the WTA is trying to do what it can but no one organisation is going to sort all this out itself.
K.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
Martin wrote:The only help we need comes from within our own ranks by giving and sharing information much as we always have done here on UKW.
Cooperation through communication is the future you are seeking. By helping ourselves help ourselves the only effective solution to our success and ultimate survival.
Allsorts wrote:WTA and other bodies, including long standing engineers, would do well to piece together a Training tutorial that would give Engineers a standard of teaching for newcomers to surpass the current NVQ.
Hear the echo? ….. Well said Martin
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
Ken, i think you have answered my points, and i agree with you views mostly, my ultimate fear is joining the WTA and putting the effort in and see it go the way of DASA and lose its independance, i would appear that my dream of professional recognition would be hard to achieve, but i think if it did it wouldnt neccessary incur lots of paperwork/costs because at the end of the day the body (WTA) would decide on the relevent level of paperwork and code of practice.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
Del wrote:That was quite simply the best post you ever made !
Oh shucks Sean, get away with you, I string a few sentences together that make sense occasionally. But appreciate your comments nonetheless, thanks. 😳
Oh, I will add just one extra comment though on the subject………..
Trade Associations in some way may have a part to play in the future of this profession but only by virtue of companies and sole traders joining so that their coat hangs next to all the others in the cloakroom. In doing so they can be seen and recognised by the trade and public alike as conforming to a certain standard that association requires, a kind of Trade Directory as it were. The more seen on the list the more recognition that association and its members will be recognised both within and without the profession.
The only unfortunate thing about that idea is that, taking DASA as an example, they only have around 90 or so members, including associate members, so not much of an overall representation of the total trade potential that’s actually out there. Hence can be regarded as a hardly representative potential toward a co-ordinated profession.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
See Martin, you can do it when you try. 😉
The problem is Nigel that often people only see one tiny part of the problem that affects only them and, quite rightly, want to tackle that little tip of the iceberg, but miss the rest of it. I’m sure I miss stuff as well.
Professional recognition would be, at best, difficult but more likely not possible and certainly not possible without jumping through several very tricky hoops first.
What the WTA are trying to do, quite rightly IMO, is use the system/s that are already there to lever the trade at as little a cost as possible to all concerned. I think that’s a sensible and pragmatic way to do things and it minimises risk. It probably won’t suit everyone though and, that’s absolutely fine.
The bulk of the costs I was talking about would likely fall to the membership though. Costs of travel to London to beat up civil servants, cost of administration, telephones and a raft of other things all have to be met. Presently the WTA gets a lot of this donated to them by various members and friends within the industry but, to expand the effort could prove very costly.
What costs there would be to members to do whatever government levied, I have no clue. But, if I look at Gas Safe as an example, it probably wouldn’t be either cheap or easy as Martin pointed out. Apart from which I don’t think I’d be tremendously happy with the HSE dictating how the trade was to operate as they’d probably c*ck it up.
To address your point about DASA and independence I will assume that you mean having manufacturers or work providers sitting on the council. Can I just say that, if that were ever to happen, I’d leave never mind anyone else. It’s an organisation to represent repairers and repairer’s interests, end of chat. It has to remain that way in order to serve the purposes it was formed for IMO.
K.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
I’m not sure there is a future in this trade, I call it a “trade”, it is certainly not a profession and never will be.
I’m only a one man band, I do not employ anyone, I work from home, so my overheads are low. I make a living but not a fortune and never will do if I stay in this trade.
In my view it has had it’s day, it is now in decline, slow but steady decline.
When I left school in the early 70s the TV repair trade was making a fortune. I had worked in the local TV shop after school since I was 12 years old, I went to technical college at 16 and got qualified, at that time it was seen as a job for life, TV’s would always need repair. We even fixed electric kettles and steam irons, toasters radios record players tape recorders etc in fact just about everything that had a plug on it, except white goods.Business was booming, the man I worked for was opening a new shop every 4 months all over London, he was earning a mint. Back then TV repair shops were everywhere and always busy TV rental was big business too.
