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Re: Sealed tub on Zanussi ZWD16581W?
Many thanks lads, what a farce ey? Where did it all go wrong?
Andy
Re: Sealed tub on Zanussi ZWD16581W?
Cheers Don. That’s the strange thing. The guy says its glued together. I wonder if someone bodged it on the past?
Re: Indesit haven’t thought this through…
The current form that the Sale of Goods Act takes is not working. It is grossly unfair on the retailer, especially small retailers. It results in the overwhelming majority of legitimate claims never being met because retailers large and small resent the unfair burden and put up all sorts of walls to protect themselves.
The logical result of putting the onus on retailers should be that they simply stop selling the crap, resulting eventually in a better world where only decent quality products are passed onto the consumer by retailers but bizarrely they don’t. This is probably due to a mixture of greed and the fact that they can offload the majority of the responsibility onto the consumer, most of whom have not got the energy or know-how to fight for their rights.
The Sale of Goods Act needs amending so that manufacturers are responsible and not retailers.
Re: Indesit haven’t thought this through…
kwatt wrote:The customer had the option to take an extended warranty and chose not to, they would have been offered it in-store and before the manufacturer warranty expired at least one time. They chose not to take that offer up and take a chance that the product wouldn’t break, it was their call.
K.That’s what the mafia would say when they burned down a store because they refused to take out their “protection”.
So they are at fault for not taking out what your latest newsletter highlights is virtually a complete waste of money?
http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/index.php … Itemid=251Re: The 0800 Thread
I think companies are talked into doing it by web designers or SEO specialists, or simply do it because everyone else is. The number of companies with Facebook pages and tweeting is ridiculous when the majority of them have no real need or use for them.
The idea of having a publicly viewable live web resource where all your satisfied and dissatisfied customers can comment is a pretty risky business – especially when it’s well known and established that most people only seek out and take the trouble to write if they are dissatisfied.
A case in point is when I wrote two separate blog articles announcing that John Lewis had won yet another award for customer service and having the highest percentage of satisfied customers, and Miele won yet another award for best appliances. Neither article attracted a single comment backing that up. No one posted saying yes, I’m one of their satisfied customers. Both articles steadily attracted only comments such as John Lewis are rubbish, Miele are rubbish followed by complaints about how dissatisfied they have been. Such comments can seriously undermine a genuinely held position or reputation. No business or product is without flaws and cock-ups, nor without unreasonable customers who give a completely one-sided and unfair account of what happened.
Therefore only a company who never has such customers and who never gets anything wrong could seriously solicit open comment with confidence. It must be very tempting for companies to try and control comments, either by deleting some, or soliciting fake ones from staff, friends and family or even so-called professional ventures..
One logical reason for creating such a forum though is in the belief that it’s better to have complaints on your own site, where you can see them, try to limit their impact, even genuinely address them but if run honestly and openly it can backfire, either just making negative publicity easier to find, or even encouraging people to complain as an obvious way to get special treatment when they see all the replies saying we are sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction – here’s what we are going to do for you.
At the end of the day it’s a delicate situation, but I’m not convinced that a business without a place to give feedback would suffer any more damage for not having one than one that did, and had to allow lots of very negative, damaging remarks.
Re: The 0800 Thread
funkyboogy wrote:part of the 0800 spin andy , any bad press will be blogged of the page , did you know seo companies now have bloggers in india ect , any unwanted posts will soon be buried 10-15 pages back .
ally
This isn’t intended to accuse anyone of anything, but since you mention manipulation of customer reviews this is an interesting article about some business’s already found to be manipulating customer reviews. I reckon they are going to be on to this sort of thing soon
http://www.out-law.com/page-12016Re: 0800 Repair
r600a wrote:Awww They’ve remove their picture and stopped anyone posting on the Facebook site..( not much of a social site if they don’t allow anyone to use it ).
bryanI don’t understand why any repair company would be daft enough to solicit comments from the public on a public system. All you are likely to get is a steady stream of people complaining that an engineer didn’t turn up, they’ve been waiting too long for a part, or a part was ordered but didn’t fix the fault, or they were charged a lot for how long the engineer was there and so on and so on..
Re: Domestic appliances – reliability and design
djh wrote:The German consumer looks for the best they can get while the British consumer has been conditioned to want only the cheapest possible.
Good post. Re your closing statement though, could it be the other way round? It’s possible that the German consumer wants and demands high quality but the UK customer wants and demands cheap prices?
