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Re: e-Jobs
Ehm hardly.
How on Earth is it anything like DASA? What the hell has DASA got to do with this? DASA hasn’t even contemplated anything like this and it’d take them three years to reach a desicion on it that only allowed DASA members access, this is allowing ANYONE the ability to recieve work from e-Jobs! If anyone in DASA is even still awake!
If you go down this line then you’d have to say that there was no merit in allowing the subscribers more work, or anyone else and we end up with a communist regime where all the pigs are equal. Why should someone not prepared to be a part of this, or just coming online 6 months from now get the same rights as those that have put a hell of a lot into this and UKW or indeed, even subscribe?
You see, a fine line isn’t it and not just as simple as it first appears to be? So the best that can be done is to, at some point along the way, reach a compromise.
You see and here’s the crux of the problem…
None of us wants to see food stolen from our table, in order to achieve that you have to build in some measure of protection whilst at the same time delivering the best possible solution for all parties.
Now you have two glaringly opposing views on this in that, where the company is not an agent and they want a sniff of ALL work and you have a recognised agent who wants to capture all the agency work and everything else on that brand. Who wins? You tell me what’s fair and what’s not.
You will also find that a good many authorised agents take the same view as I do, they won’t touch what they’re not agents for or very, very little that they are not, Alex is a typical example of this. The reason is quite simple, we generally have neither the time nor the capacity to deal with it, besides which our costs negate any benefit as it is almost always a double visit. So are you suggesting that they should be penilised for passing all the other work out and not trying to horde it all?
And yes, I realise that there are exceptions to that rule but it is a generalised statement.
As to the agents recieving the cream, frankly that’s crap, all they’d get is the appliances that they are agents for weighted in their favour, everything else is open season just as it is in Yellow Pages or the local rag, there is little difference.
The advantage of the e-Jobs system is that the people on looking for a repair will not be looking for a free ride, it will be quality work from people that want to pay for it. Quite simply we can ALL benefit from it if we do it right.
But here’s a suggestion for you to think about….
Where a major agent decides that he/she’s going to capture everything on any brand then the postcodes are considered open to all across all brands and no weighting will apply. Where they stick to their agency work then and pass on everything else then I feel that they should have some measure of protection on that work.
That to me is fair.
K.
Re: e-Jobs
Thing is Kevin that whilst I can “weigh” the repairs I cannot stop every one from going to any agent bar opting someone totally out of a brand.
But let’s put this into perspective and take me as an example.
MFI work which I do, I really don’t want anyone else touching it but I accept that many will slip through the net. I carry stock for that brand, technical information and my chances of a first fix are therefore far higher than George up the road a few miles. But I am not an agent for Hoover or Hotpoint or Zanussi nor do I stock, other then the odd casual bit, for any of those brands so the chances of me getting a first fix on it is extremely low if you see what I mean therefore I don’t want that work at all. I regularly turn away chargeable work that we are not agents for or cannot obtain spares and technical for as there’s no point, it’s no use to me or the customers.
I do realise that not everyone takes that view of things but as an agent often with contracts, such as De Detrich or Smeg as two prime examples, they wouldn’t be worth having where it not for the charge and 3rd party work off the back of them as you well know.
Yes there will be a process of natural selection involved and I think that will actually sort a lot of it out but some of the biggest brands around do not have any independent repairer agents at all like any Merloni Group product, Hoover, Hotpoint, Miele, Bosch, Neff, Siemens etc. etc. so there’s loads about and most of the guys seem to carve a niche for themselves largley on those appliances. The reason for that is all too obvious when you actually crunch the numbers, from the 50 brands listed in e-Jobs, 26 brands have service not carried out by any of us! So in actual fact over half the stuff out there, more if you want to break it down still further by product group, is not getting fixed by us.
Bear in mind that e-Jobs is designed to deliver the best possible solution to the customer and where the independents are concerned, I would argue that 90{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of the time that would be the “authorised” agent. Simply, this is because the better that we do the job the better and faster our reputation spreads. That is not a slur on anyone else at all individually, but across the trade it is generally accepted that this is the case in most areas.
