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Heh, that opens up another debate I wanna have at some point too…
What do we all do about non-payment of small debts? How do we deal with it?
If someone would care to start a thread on that one as it could be very interesting indeed.
K.
There’s an interesting one actually.
I was being told that some people in London especially charge the customer if they get a no-access call, every time. I don’t, it’s a two-strike rule with me, then they get charged for every wasted trip thereafter.
What do you lot do? How do you deal with no-access calls as it is a total waste of time and money?
K.
Phil,
If you contact MFI Extracare they should be able to supply you with a manual or a copy of it that will detail how you do that. There is a link to MFI in the Weblinks section.
K.
Oh no Martin, I’d far rather it was challenged as not but then you pretty much know that anyway.
You are correct in that I can publish what I want I suppose, either in that section or indeed in the forums, but then so can you pretty much. What I tried to get across in that article and I hope I did, was that there is no point, as a customer did to Craig yesterday, keep him in the house for a quarter hour demanding that he call the manufacturer and request a replacement be sent. Or the one I had yesterday that demanded I cancel pre-booked calls to accomodate her wish for a first call as she’d been waiting spares, then called the insurer to complain about me because I refused. The examples I could cite are legion.
This is what we are dealing with on a daily basis now, engineers and reception staff are supposed to be up to standards worth of a UN representative in diplomatic relations with customers. I think that an engineer is there to do a job to the best of his ability and do all that is possible to satisfy the needs of the customer, but the caveat of “within reason” simply has to apply to that.
Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of great customers out there that are great to deal with, but equally there are herds of unreasonable ones.
There is no veil being drawn, perhaps the wording of that line was a little too final looking, I would welcome any comments that anyone has.
Kevin is it 6 weeks now or still the 28 day rule? If you can confirm that I will update the article.
K.
Re: I think Kwatts wrong
Nope, I haven’t missed the point at all.
You two have missed a very important one though. 😉
Whilst you may not think that the tone is politically correct it has made you both stop, think and indeed post much comment on the tone, not the content.
If customers stop and think alone then the article has served its purpose and, like any written piece, if it got the readers attention whether through controversy or not, it has served its purpose as they listened and took note! Sometimes you have to shake it up a bit to achieve that goal.
And of course it’s going to biased, almost any literary work is by the author that you care to name, either by opinion or experience. Added to which I am a great anit-political correctness advocate, so there’s the result.
Had I written a nicey, nice article about consumer law the audience would have been asleep by the end of paragraph one as really, it’s dead boring. By using the glamourisation tactics employed by the media, it gets attention. Simple.
Just look around the site, which posts get the most attention? The most provocative and the most controvertial that’s the ones that get people’s attention and capture their imagination. One’s like this in fact.
It makes people think about it. Mission accomplished.
And we’ve had a nice chat about it too. 😉
K.
Re: I think Kwatts wrong
In actual fact Trading Standards is mentioned.
I have not off-handedly dismissed Martin’s comments at all but I have answered his points and explained why I wrote the article in the manner in which I did. Quite comprehensively I thought.
This thread is not just for those doing warranty work, but the actual workings of the exchange proccess and how it actually works in the real world does only affect those of us carrying out warranty or extended warranty work in some cases. The Sale Of Goods Act merely sets down the principals on which consumer law is based, it is a guide with basic principals for consumer care set in law. However, the real world translation of how the law is used is often very different to the spirit in which it was written.
You are correct it is important to look after the customer, but at what cost? Should it bankrupt you or the manufacturer to adhere to that? Where do you draw the line? Are you saying that every customer that requests a new appliance should get it as that is, in effect, what would happen?
UK consumer law is actually ahead of the much feared and totally toothless (IMO) EU Directive that everyone thought was going to herald the adoption of the 2-year warranty. It turns out that it didn’t do that, it was two years to prove a manufacturing defect from supply date, in the UK the customer actually has up to six years to do this.
What has changed is that the onus is now on the manufacturer to prove that there wasn’t a fault whereas before the customer had to prove that there was. What this has led to is a breed of far more aggresive customers out there that know, or think they do, their rights and are very adept at rattling the consumer legislation sabre in the hope that they just get what they want.
