Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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Re: Zanussi Condenser TC 470 not drying
Dave_Conway wrote:I’m not sure about the conversion kit, I never knew one existed, it does sound like the most sensible answer though.
What’s the part number Mark ?
Dave.
Fan kit 50248170008 Distriparts price £69.75 + Vat retail.
It is the only real fix, don’t know why there would have been a problem getting the belt, we carry 6 and Distriparts have over 100 in stock.
Alex
Re: Vynil Sticky Labels?
I use Vale labels Taunton.
Surprisingly good value for money.
Alex
Re: SMEG Repairs
The above somewhat disappoints me.
Smeg service is only as good as he appointed agent for the area, if you happen to be in a vicinity with poor cover, then you need to make it known to Smeg H.O. at Abingdon.
Regards the product, I can only speak as I find, I removed the Whirlpool rubbish as provided by my house builders within 2 years and replaced with Smeg.
O.K. You may not be talking Mercedes or BMW, but we aren’t talking Fiat either. I would say in the Alfa Romeo bracket, innovative and chic.
Of course, this is my opinion.
Alex
Re: Bradshaw Group
They are only 2 Junctions up the M5 from me.
They took on the Asko work when I wasn’t looking and that was followed by the Atag work. Neither of this amounted to much, but I’m sure there should have been a duty of honour from both the above to tell us 1st.
A little while later Bradshaws were floundering & asked us to do the odd call on an Ad-Hoc basis.
Needless to say I declined.
Alex
Re: Top viewers
How sad is this.
Beats me how come K.W. is at No.2 as he would have been in from the very start, and he was posting last night at nearly 2a.m. I’m sure he will soon take pole position.
The one that would bother me Dave is the guy at No.5 He must have too much time on his hands.
Alex
Re: Merloni
I’m absolutely amazed at the rates.
Don Corlione & his band of heavies would not go above £27 for me, that was only 2 years ago. They paid £25 per call & when I kicked up, raised it to £27 but then scrapped the £2 customer satisfaction bonus. In other words they gave sweet F!!! all. The stopping of the bonus thing came to light at the end of the year.
In the end because of their intransigence, they lost a good agent, (Even if I do say so myself). All of a sudden, obviously because they are bloody desperate, they can find the figures as being quoted. Where the hell did they pull this from?
Birds of a feather & all that, they are bloody welcome to each other.
I must watch the DVD of Goodfellas again to remind myself why I’m glad I’m out of the loop.
alex
Re: Distriparts price increase
The text as below I’ve sent to one or two fellow Service Force agents, as well as to Distriparts UK. I may as well copy to the outside world as it will probably be forwarded anyway someday in the future.
Of course to maintain the balance if I receive a constructive & convincing reply from Distriparts, I will post relevant facts in the true spirit of debate and democracy.
I will put in my twopennorth shortly to be increased to 3p.
I can only agree with the comments as below, and for what I feel is good reason.
Take a look at the retail price index, currently running at below 2{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}. Add to that the rate of prices you see increasing for your weekly shopping in your local Tesco etc, nowhere near these levels. Plus the retail cost of appliances in the high street is still falling.
Now look the the cost of raw materials.
If the issue is global, why don’t the prices of the end product, being the appliance as a whole, reflect this?
I have a good contact who is based in Italy and his job is to source raw materials from all over Europe for a major player in the domestic white goods industry. He spends most of his time looking at suppliers & where he can make savings, that’s his job. The last time I saw him he was about to fly to Estonia, recently he has been to Poland as well as a few more countries from the old Eastern Bloc. He tells me he is saving on wiring looms and the group is about to outsource from these areas. He is also looking at South America and China for steel & copper. For these reasons, I’m reliably informed there is not a raw materials issue.
Take a look at the spares industry as a whole in the u.k and their pricing regime. When we were Merloni agents we enjoyed 1 price change in 3 years. When we were Candy agents, there was an update annually, with very little change and only on some parts. In the days of being Philco agents, there was no price increase fo 4 years. All these products are under Italian ownership.
Distriparts competitors, i.e. Electrue/Connections. They are now in the repairs market place and can see for themseves the state of play regards materials cost. Therefore, they are painfully aware when one player in the industry is bucking the trend and unrealistically increasing prices. I’m sure they have the power to buy straight out of Italy, and they will if they don’t already, as I believe they used to with Philco.
Now look at the future, we are pricing ourselves out of the market. You get a bottom of the range Tricity Bendix in Currys now for about £200. How long is it going to be before the cost to fit an ordinary door seal is going to hit this level? This sort of thing will eventually filter down to the insurers, they will need to pitch their premium levels at a position to make the insurance viable, but who will pay for it? We are already close to insurance prices equalling the purchase price of the product.
We are struggling to keep our chargeable customers and I feel unrealistic spares prices will add further nails to our coffins. I personally fail to see why there has to be increases as frequent and at the rates that has happened over the last few years. We saw an increase in February and now the proposed hike of another 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}, this will be 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} on top of the previous increase.
People will vote with their feet, in fact they already are. A price increase to us leaves us with less room to be flexible with a customer in order to capture the business. We have to recoup our costs as well as our prospective losses, we are at the a** end of this industry and once again we are about to be hit by prices.
