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Re: work dead
Alex wrote:Bit of an unqualified remark there Martin.
Well not exactly Alex, whilst, as you know, I don’t fix fridges, I do however pass on the many fridge calls to a local ‘3rd party’. And from May thru to August I get a fair few fridge calls in which to pass along to him. A good deal of which are take-ups * for him to fix and in so doing he passes on a ‘referral fee’ back to me. This system I’ve had in place now for over 3 years and it works well, especially for those customers having trouble with American styled double fridge-freezers. Each referal of those beasts effectively doubles my monthly referral fee.
I’m not saying I get big sums of money from it but it’s money otherwise lost to me. And, the bonus for me is that he does only do fridges and won’t touch washers and stuff so refers them back to me. Therefore it works both ways and we enjoy the relationship in the process.
So, for anyone in a similar situation to me that doesn’t fix fridges and suffers a drop in trade over the summer months and bank holidays, then you might like to pursue a similar arrangement in order to keep the funds coming in during the lean times. 💡
*I do have a very reasonable knowledge regarding fridges therefore I can ‘vet’ each call I get for him as to its potential worth. (i.e the ability to suss if it’s worth fixing or not in order to pass on – he won’t touch Samsung’s and such – you catch my drift – just creamed off and likely as not good Kosher fridge work, not “….sorry lady it’s knackered, oh! by the way you owe me £40 call-out!” , nonsense.:rolls: He likewise is well up to speed at what I fix and don’t) So there! 😀
Re: work dead
One call on answerphone today, other than the dumb one from PRS 👿
“Hi, I have a BIW103W needs bearings. Can you ring me back with price to supply and fit?” Twit forgot to leave his number and according to display it’s ex-directory. :rolls: Probably would have gone for a nice new Haier anyway :rolls:
Mike.Re: work dead
5 engineers and only 6 jobs between them for Monday … o dear o dear .
😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 :cry 😥 😥 😥 😥 😥 :
Re: work dead
Its the knock on effect from last yr regarding warranty work, although we’ve been increasing the last few weeks on stuff newly installed & knackered.
Sales increased slightly in the first few months and local kitchen installers have been busier.
Older stuff though is becoming rare, most want a price over the phone and seem to prefer the local cowboy who seems to be able to offer repairs for £20 a pop plus parts, although I have had a few calls recently as they can’t get any answer once he’s fixed it hmm I mean flucked it. :rolls:
i done a bearing change on an old hotpoint 9535 today, i havent done one of those for years, both bearings broken up, i actually broke a sweat, i havent done that in a while either
Re: work dead
I miss the days of grease and dirty. 😥
Today the hardest thing I did was tell a guy his Beko bearings had failed, he did not even want to know the price. :rolls:
appleelectrics wrote:i done a bearing change on an old hotpoint 9535 today, i havent done one of those for years,
Still do one or two a month. 🙂
Re: work dead
adv wrote: this games dead in the water, sad
I know what you mean, at the stage where i just cant decide whether to try to stick it out for another year or two in the hope of things picking up, or just jack it in soon & get into something else while i’m still in my forties!Makes you feel very insecure thinking you’re one of the last few fish in a pond which is being slowly drained.. 😯
Re: work dead
lee8 wrote:
Older stuff though is becoming rare,
Its the oldies that are keeping me afloat, no doubt due to having been ‘at it’ on my own for over 30 years I do have a decent customer base.
I have noticed a distinct decline in the past two or three months overall though.
I did three calls this morning, too nice a day to do any more.
One 12 year old Hotpoint WM drum support job, one 11 year old WM brush change and one 27 year old 95622 with a door latch problem ( a liberal application of Vaseline on the mechanism did the trick ). 8)
If I had to rely on sub five year old machines it would be very hard, 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the time they are now BER. I find it easy to convince most of my customers to spend £50 to £150 on older machines when I tell them that a ‘decent’ replacement will cost them £450 upwards.
I do fear for the long term prospects and only having two or three years to go working ‘full time’ 😉 I think I will be able to battle on.
TBH I would swap 30 years to start out again knowing what I know now. 😉 😥
Jim.
Re: work dead
23 years ago when I was attending the skills centre as a trainee in this profession, the tutor said to us, “You’ll never earn a fortune in this business but you’ll always have work.” It is still just about true, as long as you remember the first bit of the sentence.
And anyway, what’s the alternative? Shelf-stacking in Tesco’s. And even that’s probably not too secure.
Mike.
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