By the early 80s it all started to go pear shaped, valves were no longer in use in the new sets, so reliability got better, things like toasters and electric kettles got very cheap, nobody bothered to bring them in for repair. The first microchips started to appear in TV’s at that time they were called integrated circuits. TV’s get even more reliable, or un repairable.
At this point I left TV and got a job in white goods, and just at the right time looking back on it.
Where are all the TV repair businesses now, all gone.
TV’s now have to be sent back to the manufacturer as it is now almost impossible to fit parts on surface mounted boards or get any kind of technical info.This trade is on the same slippery slope, we already have sealed drums modules that need to be programmed and very little technical info being sent out to the small business.
Things will only get worse over time. it is only a matter of time before, only the manufacturer can repair a machine.
In a few years only the simplest of faults could be sorted by the man from the shop, and there will simple not be enough work to keep you in a repair only business.
Big stores, the likes of Tesco on line, will be selling white goods delivered free and at silly prices.I bet a few of you will shoot me down in flames, with opposing views of how it will all be fine, but in reality I think you are kidding yourselves.
The writings already on the wall, there won’t be a white goods repair business in 20 years from now.
The big firms, that are springing up with money to throw at big advertising budgets will do well for now, they will have made there money in the next few years, then moved on to the next big investment.
I’m such a cheerful soul. 😉Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
I agree with Martin wholeheartedly, especially when he says, “I string a
few sentences together that make sense occasionally.” He really did for
once 😆 .
I can’t see why anyone should want to keep this trade going on forever,
unless they have offspring who they want to see continue flogging the
same dying equine. Why not let it die if that is what happens? The
people who are good at this job will survive quite easily in some other
trade, be it plumbing or computer maintenance or whatever needs fixing
because fixing stuff is what doing this job teaches you. What we get
paid will be dictated by what people are willing to pay. That in turn
will be dictated largely by the price of the potential replacement.
Regulation? No thanks. Not if it means more paperwork and jumping
through arbitrary hoops dreamed up by people with little “shop floor”
experience but all the right certificates.
There’s a lot of talk about cowboys and kicking them out but I’m not so
sure there are so many of them out there, nor that they can do much harm
to those who have established customer bases or who are willing to do a
bit of honest work to build a base. I think a lot of that stuff just
comes from casting around looking for someone to blame for the
diminishing workload.
Training future engineers? With technology advancing so fast it’s tough
enough keeping up yourself. Anything you can’t teach in a couple of
weeks (say six, if you’re covering all electrical appliances) will be
out of date by the time the course finishes.
Just my twopence worth.
Actually, I wrote this last night but only decided to post it when Gazman dared to write something similar.
Mike.Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
I don’t agree.
I don’t think that the repair industry is quite ready to curl up and die just yet.
Unless there’s some new technology that will replace cooking, cooling and laundering. But then, the new technology will probably need fixed too.
K.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
kwatt wrote:I don’t agree.
I don’t think that the repair industry is quite ready to curl up and die just yet.
Unless there’s some new technology that will replace cooking, cooling and laundering. But then, the new technology will probably need fixed too.
K.
Back in the 70s If someone said there would be no TV repair shops in 30 years everone would have laughed. Lets just look back a few years in this trade, at a common machine and it’s common faults that kept us busy and earning, the good old Hotpoint 95 series.
Brushes stuck, caused by the over heating of the motor because the machine would try to go into spin full of water if the filter became blocked.
New technology came along and the machines will not spin if the drum has water in it, likewise it wont spin if the load is uneven, the result is less faulty motors and bearings they don’t fail as often as they did, and we could change a bearing and shaft, not possible on a sealed tub and how many customers are happy to pay repair bills over £100, machines are far cheaper now.
The old style mechanical timers got burns on the heater terminals, half the time a new spade connector and a clean and the machine was up and running again.
