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Re: The cheek of some people
We had a customer who had bought a graded fridge freezer here. A few weeks down the line she had a fire in the kitchen which melted the top trim where the PCB sits (Candy) and the fire brigade had also been spraying water around. She thought with all conviction that as it was under guarantee, she should get a replacement. Beware, the courts might have agreed with her if I had not written on the bill that items damaged in fires or floods would not be under guarantee. A judge ordered a refund to be given to a man who had a sky digibox that was full of water because the bill just said 6 month guarantee. You must spell out the circumstances where you will not regard it as under guarantee or the courts will regard your guarantee as covering absolutely anything.
Re: cannot win!
I had a call to a range cooker that was impossible to get out as it had been positioned and then a marble floor laid in front of it and the marble worktops had been cut to slightly overlap the edges of the cooker. I left after telling the woman that I could not gain access to it. 1 Hour later my phone rang and it was her Indian doctor husband swearing and generally abusing me for walking out without fixing the cooker, he said couldn’t I have got 2 chisels and forced it out. Yeah and then have to pay for your million pound floor?
Re: not being paid
I was owed some money by a council contractor whose employee had stood on a ceramic hob while working in a house. They were always in the shop for knobs and handles so when they asked me to replace the hob and bill their office I did so. I was chasing them for payment for 4 months. Finally, I told them that if they did not send my cheque immediately, I would write to the Chief Executive of the council and the local paper about how they were ripping off tradesmen who were picking up the pieces after them. I got paid immediately. Another was a letting agent who had asked me to repair 3 different cookers in rented houses. I was waiting 3 months and had been fobbed off with every lie in the book. I called their bluff, I wrote to them that I had been to the court and collected a form to take them to court and if they wanted me not to fill it in, they must pay up in 24 hours. They paid next morning.
Re: Should have got a deposit.
I have rarely had a problem over the years but I have just changed my job sheet wording to say that I won’t touch anything until they sign an agreement to pay a call out charge if they don’t want it repaired or a £20 deposit if I need to come back later after ordering part(s). I went to a Beko washer that was clonking on spin. The bottom stone was a little loose and I tightened it. I then noticed a huge hole in the door rubber and didn’t have one. She told me come back the day after tomorrow to fit the new rubber. Come the morning of the day of the call, I got a text from her saying don’t call as her father in law had one and has fitted it, sorry for messing you about. I rang her and said what about paying for my call and tightening the bolts up? I’ll send it down, she said. Yeah right, we know.
This free estimate thing narks me, I used to do TV repairs until 2 years ago because I can’t do flat panel sets. TV sets can’t really be estimated at all, 99{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the job is finding the fault in many instances. After 2 hours of fault finding the repair may only be a quick dab of a soldering iron but they would say just give me a price without doing any work, how in hell are you supposed to do that?
Re: hotpoint wf560 no spin
I’ve cured it, there was a bit of a split forming in the belt.
A new one got it running. It’s also strange that these machines will not put the motor into spin if the motor is on the floor, yet on saturday , we had a similar machine with a digital flourescent display (wf860 I think) and the motor entered spin on the floor with no problem.Re: CURRYS KNOW HOW
The words ‘Currys’ and Know How just don’t go together. When I saw this as their new branding I nearly wet myself. When I was with Currys in the 70’s (ran by the Curry family), we had Currys Group Service. Mastercare was the name of a company policy book that was in all branches. The book spelled out how customers complaints and service/repair needs were to be handled. They advertised “Buy at Currys and get ‘Mastercare’ Service”.
Dixons rebranded CGS as Mastercare and over the years just allowed it to get poorer and poorer. We sold proper annual service contracts whereas they now sell insurance policies and are really only interested in claiming on these policies to sell new items. I would not be surprised to see this company close down as it is only a pale imitation of the company I worked for.Re: Domestic appliances – reliability and design
I started in 1976 as a salesman then branch manager at Currys. I decided to switch to servicing and then went self employed. The goods on sale today are all the same price now as they were in the 70’s and this has only been achieved by vastly cutting back on quality. When there was no more to cut, they started welding to save a few pence on screws. I firmly believe that this only started to happen after Dixons took over Currys as Dixons were always more obsessed with low prices than quality.
If we sold a machine for £250 in 1976, with a £50 profit, that £50 went a long way. That amount is insignificant today, hence the sorry state of Currys and Comet. I was in Germany earlier this year and I looked at appliances in their two big electrical chains, SATURN and MEDIA MARKT. The washers etc. in there were the sort of prices you would have expected them to be now if they had inflated with everything else, i.e. 1000 euros. However, these machines were clearly not the same as those sold here, they were still built like tanks. Clearly, the retailers have not pressurised the manufacturers into turning out rubbish.
The retailers here believe that they will not sell any of these items if they were realistically priced but I disagree. £250 was a lot in 1976 but we still sold them in droves, we sold them mostly on credit and this would be the case today. The German consumer looks for the best they can get while the British consumer has been conditioned to want only the cheapest possible.Re: 0800 Repair
clyde wrote:
funkyboogy wrote:
seen one driving about balieston ( glasgow) .. had a look at the site acording to site they are owned by………
We have been operating successfully throughout the UK for many years and can trace our roots back to 1996. 0800Repair is owned and run by Pacifica Group Limited which consists of a senior management team including Kevin Brown as the Group Managing Director, Scott Pallister the Group Finance Director and Paul Feek as the Group Sales Director.do they not own jtm / or have a tie in some where with them ???
Would this be the same Kevin brown that was involved in Northern Electric retail and the setup of franchises through freedom? and b2c?
interesting that the head office is in durham!!! 😯
YES it is.Re: 0800 Repair
I have seen one of these vans outside a local spares wholesaler. It looks like something from The Simpsons. I was talking to another local repairer about them. He said that he had rang them and pretended to need a quote to fix a hotpoint washer, he told them that it was very noisy on spin and thought it must need new bearings. The woman on the phone said that it would cost £60 to call and provide labour. She said that it’s very rare that the machine would need any parts. Sounds a bit dodgy to me.
I have been doing this self employed since 1981 and all off my own efforts. I can’t see the point of giving a leech £25k when I can advertise myself. If you do the jobs right, the customers will stick with you and recommend their friends.
