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Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
Just because Hotpoint may not inform customers of cheaper options does not mean that us independants should lower ourselves to their level. He was not informed of his options, he would certainly have gone to Hotpoint had he known, he has a very poorly paid job, if you think we do it for the love & not the money, try working for the Church Army. He did not want a ‘ quick’ fix, just to be dealt with by a trader with morals. As he is in the middle of moving to a new post in Sussex and is very busy with that at the moment, bringing the machine all the way from Cornwall to Oldham would be just plain daft.
Also I think that £100 + labour ( we know the cost of bearings & spider )for what should be at the most a 2 hour job is rather steep, but then I do live in the poor & run down North. 😥 😉
I relent on this one, as the wma bearing issue had a massive impact on my business in as much as when the machine was launched 2001, to compete with the sheds I was offering a retra 5 year warranty, paid for by me at a cost of say £50. The terms were as the retailer I would be paid for any repairs. However due to the nature of the failure retra took this back and sent the work to GDA due to cost. The failure rate was fantastic. It was not the work I lost in the first two years, but subsequently the customers I lost through becoming Hotpoint customers (due to drum bearings) and subsequently being canvassed via D&G and taken on insurance from that day on. I estimate we lost 400 + machines which would have been ours for servicing.
You can imagine the effect on my business that this has had, during the past years. But at least I didnt get all the recalls every 10 months till it got sorted.
On a more personal note was Arthur T a relation of yours.Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
How do you think I got the job at Hotpoint. 😉
Arthur was in fact my father in law, a fantastic bloke. Sadly he died rather suddenly last September and although he had been having a few health problems it still came as a great shock to us all. His wife and two daughters have still not really come to terms with it. 😥would that be Arthur T who worked in the Bridal way in Netherton centre and then the stockport Heaton mersey service centre with malcolm Bargett and syd Jones?…sorry to hear that he passed away.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
Sent a personal note to IADOM, yes Arthur T was at Heaton Mersey from the days of Hotpoint moving to Station Road and prev at Chorlton, until his retirement in 1995.
Held in the highest regard by all that knew him.Malcolm I believe is now at GIAS (Hoover) or was last I heard of him.
I hope he’s doing well wherever.Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
Arthur Turberville, or Mr T as he was affectionately known by most people, joined Hotpoint in the early sixties after working on board merchant ships as an Officer/Electrical engineer and as an electrician at Bradford Collieries in Manchester. He started as an FSM when the office was in Broughton Lane, Salford and rose to become the Area Manager for North Manchester. When the service centre was opened at Heaton Mersey after a few years at Barlow moor Rd, Chorlton, he was at one time the Area Manager for the whole of the Manchester area. I know from speaking to many people that he was liked and admired by most people that came into contact with him at Hotpoint. I miss him a great deal, oh how he used to ramble on and on and wander of the topic when he was telling you a tale.
Those really were the ‘good old days’.
It is the Arthur T that I was thinking of, I met him on numerous occasions, but heard his name regularly and I am really sorry to hear that he has passed on.
I know that he was very well thought of and FSE’s in our 737 office would often draw comparisons about how things were better for our Manchester counterparts under Arthur T, as opposed to Arthur Wignal on Merseyside.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
iadom wrote:Just because Hotpoint may not inform customers of cheaper options does not mean that us independants should lower ourselves to their level. He was not informed of his options, he would certainly have gone to Hotpoint had he known, he has a very poorly paid job, if you think we do it for the love & not the money, try working for the Church Army. He did not want a ‘ quick’ fix, just to be dealt with by a trader with morals. As he is in the middle of moving to a new post in Sussex and is very busy with that at the moment, bringing the machine all the way from Cornwall to Oldham would be just plain daft.
Also I think that £100 + labour ( we know the cost of bearings & spider )for what should be at the most a 2 hour job is rather steep, but then I do live in the poor & run down North. 😥 😉
I am sure the guy informed him how much the repair would be before carrying it out, right? His options then would be to try and get it cheaper if he so wanted to but chose not to by the sound of it.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
eastlmark wrote:
iadom wrote:
Just because Hotpoint may not inform customers of cheaper options does not mean that us independants should lower ourselves to their level. He was not informed of his options, he would certainly have gone to Hotpoint had he known, he has a very poorly paid job, if you think we do it for the love & not the money, try working for the Church Army. He did not want a ‘ quick’ fix, just to be dealt with by a trader with morals. As he is in the middle of moving to a new post in Sussex and is very busy with that at the moment, bringing the machine all the way from Cornwall to Oldham would be just plain daft.Also I think that £100 + labour ( we know the cost of bearings & spider )for what should be at the most a 2 hour job is rather steep, but then I do live in the poor & run down North. 😥 😉
I am sure the guy informed him how much the repair would be before carrying it out, right? His options then would be to try and get it cheaper if he so wanted to but chose not to by the sound of it.
It all comes down to morals and conscience, personally I could never charge someone £148.40 without informing them that they have a cheaper option that will also not invalidate their parts warranty. If they still insist on letting me do the repair then fine. I would sooner give it all up tomorrow than compromise on my principles. I have not advertised anywhere for over 20 years and am nearly always busy. I put that down in no small part to my reputation for honesty above anything else.