All this is only an opinion, and I must add My opinion. However, I’m sure I speak for others in the trade.
Alex
Re: e-Jobs
I think us beneficiaries need to have something in place to reward the site & in particular the people/person who are doing the legwork. I know there is little room to add onto our calls what I might call a referral or commission fee, but you don’t get owt for nowt. It needn’t be mega-bucks but I think consideration should be made.
To honour the integrity of the site we must make sure we are up to speed at our end as well to accept any work. What I mean is to have almost instant/constant access to the forum that pass the calls on, not just pop in when it suits every now & then. Accepting e-mails is o.k. but some operators only log on once aweek or so. These will fall by the wayside unless they get up to speed.
Next week we are going Broadband with a fixed IP address and a router to 4 terminals as I know this is where the industry will be heading. If anyone looks at the CDSL booking regime they will see what I mean.
Regards Livery, may confuse some customers, a good sign of advertising I know, but I never thought having a DASA sticker on my van had any impact, also if you are not careful the van could end up looking like an old leather suitcase. Just a thought.
Alex
Re: Merloni
We must make sure we are up to speed at our end as well to accept any work. What I mean is to have almost instant/constant access to the forum that pass the calls on, not just pop in when it suits every now & then.
Next week we are going Broadband with a fixed IP address and a router to 4 terminals as I know this is where the industry needs to be heading.
Alex
Martin wrote:
That bloke from Merloni (Graham- forgot his surname- Regional Service Manager) I saw the other day was not the least bit concerned over his current workforce. His business calling from his superiors at Merloni was to ‘solve the state of after sales service quickly and as cheaply as possible’.MartinGraham Cole, lives in Alderholt just outside of Fordingbridge. He would have drunk all your coffee I suspect, seems like an affable guy but will stab you in the back as when you least expect it.
He was the guy who was given the job of Bollocking me for posting something on the old Whitegoods E-mail forum. He was nasty in the extreme at that point. Wouldn’t trust him at all.
Alex
Re: Hotpoint Advertise Franchises!
It costs my company £27.95 to put a man on the customer’s door step. This is not a guess, but calculated on the last 6 months to Sept 1st. Therefore we need a high 1st time fix rate to stay profitable.
To manage the Merloni account we found we needed an extra person to man the stores, the work involved on their parts needed that additional level of support. You could place an order of 21 items and 19 be on back order. They were still sending me parts that were back ordered for jobs over a year after I’d finished with them. There would be up to 6 versions of 1 Indesit machine depending on TPG, TG and God knows what else you may need from the model number, couple that with the bulletins when it came to tubs & drums. All this added to the stress & additional work involved.
For all that there was nothing in place to cover your cost, as with most companies, you sold the bit back at the price you paid for it.
The defence rests its case.
Alex
Re: D&G Karting
You don’t have to go onto the track. I’ve gone before and worked the pit for another team, keeping count of laps & pulling them in for changes etc. Leaves them to get on with it.
The other meeting is at Warrington Cheshire 11th November, indoor course which in November isn’t a bad thing. http://www.speedkarting.com Thing is you should be booked by now I would think.
Alex
Re: Powerhouse
Have made a few enquiries. I’m informed that they have sold on a few non-profitable stores. One or two for example were not performing and there were the opportunities to sell the leases to other traders. In one case the Next Group offered a tidy sum for one particular store.
There were major losses apparently in the 1st year, but this is now changing and I’m advised they are confident regards the future.
Take a look at the link below and go to reports, may give some pointers.
Alex
Re: Merloni
Well done Martin. I thought you to be too astute to fall into their web.
As Del says, we musn’t lower ourselves to laugh at the expense of others. We were daft enough to do it once.
I was told about £25 calls per week. We soon realised it was 60 calls per week and climbing rapidly. To start with I was too busy to see the full picture and kept taking on more staff to ease the pressure. Whata Mistaka to Maka, Some days the man from Business Post had to bring a bigger wagon to accommodate our orders.
We couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
Alex
Re: Merloni
Martin wrote:So if one can fit/replace say a Hotpoint (-Merloni Van Stock-) Motor from Connect any cheaper, at least you can profit on the difference 8) BIG DEAL !
MartinDon’t you believe it. They will cross reconcile any parts you fit over what you buy. They tried to catch me out once on modules; quoting I’d bought so many of one part number, yet sold back more. Transpired the part numbers of 2 modules melded into one, we updated our data to account for this and they could not grasp the change at their end.
On Ariston, Indesit products there is no chance of chargeable or selling spares, they handle all part sales as the phone number is on the machine, and there is no mark up facilities for parts fitted I/G or insurance. Bear in mind, they all have a 5 year parts warranty, and a lot of it won’t last much longer than 5 years. In August every year Italy will be shut, you will order bits and when they finally arrive some 2 months later the product has been exchanged.
Chargeable customers do not exist, they get onto Social Services when it breaks down and get a new one.
I assume Martin, you are stringing them along? If so then fair play mate, all the best and I will watch with interest.
Alex
