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I think a lot of this will be discussed at the forthcoming meeting. Glad I’m going now.
Won’t be on line for a couple of days now due to above meeting.
I think this story will run & run.
AR
Glad I’m not part of it. I had a begging phone call from a company in Staffs and I turned them down, they kept raising the money on offer.
Being a Service Force agent I can look at it from the historical side; the offer made by S.F. to a large retailer regards their insurance contract wasn’t good enough for them. They wanted too many conditions so S.F. pulled out of negotiations, this was in January this year. Following that, I took the decision not to take the work through the “back door”. I feel that would have undermined the efforts made by S.F. to make it a worthwhile contract.
It is a pity really, as there is a lot of work which we were well used to on appliances we grew up with, and some of which we serviced in the past. We could have handled the work easily and kept the customers. As it was this was only 10{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the workload and we soon replaced it. There is one advantage, we get a few of pay & claim customers now as they cannot wait as long as 2 weeks sometimes.
Who are we talking about? is this a company we have read a lot about on this forum recently? Take a look at the number of people that has read about one such company in the rumour mill. Over 200 at the last count, speaks volumes.
Looking at the content of the above, this sounds like a company that are national and act as intermediaries for insurance work.
I must assume it isn’t an agency my company carry out work for, as none of my work providers have tried or suggested a reduction in rate. They will get a two word answer, the second being off.
AR
Leaving night before as I have family up that way.
Therefore won’t be able to attend bun fight later in the evening.Alex
On a serious note, do we meet in the bar of Brewsters 1st?
Do we need a strategy so we know each other? I will have a badge with my name on so I know who I am. No it hasn’t got my age on it, they don’t go that high. You will work out who I am by the West Country accent, “Me Luvver”.
It may be an idea if one of us has something like a logo’ed carrier bag so we recognise others who are are part of the meeting.
I hope to be there between 11 & 12. I haven’t yet decided on the Dasa meeting as I may have pressing commitments otherwise, I will go if possible but it looks unlikely.
See you on the day.
Alex
Merloni
That Merloni thing mentioned above, sounds like it was me.
We were agents for 3 years, we had to fight tooth & nail to get an increase UP to £27 plus an enhancement for gas.
My accountant advised me their was a serious problem and he identified that the Merloni account was costing too much to run. I was losing £2.10 per call on their work.
When I approached Merloni regards this prior to resignation, they told me to change my accountant. Arrogance or what!
After I posted a thing for the benefit of fellow members on the whitegoods group E-Mail forum, some GIT forwarded it to Merloni. If I ever find out who that was I will post his name on as many web pages as I can find. I’m not bitter mind you as I’ve always said the quality of work has improved greatly without the agency.
Nothing is forever, and we must always move on.
😆 This is looking tasty at present.
I think I’ve worked out who the “name that keeps popping” up is regards C/Plan etc. I aint going to say it though. I’ve still got the bruises from the Merloni beating I had sometime ago.
We are owed a few hundred £. Ive telephoned Marsh of Witham in Essex to whom we send ALL Powerhouse bills, they tell me that out of a list of 18 claims I will only be paid on 2. I feel they may have some responsibility and could be liable, as their name is on the invoice for billing purposes, I’m not 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} on this but legally it looks like I may have a case that would stand.
An alternative is to bill the individual customers/policy holders, somehow I dont think it would work.
If anyone knows of a watertight method of reclaiming what is legally mine, I would love to know. I assume nobody got anything out of the demise of PESN last year? I certainly didn’t.
Mr. Kerr may be right, I’ve heard things from a sales rep from a rival company to Electrue, in a very similar vein. They are probably hoping it will all end in tears.
Being multi branded we have to deal with loads of companies, some are good, most average and the odd one rubbish.
Back in May I put one of them on stop, they hadn’t paid since January and some of the outstanding went back to the previous July. I was well aware this action may compromise my relationship them, but I was also aware that my business was being compromised by poor cash flow. I had phone calls from several retailers to see what was going on, and they then left me to fight my battle, which I think was the proper thing to do. It got to the stage where we looked through the workload and cancelled calls that were already one the system.
One day a lass from this manufacturer phoned and asked the status of a call that we had passed back to them. I refused to divulge any information, she got rather agitated at this and said I was likely to jeopardise my realtionship with them, I told her my business was likely to be in jeopardy and this needed sorting, I asked her if she was getting her wages o.k. every month, to which she replied, “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here!” I replied, “I rest my case! When they pay me to date I will reconsider my actions”. Some people will be reading this and know of whom I am referring. I’m not going to name them now, as at last they have got it together and the backlog is less than a month.
I find there are times when you have to take drastic action, I was caught out by P.E.S.N. and there is no way I will let that happen again. I now use a debt collection agency in serious cases and the results are good. I say to everybody, don’t try to be the nice guy, the Staff, Vat & Tax offices still want their cut and when it comes to the crunch, they won’t be so nice.
Alex
Is this AEG made for the British market, or a foreigner. In keeping with most AEG, seals are not listed, try looking for motor brushes.
I 😉 f this is for a “counter sale”, then the spider is the answer and you will make a better rprofit. Otherwise the customer is likely to make a pigs ear of the bearing when hammering it in and expect a free one in 9 months time. We usually ask if he’s hot a fly press to install the bearing, the look on their faces says a lot.
It is getting silly I’m afraid.
I’m old enough to remember the days when it became too expensive to renew elements to a Morphy TU1D toaster, that was followed by kettle elements, Hoover 1334 armatures etc. We have seen this move into micro-waves and of course the Laundry side is not far behind. The only way is to put out the quality stuff like Bosch or AEG.
This is sad I know, but there is a programme on BBC2 every Tueday night at 8.30 (Just after Fred Dibnah) all about domestic appliances etc. called “Every Home Should Have One”. Not that I’m qualified to know this you understand, someone has told me about it. This coming week (5th Aug.) it will be about Fridges being cheaper to replace than repair. This is so true, we used to fit compressors @ £150 no matter what size or make; now people just don’t want to know.
Sad to say this, but if it wasn’t for agency work, we could be in serious trouble. The likes of Currys must find it hard to sell a warranty that is dearer than the product. People are catching on to this and are aware they are better off taking a chance.