When my daughter was at her junior school, one of her teachers criticised her for having an, ‘over developed sense of right & wrong’ 😥 . I am as proud of that statement as any other of the many glowing reports she had thoughout her schooldays.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
I think that the morals and conscience idea is admirable; however, we are all aware that Hotpoint’s popularity in the trade for many years was based on the machines being cheap and cheerful, cheap parts aplenty, easy to work on, good popular name…… To this day, we do spider/bearings/tub seal on the 95/WM range for £90, and probably throw in a set of brushes for good measure. Profiteering? I don’t think so, in fact the number of these repairs is rising as people seem to be reluctant to abandon some of these machines in the face of the current batch of cheap cr@p that we’re being served up with at the moment.
Where it goes wrong is the WMA series is basically a deeply flawed design, with a myriad of problems quite apart from the bearings – soggy motors, chaffing wiring, dodgy modules, pressure system that’s prone to choking at the slightest provocation, leaky soap boxes, modules that explode when the interlock gets wet because the door gasket rubs through …….. Do I have to go on?
However, there is a 20 year culture mainly supported by the Indies that it’s worth fixing a Hotpoint because you can always make a decent profit. It’s got nothing to do with quality, it’s about profit.
So, confronted by the technological wonder that is the WMA, what do we make of it? I looked at the first few that I saw and decided that if Hotpoint were dumb enough to offer 5 years on this sort of junk, I’d retreat to safe distance and let them get on with it. After all I might have to stand the guarantee…… :eeek:
Others will see this as a continuation of the “old” Hotpoints – simple, British, “better than that foreign rubbish”, all sorts of reasons for trying to maintain the old status quo; unfortunatley it just isn’t so, but any intellegent engineer will sell the repair to the customer. No problem when you just threw in a new tank assembly, easy money in fact. Even the tub rear half and drum wasn’t bad…. The bearing and spider is a different matter. Will it take an hour? Or three? I’m certain that prices shot up because of the need to allow for all the complications.
Sorry about the brother Iadom – it happened to my sister recently. Got rid of her old Bosch because it needed a pump and brushes that we could have got from Maddocks for under £20 – local engineer in Dorchester quoted her £130 (!), so she went out and bought a WTO machine without asking me first. I await the developments with interest………….. 🙁
Chris.
I am just so tempted to make a lot of this thread available to the public at large. You never know, maybe they’d actually listen!
K.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
Of course, another realy good reason for passing over wma tubs to Hopoint is that we can do 2 maybe 3 ‘normal’ jobs at say £60 a piece in the time taken to complete one. Is that morals or just good bussiness practice?
I charge around £130 inc vat for those regardless what parts were fitted or how long it takes. Its hard work for 90 mins or so + the workshop time building up an exchange unit. OK the other guy’s price may have been slightly over the top, assuming he is vat registered he is getting £125 odd about the same as 2 carbon brush jobs on a WM.
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
Point in question, re invalidating warranty.. Genuine parts are sold by Hotpoint (Indesit Company) fitting the correct part to the correct machine by an experienced engineer, to the standards required by the manufacturer, (whom will now take any one from anywhere – painters, ikea salesmen, forklift truck operaters etc and train in three weeks to be a dom appliance engineer) why should this invalidate the warranty.
Speed of service in many cases may be up to 2 weeks to get the call.
Independents are beating these people hands down. better service, knowledge and standards, you are not just a number, you are your business.
As I stated earlier the WMA had a massive impact on my business. and adding insult to injury by far my biggest competition was ex collegues running round of an evening, using GDA transport,tools,and free stock to repair machines on my doorstep, all because they had been introduced to the customer, when they had attended the drum replacement under warranty.
On one occasion we had a customer turn up on the counter, with a good set of brushes, and wanting a new set, my dad, being honest advised that they were not worn and did not need replacing. The customer also asked the price of a new motor. We gave it list price and offered a call to advise or if pref they could bring us the motor and we would have tested it.. the same came back a week later and informed us that a hotpoint engineer had replaced the motor (much cheaper “he gets his at staff price”) and charged her £50cash. Parts are really cheap when youve a van full of free ones.. perhaps that even a better way for the customer to get the job done cheap, with such things going on I dont think your brother will loose his parts warranty, cause nobody in the organisation could give a stuff any more, its not like the good old days, its recalls – lots of naff calls and get home to do the night shift..burns wrote:Think of this the other way round – do Hotpoint tell their customers that you can do the repair for less than the parts warranty inc labour (£89.99) when its only the brushes worn, I think not.
Good point. Also, Do Currys tell customers that they can buy the same product £20 cheaper at Comet? (or visa versa) The onus should be on customers. If they can’t be bothered to read their instruction books which clearly states the 5 year parts guarantee – or they can’t be bothered to remember that they bought it with a 5 year parts guarantee then that’s up to them. The onus should never, ever be on a trader to advise his customers that they can get something cheaper at a competitor. The idea of that is simply ludicrous.
Having said that, I always advise them to go to Hotpoint 😉 But then I hate doing drum bearing jobs 😉 It’s a tricky one, I understand the moral implications, but at the end of the day, no business should have to tell customers they can buy their product / service cheaper elsewhere – the very idea
Re: WMA Drum 5 yr Guarantee
How does this work anyway. Do the “morally correct” ones tell every customer who phones up reporting a noisy WMA that they should call Hotpoint and get it done cheaper, hence loosing out on the coin in pump/bra wires/loose weights/dislodged susp pins/frayed belts/loose worktops or backs/whatever may also cause noises which he could sort out cheaper than Hotpoint anyway. OR conveys his morals while at the customers house thus charging them a moral charge for the estimate which when added to the Hotpoint rate would work out about the same anyway? Just wondered.
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