I personally think there has been too many different brands in the UK resulting in too much competition. I believe once you get over the tipping point of healthy competition one of two things happens. Either the excess players go bust, resulting in re-adjustment back to healthy competition, or price wars ensue, but all players survive with some just being swallowed up to remain in competition under different ownership. This maintains a status of “too much” competition so when prices have been cut as much as possible through legitimate means there’s only one way to keep the price wars going and that’s to start hacking away at quality – until in the end all that’s left is cheap rubbish.
We are led to believe competition is the be-all and end-all but I’m starting to think that (apart from the problem of high prices) some of the best quality products in this world come from companies with little or no competition. Hmmmm.
Re: 0800 Repair
People with money have always up-scaled business models and always will. Supermarkets are a prime example. Ultimately supermarkets are preferred by the vast majority of consumers, which is why they thrive. If most customers preferred to use local shops then they would, and supermarkets could never grow so big.
If consumers prefer to use their local independent repairer or even small shop then they will. All these national big companies “hoovering up work” are up-scaling appliance repair work and offering an alternative. They are offering all sorts of gimmicks such as fixed prices, insurances and monthly payments which are innovations or new options for consumers. If it’s ultimately rubbish, it cannot survive. If it generally works then it will thrive and eventually wipe out most independents. It’s how the market always works.
The only reason we have so many big boys with the money interested in taking over with these franchise or dealer-based national repair companies is because things have changed (and declined) in the repair industry to such an extent that they believe they can make lots more money by offering something different.
Why have these companies only relatively recently emerged? Presumably because back in the good old days their business models would never have worked. Customers would not have been interested in paying so much money. Now, because of the extremely high cost of spares and repairs their local guys commonly can’t fix it quickly and reasonably any more. Things have changed considerably and this is the market adapting.
I don’t think it’s likely they are in it for a quick buck, it seems likely to me that they believe it’s the future of repairs. They may be right, or they may have got it very wrong. Maybe the truth is nearer to my personal belief that hardly anyone can really make money out of appliance repairs any more. Ultimately the consumer will decide.
Re: 0800 Repair
funkyboogy wrote: 0800 local sites give the impression their local – but infact most of them arent and are ran from a call centre far away , if they dont have a local 0800 franchise for that area , the customer wont get a local 0800 engineer.
Howdoo ally 🙂
My impression is that they are run by a big company with lots of money and a national franchise but they send engineers who live “locally”.
I don’t think many customers would believe these web sites are set up and run by a one man local band or a small local shop.
Whether they always do send a local engineer or not I don’t know for sure, also, How local is local?
Re: 0800 Repair
I would disagree with the idea that customers equate “local” with an exclusively locally created business.
If they go to their local pub they don’t usually care if it’s a nationally owned chain or owned by a local landlord. They just care that it’s local and what it’s like.
Most will clearly also be able to tell the difference between an organic local boy, building a business from home, and a large company with a fancy web site, clearly covering the whole of the UK. All ads I’ve seen for 0800Repair clearly state their position and if they advertise local engineers as long as they send local engineers they aren’t misleading anyone.
Even looking at the 0800Repair “local” sites anyone can see these sites are very fancy, very expensive, clearly run by a large national franchise company. I can’t see how anyone seeing such a site would see it as anything other than a big national company who will send a locally based engineer.
Re: 0800 Repair
I posted a comment here just after starting to catch up on this thread. Three quarters of an hour later I get to the end only to realise my comment is no longer necessary so I’ve removed it.
For some reason I only ever get email notifications of new comments on a thread here for a short while and then they stop, which is why I was so far behind.
Re: Indesit washing machine explodes
kwatt wrote:I got tweeted earlier. 😉
K.You’ve got time to tweet as well? You must be on speed or sommat.
Re: Beko fridge freeze recall
When I heard about this tragedy the news reporter said neighbours had reported hearing an explosion before the fire. I immediately thought of the exploding fridges, and also remarked to the wife that if I was Beko I’d be seriously concerned .. I sincerely hope it isn’t an appliance that’s been subject to a safety warning.
I feel sorry for anyone who has to make a decision, which can sometimes mean a choice between authorising catastrophically expensive expense, which could severely or even fatally wound a company to be totally sure of customer safety and taking a calculated risk that it will all work out ok. Of course it’s still speculation at the moment but the principle and moral dilemma I talk about is powerfully real.