In future I want to develop the idea of offering the customer a choice at the point where a call is booked and offer them a chance to select the closest or approved agent, then it’s out our hands anyway. But for now we’re stuck with a single choice that we’re making on the customer’s behalf. Repairs@ still has some development work planned, I ain’t done yet!
This is why on the form for e-Jobs I asked the question of what appliances people specialised in, I wasn’t just looking for the “we repair anything” answer which I got from a few people as that doesn’t help target the calls. The idea was to give each repairer the work that they wanted and that they could therefore easily repair both based on skillset and all the above factors.
In short, it’s a hell of a lot to try to resolve as it is a very complex market in some areas, especially the likes of where you are, I grant you that, but move away from the main hubs and it gets a whole lot easier. You’re in a pretty unique area with the sheer volumes and the number of repairers in the area all crossing over so your the ideal guy to experiment on. 😉
CDSL kinda puts a spanner in the works here by setting an authorised agent and a non-franchised but very competent agent in the same areas, but I’m sure we can come up with something where it’s an issue. If there are people in a specific area that want work that is part of another’s franchise then perhaps splitting the postcodes is the way to go if there’s some debate on the subject. This is one reason why I wanted the Advisory Council running. 🙄
As for the areas being huge for some franchise agents, well what can you say that we’ve not said before about that? Going down the DASA route, I don’t think so, DASA fell asleep at the wheel a long, long time ago and still doesn’t seem to have woken up.
Also bear in mind that people have to give us the information to target and this is the most important point here as, thus far as you’ve seen Kevin, the information has ranged from pretty damn good to total crap. In some cases we could have filled the form out with more information than the business itself doing it! We had almost the exact same thing doing the MFI stuff as well.
If the information you give isn’t right then the work won’t be targetted correctly and we can only fix so much.
K.
Re: Revenue Report
See Martin, you should have STFU! :rotfl:
There has been talk of charging for access to the trade forums… ain’t gonna happen, get over it. 😆
There was talk of charging the guys for e-jobs… ain’t gonna happen, get over it! 😆
There is very good reason for the way I have and will always approach financing for UKW and that is that I do not believe that we should be paying for it. I never have and I never will, there’s plenty other people out there in this industry that have a LOT more money that we do, let them pay for it all.
And, if it should come to pass that they won’t, then so be it. But personally I think that’s a pretty foolish long term outlook on their part.
Since this is a pretty private forum…
We hold the power here, we have the power to change this industry! We don’t need industrial action, we don’t need a big club at all. All we need is a little unity and a little faith and we will prevail. Yes, we (Dave, Kev and I amongst some others here) may well have the nonce to get off our arses and do something about it but in the end it comes down to you guys, you have to decide what’s worth doing and what’s not. We do listen to you and pay attention, very often acting on what we get back so the more you tell us the more we account for your opinions and thoughts.
We’ve already made great strides in changing the order of things I think, although I was hard pressed to admit it. Now we have to capitilise on that and make it good.
The subscriber funds are there for YOU, you have to tell me what you want them to do for you and if it’s doable then I’ll get it done. If we need more to accomplish what we want then we simply modify what we’re doing now and set it the way we want it, it really is that easy and simple.
None of us, as in the three retrabates that run this, are dictators by any stretch, nor do I wish to force anyone down any path they don’t wish to go and that is a sentiment I never want to lose sight of.
So, we’re still left with the issue of how to effectively use the funding and it should be something that we can all benefit from, or multiple things preferable that we can benefit from. We’re not rich by any stretch of the imagination and therefore I feel that now is the time to lay the foundations for our future with this funding as well as any we deem to be required for any further projects.
Myself, Dave, Kevin, Martin and Chris to name but a few are full of ideas but I, personally, want to hear more from others even if it is whacky as from each conversation we all learn and gain an insight. So even if you seldom post, or never post at all I would ask that you give us your thoughts on this subject as we will all benefit from it and hopefully make it something worthy.
K.
Re: mystery smell
Darren,
Try…
Of course there are a multitude of other things it could be like a leak from anywhere really or any bacterial smell from any of the appliances, but any would most likely have n external cause.
I assume you have checked visibly for any leaks?
And you’re pint’s safe, I don’t drink them. 😉 😆
K.
Re: Press Release – e-Jobs
Just to put this in perspective a little for you all…
In December 2004 we recieved visits from 23922 unique visitors!
