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LOL, but it was a real ASKO Mark and it did work although I’ve no idea if it was sold outside the UK.
Skoda did hill climbers well didn’t they? 😉
Beko, I just shudder at the thought! 😕
K.
Not the first, ASKO had a machine that spun at 2200rpm (IIRC) circa 1990 at Domotechnica although it was never made available commercially.
K.
Re: Anglo Iberian
I have a lot of time for AIS but I have to admit to a few issues of late.
One is the old chestnut of reporting back the status of calls. What AIS and many others don’t seem to realise is that everyone is looking for this these days and it takes time to do it. Time costs money as does the faxes in this case and it is not reflected in the rates I don’t think, this was one of the reasons for the “Scalable Charges” thread the other day.
Let’s face it, these days, you’re looking at those rates for bargain basement “keep it going” service, you’re not going to get people falling over themselves to do work for those rates and certainly not with the feedback that is seemingly expected. Or course not, the guys are going to be concentrating on getting the £40+ jobs done first as, in the end, we are all forced by commercial reality to be a bit mercenary whether we like AIS or not, which I do BTW.
Also, according to my figures based on the benchmark £27 cost to call, you need to be getting a 71{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} first fix rate to break even at £35 so there’s not a lot of room for error in there. You also have to consider the diversity of the product and the old “X” factor that is, in this case, that the product branding is often unknown to the customer so they are often pretty hostile as it’s something they are not familiar with and it’s busted.
The point is that all this sort of low renumeration high risk work is fine as a filler but it’s not going to get star treatment as, quite simply, there’s nothing in it to allow us to give it the attention that it perhaps deserves. That said AIS have tried to some degree to address the rates issue and they did manage to get a large rate increase earlier this year as a standard call was about the £27-28 mark so there has been significant progress.
Much of this is not a critisism of AIS, it’s actually a critisism of the industry in general and the attitudes towards service levels. I am a great believer in the “you get what you pay for” principal and I think that service levels or SLA’s should be geared toward and reflected in the renumeration on offer just as it is in most other industries. After all, why should a customer that wants a call down to a three hour slot and a call on her mobile before going on a £500 washer get the same service as customer who has a £200 washer for the same service fee, or less in many cases? It always struck me as, at best remiss and at worst totally stupid, that manufacturers and retailers did not use service levels as a selling tool which would be very easy and cheap to impliment, but then they never did listen to me. 😕
K.
Yeah Phil I know the kinda costs involved in getting them done. We used to get the stickers supplied for free from the likes of Zanussi and we put them on and it’s really pretty easy to do. Soapy water and a plastic spatula thing and your away, taking them off is even easier with a hair dryer. 😉
Anyway, the point is that it wouldn’t save any money for us immediately but I think there’s a long-term benefit to be had from it. After all, it won’t pay you on the first one, but every one after that is recouping the cost.
But here’s a thought for you all to mull over and one I mentioned to Dave earlier as I’ve been thinking on this tact for a few days now, what about charging to advertise on the vans? I mean if you read that Volkswagen article it is 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} correct, why do you think people get paid to drive about with “Red Bull” splattered all over their nice VW? Simple, it’s high profile advertising that is seen by a LOT of people. So in adition to advertising ourselves we could also approach others and see if they want to pay to have their proper logos displayed.
Just a thought or two.
K.
Yeah Alex and I think I know to whom you refer. 😕
Neil, as there’s no input and hardly any sight of him at all.
Comments?
K.
I’ve already taken a bit of advice on it Alex as I’m no lawyer, they live in a world that is not mine.
But I sent you a mail of a lot of the recent stuff, see what you think of it.
K.
:rotfl:
I have some fresh ones as is. One day it will also be released I should imagine, but not just yet I don’t think. 😉
K.
Re: Ted Won’t Let Me Post It!
Well Kev phoned me last night just as he finished readin the first version and the conversation ran…
KH “The tears are streaming down me face laughing at that”
KW “It’s not THAT funny fer fuck’s sake”
KH “You can’t call Merloni “Eye-tie””
KW “Why not?”
KH “It’s too fucking funny, that’s why not and as for Dragon’s Breath…”
He couldn’t stop laughing, so I guess I musta done something right. I didn’t think it was that funny though.
K.
Yeah I wanted to know if it was just me, but apparently it’s not. Thankfully a lot of the errors Bradshaws have kindly set out in black and white and, if this continues I will make all the documentation that I have available for download in the hope it stops someone else being suckered by this crew.
This type of thing is the very reason that a war chest to defend such things in court was suggested some time ago.
The work was terrible Dave, nursing homes and Burger King microwaves as well as high end specialist appliances for low rates. Very high double call rate, some of the microwaves were extremely time consuming and all for a measly £35. Then on top of that you have to put up with this cr4p as well.
Alex was a wise man when he declined the work, more hassle than it was worth.
K.
Re: Bradshaw Group
Well someone must have told Bradshaw’s about this thread and they contacted me and agreed to take back the spares.