It is my opinion that consumer law has swung very much in favour of the customer and they are extremely well protected in the UK and that in itself is no bad thing. What is bad is the way that customers approach a failure, which is more often than not, with quite an aggresive stance and making demands of the service company which are not realistic. As I previously stated this has been perpetuated by, primarily, the media who also misrepresent to an extent just how it all works.
Just look at the Benoit Milner case, all that hullabulloo about the tumble dryer going on fire, on Watchdog and here then it goes totally silent, no result at all. Why? Well either Whirlpool paid out to shut her up or she was proved to be in the wrong, it’s the only two possible explanation’s that I can see. But look at the tone of her posts, look at the interview she gave on Watchdog, but no mention of the fact that she had no insurance, no mention of the fact that the appliance was left on unattended, but loads of mention of how bad the big bad Whirlpool was. Whilst there’s not a lot of love lost between myself and Whirlpool I can understand the stance they took and, for once, I actually agree with them but I still treated the customer with kid gloves. Had I chosen, I could have been quite scathing and brutal about it.
Its all very well championing the cause of the customer, but it has to be a balanced like any other argument and up until now I can’t see anyone offering any sort of balance at all in the media or anywhere else for that matter. To simply say that the customer is always correct and should always get their way is insane IMO, customers are often wrong and often misinformed and, these days, very demanding. Couple that with the margins that we have to work with and the demands that they place on us are, in many cases, impossible to fulfill.
But get a wrong price on a product, i.e. make a genuine mistake, on the internet and thousands will take advantage of it at the retailer or manufacturers cost and then demand that the deal is fullfilled. Then they’ll complain if it breaks down and demand a replacement, which by your standards you would give them I assume?
At the first opportunity many will also sue you or demand other concetions be made to them and it’s sad, but that’s the culture we now live in I’m afraid. They will twist what you tell them, or the engineer tells them to get their way and allsorts but you will have little or no experience of that sort of situation and its not because the job is done badly more often than not. So in many ways we are forced to regard the customer as being hostile, by the customers and then try not to treat them likewise. 🙁
K.
Re: I think Kwatts wrong
There’s many a way to save the client money Martin as you well know, be that an end-user or a corporate client so I don’t see a contradiction in trying to appease both camps to the best of your ability. On occasion there is a conflict, but he who pays the piper…
The thing is and, I guess the core of the whole problem, is that consumers due to an increase in “supposed” knowledge gleaned from snippets in the media have become increasingly hostile over the past few years. This is in no way simply restricted to our trade in any way, it affects many others as well. This is purely down to the media and a lot of large businesses perpetuating the ethos that they look after their customers to the Nth degree when the reality is usually not what is in the glossy ads and many of the promises are not delivered.
Service costs money and it also takes a dedicated and motivated staff to get it right, something that has always been a failing of large companies in our and other walks of life. Where you have a small team that are trying to earn a crust, like we independents, the level of customer care, attention and information given to a customer rises considerably. Just as I am sure both youself and Richard look after your customers very well indeed, after all they put food on the table. We have to apply that to corporate clients as well as end-users and balance the level of care. However, the level of care required for many warranty customers, with their unrealistic expectations to start with, simply cannot be met on the rates that we get paid, it’s just that simple and it is the reality that we all have to live with, manufacturers included.
Now at that point you have to decide, to be open and honest and tell the customers that they are being unrealistic or do you string them along in the hope that the problem will go away?
Personally I don’t hide my head in the sand and the majority of customers I talk to accept and appreciate that.
K.
Re: I think Kwatts wrong
Actually I totally disagree Martin.
In 20 years of working in manufacturer service I have learned that there is one thing that customers respect above all else and expect from our businesses and employees… honesty!
Whilst the truth of the matter may not suit customers and they may not like being faced with it, it is nonetheless the truth.
If I cock it up I will tell a customer, quite openly, that I have done so as we’re all human and we do make mistakes and in virtually every instance the customer respects that far more than being fed a line. I have applied that principle for years, some customers don’t like it when you tell them the facts but most of them a least respect your honesty and integrity in telling them straight.