To 3.30am on Jan 02/05 we had 1101 unique visitors, yes that’s in 27.5 hours!
Extrapolate those figures over a year, then divide it up per population centre and you get what we’re on about. It’s a staggering reach that, hopefully, is set to grow during 2005 as well and, if it grows even a fraction of what it has in the past six months it will be unbelieveable by the year end.
The question you have to ask yourself is this…
Can you afford not to be a part of it, especially in light of the fact that we’re giving it away for free?
K.
Yeah I told him not to buy a Smeg.
Mainly as I’d feel so bad for the poor sod that had to go out and do the mod on it! :rotfl:
K.
That’s my fault Sparkey entirely. 😳
1. Unless an invoice was requested I didn’t send one!
2. Because I’m pretty crap at remembering such things
Many apologies and if anyone requires an invoice who hasn’t got one please let me or Dave know and we’ll sort it out.
Again sorry.
K.
Re: e-Jobs
Oh I forgot something….
If there is an agent in place for the appliance, especially if they are a subscriber, they get preference on that appliance/brand because that’s the way it is and it’s fair IMO. That does not include OEM service because we don’t really like them much for the most part, so sod them.
What I won’t have is an area where someone wants to cadge all the Zanussi or Whirpool work from the existing agent, I wouldn’t want it done to me so I will carry that sentiment forward here too. So unless there’s good reason not to forward that work primarily to the “approved agent” then that’s where it should go IMO.
It is my honest opinion that this is the honourable course to take and that UKW and we should respect that.
There’s loads of work to go round, it’d be pretty crap if we started fighting about it. But, that said, if you ain’t in it you can’t win it, as Alex oft reminds us.
We still have a way to go with this and, trust me, this is only the start of what I want to do with it all as well but I said I’d get it done and get it done I have with a fair bit of very appreciated help from some friends and collegues just to deliver a benefit to you lot. Make sure that, as subscribers, you’re first in the queue for the work as a reward for having a bit of foresight and vision.
Kevin, Dave and I all hope you get some work from it and that it is a success, God knows we’ve worked hard enough to get to this stage! Now it’s time to get on with other projects as well… 😈
K.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
Dave_Conway wrote:And yes Kevin, I agree, someone in HM Gov should be looking in to this a little harder than they have I think. I know contact has been made from UKW on the matter last year, I don’t know what the outcome, if any there was 😕
No comment. 😈
K.
Re: e-Jobs
And just to offer you a flavour of what it will look like and, remember this is the bare bones without any prettying up by me yet…
K.
So much for Plan A!
E-Jobs is now a live module on UK Whitegoods, in under 6 hours! I am currently sorting out the data etc to test it out before we make it live for one and all, i.e. the public, to have a look at.
I also need to re-do a load of text for an intro and write up all about it for a help page etc. so I’ve a bit of work to get done for this over the next few days and I was busy as things were. 😕
What I do want is as much detail from everyone as we can get so please fax back the e-Jobs application for so your details are on there from the outset. This will not be as easily accessible as much of the site for a while as, until the admin interface is complete, the data has to be manually uploaded and there’s only really Trevor that can do that right now and I don’t want to be bugging him every five minutes with this.
K.
Hi Purple,
We will be able to get you the correct spare, although most of the capacitors are pretty generic that are in the Shop@ section and would (in all probability) fit.
Dave will check it and get back to you on Tuesday when we all get back to our desks where the information is.
K.
Re: £179 For A Zanussi Washer!
It really is stupid this whole notion of fighting on price, especially in this industry which is saturated and oversupplied as it is. But then the bean counters, as usual, think that the measure of success for a business is it’s expansion of turnover which is all well and good so long as the margins are not erroded.
But to start erroding the branding is a dangerous, dangerous path to walk and one which, if/when it goes wrong, will haunt the business for many, many years if they can ever recover from it. Just look at Servis as you mentioned, even the punters know it’s crap now. Look at what happened to Philco, ten years on and still nobody wants to know about them!
I actually do not know that many of the manufacturers have actually asked their customers what they want, I talk to customers daily and what they want often bears no relation to what’s on offer. But they got what they didn’t want at a good price. 🙄
K.