So, after digging out the original invoice I’m told that’s not sufficient as it’s batched and shows only a labour and spares content. But since the original worksheets with the customer’s signature were attached to the original invoice sent out on the 03/10/2002 I don’t have the copies. So they tell me they can’t pay a batched invoice and they don’t have any information on the invoice. But if they didn’t have the information then how on Earth can they tell me that it’s a batched invoice? 😕
So anyway, I gets a fax telling me that Dave Newey would call and arrage the collection of the spares… still waiting!
But, last night some guy turned up at the door at 5:30pm to collect something. He didn’t know what or for whom, now what would you do? Especially as I had no idea that the spares were to be collected at all.
So anyhow, fax from this cheeky woman at Bradshaws called Tracey Devine this morning telling me that I had refused collection, I didn’t even know that were collecting for God’s sakes!
Long story short, they’re now taking me to court over it and accuse me of not being within the legal requirements for records and allsorts, as if.
So nice people to work for, I think not!
K.
Re: Distriparts price increase
Well it looks as if the reason for Distri’s price increase has become clear and it has nothing to do with the service guys really or what they do, to quote one of the financial pundits…
Chief Executive Hans Straaberg last month said earnings will drop more than previously forecast as steel prices have more than doubled this year, inflating costs for making refrigerators, stoves and washing machines.
At the same time, the owner of the Frigidaire brand is struggling with sluggish consumer demand amid record European unemployment levels.
Operating profit this year will fall “significantly” compared with an earlier forecast of a “slight” decline, the company said. Pretax profit in the period fell 27 per cent to 944 million kronor (US$129 million).
The shares were down 1.50 kronor (21 US cents), or 1.2 per cent, to 128 as of 9:02 am in Stockholm. The stock declined 8.1 per cent in a day last month on the outlook for full-year profit and has shed 19 per cent in 2004.
As costs rise by 1.2 billion kronor (US$164 million) in the second half – driven partly by increased demand in China – earnings will be cut by 500 million kronor (US$68.5 million), Straaberg said in September. Before that, he had forecast that annual profit before interest, taxes and one-time items would drop less than 10 per cent.
The company, which has eliminated about 5,000 jobs over two years, is paring costs in response. Electrolux aims to save some 700 million kronor (US$95.9 million) by reducing expenses and raising prices. Analysts say that may be difficult as competitors such as Maytag Corp and Whirlpool Corp vie to offload inventories in the face of sluggish consumer spending.
“We see few attractions at this juncture,” Patrick Marshall, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in London with an “underperform” recommendation on Electrolux, wrote in a note to clients before the earnings were released. “Industry pricing simply has to improve significantly” for companies to be able to meet profit goals, he said.
Metal and energy prices have soared as China, the world’s largest consumer of copper, aluminum and coal, helps fuel the fastest global growth in three decades. Higher prices for metals and oil contributed to the fastest annual gain in three years in German producer prices in September.
So the stock on your shelves is going to be costing you more because the prices to the manufacturer has increased, especially oil and steel in this instance.
Now it strikes me that, since oil prices have also a direct affect on our profitability that we should also be allowed to increase our prices in line with external factors, after all if it’s good enough for a multi-national billion dollar corporation like Electrolux then it’s got to be good enough for us to employ the same tactic. Oh, that’s right, we get told to behave and that the price is on offer is the price, take it or leave it. Well, in that case maybe we should just subtract the equivilent amount in percentage points from our Distri spares bill every month and say, “well that’s what we’ll pay, take it or leave it”.
Two sets of rules… never works.
K.
Re: DANCE WITH THE DEVIL
I think that with a few simple questions Richard has absolutely hit the nail very squarely on the head here. In fact, some of the points made by all are outstanding and it appears that maybe we are starting to wake up to ourselves after all.
Like Richard I would also like to see some new input on this, I think it’s a cracking thread and one that people should contribute to with their own thoughts. Whether you agree or not I’d love to get different takes on some of the points raised in this.
Let’s face it, if this is the calibre of people in this trade I’m damned sure we can do better than we currently are and I happen to know that most service engineers, particularly of the self employed variety, are generally pretty smart people.
To train costs a lot of money, fact! I was recently talking to an IT company about some software, the software was not that expensive all things considered, but the cost of training was just astoundingly expensive, that’s why no-one wants to do it. But as we all know, the cost of training up staff only to have them pinched or bought by another company is not only expensive but also potentially very damaging to the business as well. Just another reason why we are not training on top of the financial constraints placed upon us.
Kevin rightly points out that, in actual fact, on the whole it is actually cheaper for a manufacturer to contract out the work as well as being a lot less hassle, because it then becomes someone else’s problem.
It is also correct that the tide appears to be changing to be yet again in our favour, use that to your advantage. There is work out there, decent work and that which is not decent will have to become so or it simply won’t be done in time.
Lawrence, you should post more. 😉
K.