The problem is that we have people like Which and Watchdog banging the consumer rights drum and, basically, misleading people a lot of the time by glamourising the complaints process, very often reporting the ones that they win only. This to me is highly dangerous, Which are interested in circulation figures and Watchdog are interested in viewing numbers so both have an agenda to fulfill, I do not.
If I had a fiver for every time I heard “I’m getting onto Watchdog about this” I would indeed be a rich man by now. Such is live as a manufacturer’s agent sadly. But I have to note that even many of the problems that I consider to be justified in some measure never seem to appear in the press or on the TV at all. The reason is simple, it’s not tasty enough for the media to pick up on it and they don’t care unless they think they’re onto something big. They are also only too aware of UK consumer law and also know that instance where many of the manufacturers fail to resolve a problem correctly within that framework is very, very small.
UK customers in relation to other countries and what they actually pay for service get a pretty good deal all things considered, but it comes down to just that, money. You have to ask, is the level of service that the customer expects, or demands, being paid for by the customer (ultimately) or the manufacturer? I can tell you now that the almost universal answer is “no” to that question.
When it comes to the exchange process it is under warranty stuff, not the same type of customer that both yourself and Richard deal with which will be largley out of warranty chargeable repairs, that’s a whole other ball game. The customers expectations of what you do are entirely different to say what they expect from a large company like Electrolux, MFI or any other brand name and mostly those expectations are just stupid.
The mantra that “the customer is always right” only stretches so far. For example, first thing this morning I had a message on the answering machine from a customer that we called to yesterday, £500 integrated washer that had a pump in it 3 months or so ago and now needs a PCB for a no-spin fault, unsurprisingly she was demanding an exchange. I explained the facts to her as detailed in that article, explained that to get a replacement would likely take at least two weeks or so and you know what? She now is perfectly happy to accept a repair rather than a replacement, she’s even off to take out the extended warranty on the machine too which is great for me as I get any work under that as well.
So no, often telling the customer the truth is very often, as the old saying goes, the best policy.
K.
If you really have to enter that arena my suggestion was this to many old customers…
Free estimate on repairs over £XXX
Where XXX will generally be £100. This means that the customer gets a free estimate if it is an espensive repair but up to the £100 you either get the job, which is highly likely, or you get a callout fee which you can explain.
It’s clear, it’s simple and it is within the legal framework if presented correctly.
Most of the guys that adopted such a system or charged a nominal fee as a callout found that all it did was filter out a lot of the cr@p calls they were getting from customers wanting the job done for nothing. The high cost ones, well you takes your chance but it’s a better one than running around the countryside for nothing all the time.
K.
Kev, it’s primarily warranty calls that are affected and extended warranties that are percieved by the customer to be held by the manufacturer. However, customers seem to think that there is no cost attached to simply giving them a new one (whatever it is). They do appreciate that whilst the appliance’s cost is low so is the profit on it, for most retailers at least and to a large extent manufacturers is way out of proportion with the profit earned. If they end up replacing upon ever request they would be in a loss situation.
But then if they built the things better in the first place and stopped producing 15 different ways to do the same thing then we’d have a far better chance at a first fix as Penguin rightly points out. So I’ve little sympathy for the manufacturers ass they’ve brought it on themselves, I just don’t want the earache from the customer about it as they mistakenly think that we can wave a magic wand and have them a new machine. Many of them actually expect us to carry a replacement appliance in the van!
K.
I wil have, but I rarely fight a battle on one front. 😉
I was also reminded of something today I either learnt or read…
Battles are rarely won on the field, they are won through politics and machinations behind the scenes, the examples are plenty, the exceptions are rare.
Some pressure has been brought to near on Bradshaws and, in some ways, it would be a pity if they back off, but cest la vie. As if they don’t we could use them as an example that we are not to fucked with.
K.
Re: AEG electronic ovn
streetlighter wrote:new baby arrived, 2 boys now so back to work for some peace and quite.
Sod the oven Paul, congratulations! I trust all is well?
streetlighter wrote:sorry if spelling bad but lack of sleep & beer playing havock at the moment.
Yep, know that scene only too well. 😉
K.
