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Martin wrote:Once upon a time long long ago……………….we took on agency work and accepted their paltry guarantee rates because of lots of chargeable repeat business out of warranty.
And on that note I had a classic example of a customer that had a Brandt machie that cost him about £500 four years ago yesterday. It needed a timer at over £108 plus VAT and he has decided to buy a new machine as he resented paying over 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the new cost to have on part in appliance replaced.
He asked me what appliance I’d recommend as a replacement that was worth having, cheap and easy to repair and a reasonable cost to buy and I have to admit I was a bit stumped at that one and could not recommend any appliance as a replacement, obviously he will never buy another Brandt appliance.
There seems to me to be very few machines out there worth the space that are not under restrictive service arrangements or expensive to repair, in many cases both!
So I stuck this in the public forums as I’d bet that this customer is not the only one in this position out there. Are there any appliances worth buying out there that cost less than a Meile?
K.
Re: What would you recommend?
I bought one of the Imperialito Washboards this Christmas for ‘er indoors and the feet fell off as she dipped it in the froth!!!
Who are the Service agents and how’s she going to wash my overalls in the meantime?
Martin
Re: What would you recommend?
Martin wrote:how’s she going to wash my overalls in the meantime?
move to a house near a river, one with large boulders on it’s banks preferably 😆
Dave.
Re: What would you recommend?
Alex wrote:I couldn’t help noticing, even that thing was Italian.
So it is 😯
I wonder if the more recent models have the name Merloni on them somewhere.
Dave.
Re: What would you recommend?
Dave_Conway wrote:I wonder if the more recent models have the name Merloni on them somewhere.
Na, that bit of equipment looks set to last more than 18 months! 😉
K.
Re: What would you recommend?
It’s a very good question K, and I’ve thought long and hard about it for the last year or so now. I can honestly say I can’t recommend a single really good washing machine to buy any more that costs in the sub £400 range. I always say that Miele are the best you can buy in the UK, real class, but repairs wont be cheap (although rare in theory)
For 20 years I recomended only Hoover. To me they were the best value for money as they were so easy to get repaired in the UK and parts ubiquitous and cheap. Then Candy got them 🙁
All the budget to mid range machines are manufactured in such a way that they wont last anywhere near as long as they physically should – and could – because you can’t fit armatures, field coils, drum bearings (new tubs needed mostly) and timers and modules tend to cost over half the purchasing price fitted.
Frankly, modern washing machines are rubbish, and there’s no need. It’s just crazy price wars making manufacturers afraid to charge a proper price and having to constantly cut costs. I admire Miele for their arrogance in producing the best they can, and stuff the fact that it will be expensive.
Candy getting Hoover isn’t the problem.
Like Hoover, Hotpoint, Zanussi, Bendix, Philco, Servis or any other brand that’s been around a long time they also did produce good solid machines, even if a lot of repairers didn’t like them or understand them. In the 80’s when I started there were so many people that wouldn’t touch anything but Hoover or Hotpoint.
However all the manufacturers as you rightly say, now play the price war game and there is reasons for that, two of the main ones being in the UK, Currys and Comet! Built to a price, not a quality.
Remember also that there is virtually no “new” market anymore for appliances, only replacement and if I were cynical I might purport that machines have a limited lifespan so as to induce higher sales through premature replacement. 😉
K.
Re: What would you recommend?
The Hoover washing machines dropped in quality a fair bit when Candy started badging them up K. Plus overnight all the Hoover specialists who survived on nothing but Hoover were faced with a totally different (Candy) washing machine. This altered Hoover’s position and value for money. I know that rumours spread slowly-but-surely (by salesmen and repairman accross the country) not to buy Hoover as they were only Candy machines badged up.
I’ve always had a problem with the theory that people produce products deliberately not to last long. Anyone with any sense knows that the vast majority of people, who buy a product and it doesn’t give good value for money – although “forced” into replacing it – will never buy that make again. I think it’s more to do with fighting for business on price alone – which is daft.