You can’t get away with that on new timer modules, another regular fault gone.
Who could have predicted that a timer would need to be programmed with a smart card after fitting it, 15 years ago that was not possible.
New technology has not made the job easier in fact it just adds to the list of thing we no longer need to be called out for.Before long only a few faults will be repairable and left profitable for the independents, with less suitable profitable work around how will we survive, we can’t charge more to compensate for the lost revenue It’s hard enough getting them to pay repair bills now, they just buy a new machine if we out price our services.
It will not get better for any of us with any new technology. In fact new technology will be the final nail in this trades coffin. We can all bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not going to change, but deep down we all know it is only a matter of time.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
There still are TV and electronics repairers, just less of them. Most have also moved into other product areas such as mobile phone repairs, computer repairs both of which didn’t exist in the 70’s… new stuff, they adapted and moved on.
I’m sorry but you can’t live in the past.
The industry has changed and the repair market has shrunk, yes and there’s a plethora of reasons why that’s happened that I’m not going to go into right now. But in some ways the whitegoods have and is mirroring the browngoods side, the products have changed and the repair market has changed with it.
The days of running about changing sets of carbon brushes on Hoovers and Hotpoints are long gone and will never return.
We’ve moved on to integrated products, side by sides, range cookers and more technological products, many of which you can make a decent living on if you are prepared to work on them. People don’t throw these out carte blanche and will have repairs on them.
K.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
I know i asked the question, being the subject of this thread, but i do not think this industry is dead at all either, there will always be a home appliance to fix, and as Ken said it will just be more technical and we will need to be more skilled and trained on the products, we do a lot of built in appliance replacements and upgrades, its a very satisfying part of the business.
The benifit of the products being more technically advanced for me will mean that this trade will shed the not so qualified who dont wish to stay in the trade as they dont want or cant afford to invest in the new technology to carry out the repairs, this will leave in my opinion the companies that will have the better skills, the test equipment etc and hopefully by then this trade will be properly recognised and with some form of regulation/competence standards.
After my first attendance at a WTA meeting it brought many thoughts in my head, after thinking long and hard and discussions with others i now believe there is a brighter future ahead, it is now a fact that we can get a proper labour rate for repairs, if one manufacturer will pay it i am sure others will follow.I think we should all go out and hug a pole!!
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
kwatt wrote:There still are TV and electronics repairers, just less of them. Most have also moved into other product areas such as mobile phone repairs, computer repairs both of which didn’t exist in the 70’s… new stuff, they adapted and moved on.
I’m sorry but you can’t live in the past.
I’m not asking anyone to live in the past. All those that were in the Trade that I knew, have given it a go right up to the end. Some adapted and moved on like I did, others Simple went bust.
kwatt wrote:
The industry has changed and the repair market has shrunk, yes and there’s a plethora of reasons why that’s happened that I’m not going to go into right now. But in some ways the whitegoods have and is mirroring the browngoods side, the products have changed and the repair market has changed with itThe days of running about changing sets of carbon brushes on Hoovers and Hotpoints are long gone and will never return.
That was my point it has changed, but we as a trade can’t move on if there is no profit in repairs, a few side by side fridge repairs a month won’t keep you in business, the volume of work is slowly failing away, what ever you repair.
kwatt wrote:We’ve moved on to integrated products, side by sides, range cookers and more technological products, many of which you can make a decent living on if you are prepared to work on them.People don’t throw these out carte blanche and will have repairs on them.
K.Most of my profitable work is on these products, but there is not enough work to sustain a large number of repairers. In time appliances will get cheaper to replace. It’s not that long ago a crapy Samung was well over a grand. There was a time when nobody would throw away a colour TV. Who in their right mind spends money one repairing an old TV these days.
I’m not living in the past, I’m just being realistic, I’ve seen it all happen before. A few might survive but most of the smaller firms will be gone.
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