Not really Andy. Hoover were already on the road to ruin with the utter garbage they pushed out when Candy bought them. Can’t remember the series but it was those “things” with the control PCB and the display PCB which had a nice wave design on the fascia which nicely got any overflow from the soap dispencer down to the PCB blowing it to bits! Aside from that we were replacing control PCB kits which necessitated a new harness and door lock from memory at a huge cost, over £150 cost IIRC. Hardly a good product.
If appliances are designed to last any more than a few years then why is a motor, normally, over half the cost of a replacement appliance? Or a PCB quite often 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or so of a replacement? Prices such as these force the customer into a replacement and does the brand name no favours either.
Thing is that I think manufacturers play the name game, okay so the customer won’t buy another appliance of that brand perhaps but they’ll buy another brand, maybe one that the company owns. If not, it’s not a great worry as another customer that’s been hacked off by another manufacturer will buy one of theirs instead. If you see what I mean, it’s just a merry go round.
K.
The New Wave machines? They had major problems initially (a common event – look at the recent WMA Hotpoints and the even the Hoover A3060 A3110 1100 drum splitting problems in the early 80s) There was a complete rewire and conversion kit made available but it was just a short lived thing and the New Waves settled into being a reasonable machine. There’s still loads of them about as we speak.
As you say, they had lots pf problems initially and several modifications so yes, they were garbage compared to previous Hoovers, and show the folly in ditching tried and tested evolved machines for complete back-to-the-drawing-board models. You can’t produce anything brilliant without it evolving over many incarnations IMHO.
If appliances are designed to last any more than a few years then why is a motor, normally, over half the cost of a replacement appliance? Or a PCB quite often 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or so of a replacement? Prices such as these force the customer into a replacement and does the brand name no favours either.
I could be wrong, but I suspect it could be to do with simple economies of scale. In the old days, manufacturers used to have small ranges of washing machines. They had a tried and tested product, which they evolved slowly. New ranges came out far less frequently and when they did, they were usually the same shell, same tub, same motor, same valves and pump etc. They mostly just had new facia and trimmings and a few minor modifications, option buttons and so on. If they had a different timer, it was still sourced at the same manufacturer who just modified it a bit. This would have resulted in the washing machine manufacturer sourcing parts on vast scales and at good mass produced prices.
These days, it seems they start from scratch every few years. Starting again with new shells, different tubs, different motors and pumps etc. Usually this is price and production cost driven. It means that someone like Hoover for example, will source a tub or a motor from a manufacturer, buy X100 thousands of them and then ditch the design and use a dfferent tub on their next model. This means as they no longer produce the models with these tubs, they have to source spares for it on a far smaller scale which costs much more.The same would apply to all parts. Each new machine seems to use a different PCB but they get them cheap enough when ordering 200,000 to fit in their new machines but then when they need to source just 200 of them a year (out of production) in order to supply spares (and they are relatively slow moving too) it costs thenm considerably more.
This would also explain why washer dryer timers were always a lot more than washing machine only timers, and particularly why dishwasher timers were considerably higher than washing machine timers.
It’s only my own theory, feel free to shoot it down J
Nope I quite agree with everything there Andy, except the New Waves were garbage IMO, but then Philco’s range at the time and Candy’s Charme range were also pretty rank as well wilst Zanussi (Lux group) decided to instigate the Carboran tubs, nuff said. 😉
I know that spares costs will be driven up as usage goes down, that’s just a fact of life, but it does not explain how a manufacturer can buy in a pump for £1 from Askoll and sell it to Joe Public for over £30. I can think of no justification for that other than pushing the customer into buying a replacement appliance. Some are more sensiblel than others as has been discussed on the expensive spares thread but many just appear to be an attempt to push the customer into replacing rather than repairing. Also having experience of buying electronics and electronic components as well as finished product from the likes of Hong Kong, tells me that many of the spares are not just over-priced, they are enormously over-priced especially when you take into account the economies of scale. Most of that stuff is as cheap as chips to get made and the majority of it in the products we service is very simple really.
But as an example for you to mull over…
An Antonio Merloni washer has a landed cost, per container load of approx. £100 incl VAT & Duty yet a motor is £165 and a module £83 roughly excluding VAT. How can they justify that?
K.
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