Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Penguin45 wrote:18 months from now, it could all be changing for the better!
Exactly and, other than a bit of time, there’s nothing at to be lost from at least trying to make things better than sitting around waiting on doomsday IMO. Things may well happen, but they more often don’t happen on thier own without some intervention.
K.
You are absolutely right Penguin!
It’s an idea I’ve toyed with on many occasions and thought about, all we need to get this started is engineer’s comments. Going on and surveying consumers could be done, but as you quite rightly point out, that takes a bit of funding.
Penguin is right about the car industry (I have a few contacts there myself ;)) everytime What Car, Top Gear or any of the other leading mags ask for a review car manufacturers sweat buckets awaiting the results, likewise the JD Power results. Why? Simple, it affects sales which is the only thing that a manufacturer cares about in reality. Manufacturers don’t much care about UKW and the bits I write on the front page other than the fact that it affects sales, like if a retailer or contract client read it they may be put off if there’s service problems and switch brand. Yeah, sure they care about the service aspect but not to anywhere near the same degree.
If you want to change anything at all, you have to affect sales and I think this is the start of a great idea.
K.
Nope, a lot of it we do see in-warranty or many of us do at least, even if we don’t we can still tell you that the new range of Hotpoint washers still use the WMA tub group, in essence. We can tell you that the Tricity Bendix is the same thing near enough with minor changes to the Zanussi sat next to it for £100 more, or the AEG. We can tell these things to customers, we just haven’t.
Normally, in this industry which I have remarked before changes at a glacial pace, a tank/cabinet design has a lifespan of 10 years or more, look at any major European manufacturer and tell me I’m wrong.
The warranty failure rate for most manufacturers is calculated at approx. 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of appliances will require service within the first twelve months. Then it tails off a bit as most of those are actually in the first three to six months of ownership and then rises from about 2.5-3 years gradually from the information I’ve gleaned. Hence there wasn’t really that much hooha about a two year warranty being imposed, had it come to pass.
Customers ask me on a, literally, daily basis what machine I’d reccomend personally and all I can say is don’t buy the cheapest of the cheap, go to something at least mid-range. But even that doesn’t guarantee longevity of any sort these days.
Buy an integrated De Detriech and you get a Zanussi badged up, big bucks. Buy a Kuppersbusch washer and you get a £600+ Candy! These are things that the public are totally and utterly unaware of, should they be? Not only that, for these badged up machines, as an example, a timer for the “Kuppersbusch” intg. w/d is over £220!!!
Martin you’d be amazed at the volumes being sold by some of the smaller guys out there and they’re taking business from only one place, the traditional brand names. Look at the rise and rise of Smeg, CDA, Brandt, De Detriech, Hygena/Diplomat, Cusina, Elica, Maytag an a host of others now out there and selling well. Many of these brands have come from nowhere in the UK to being known names by the public. Why?
Also please note that most of the above do not sell through the sheds and have specialist products aimed at a very targetted market in many cases.
There is and probably always will be a very large market out there for traditional brand names, on that I totally agree as people are comfortable with them.
But….
Look at the history, which everyone seems to forget.
Hotpoint and Hoover were once topping the sales charts by a HUGE margin, that has now changed totally.
How long will it be once you get Merloni in a Hotpoint box with 2 weeks for a service call, that retailers start to shy away from selling them? It’s more hassle than it’s worth to do so for the retailer if it does go wrong, as has just been proved by Dave’s reaction to the current situation with his customer.
When Lux made the switch from true Zanussi/AEG/Lux service separated and specialist,IIRC, Zanussi had a 15{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} share of the UK market, the service when it changed to Service Force as it was then had the same kind of delays at the time all over the UK. Zanussi’s market share dipped to under 10{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} in a year (again from memory) simply because the dealers stopped selling it. It was more hassle than it was worth, the same happened with AEG from what I’m told.
I can see Hotpoint going the same way, soon.
If that happens who will fill the void?
Enough market analysis for tonight, wine beckons and the manufacturers pay people loads of cash to figure this stuff out, albeit not very well IMHO. 😉
K.
Re: One Million!
Wow, this has taken an interesting twist. Penguin has indeed hit a nail on the head.
There is practically no independent advice available to the public about whitegoods in the UK, very little in fact worldwide so the manufacturers get to do what they like effectively as there is no control other than legislation really. They have, IMO, mostly fought a price war over the past decade or so and where’s it got them? I’ve heard the tired excuses about Currys/Comet etc. forcing price points on appliances, but really, there is a little word that needs to be learned and, it is “no”. What has happened in recent times is that (again only my opinion) we’ve seen not only the price erroded but consumer confidence in major brand names as well who appear to be losing ground to newer brands now. We’ve seen the errosion in quality of components and in the actual engineering in the appliances with many these days seemingly designed to be consigned to the tip at the slightest failure, even the lack of information of training on them shows us that let alone the actual build.
Which do provide some insight and, sales teams around the land read it avidly as, like a good review of a car in What Car it can mean sales are boosted by a positive review. By the same token the reviews, if negative, can also adversly affect sales. The huge difference between the likes of What Car and Which is that What Car will go into detail pricing spares and servicing costs, running costs and the platforms on which the mechanics are built on giving a much greater and better picture than Which would do. We have no equivelent in this industry so the consumer finds out the XXX manufacturer’s spares are hideously expensive when they go to buy one. The response from the consumer is generally never to buy that brand again and instead try another, rightly or wrongly. But with little or no information to provide an informed purchase, other than the manufacturer’s literature in most cases or the advice of the salesperson, they have little choice but to do so.
Offering an opinion based on your own experiences in the field is just that, an opinion and we all do it day after day when customers ask and, they do ask. I see no harm in giving an opinion if asked and I make it as honest as I can when I do, it has gotten me into trouble on occasion but I’d rather have my integrity intact thank you very much. Although some clever wording goes a long way. 😉
I think there is a large potential niche in the market for a range of solidly built and well supported appliances and I honestly think that customers are fed up with the muck they’ve had for the past few years. The problem is we seem to jump from the poor quality at low prices to decent quality at high prices, there seems to be little in the middle ground now.
As for the site, thanks for the comments and let’s hope it makes a difference somehow.
The posts, as we’ve discussed before, are better left there as they are searchable and indexed (in the public forums) by Google etc. so people can find answers without having to ask the same questions repeatedly and they are searchable using the internal site search engine, for the trade forums. I think it’s best that valuable information that people have taken the time and trouble to type out is left there. It also builds a history of the site and the industry which has previously been non-existant in any form.
Penguin is correct totally in the time it takes to type something out for the site as you have to type it, review it, polish it, review it then publish it. I do do some stuff “off-the-cuff” but that’s just me, then oggle at the errors later! 😆 But that’s why I, personally, really appreciate the time that people put into UKW as I know first hand how time-consuming it can be and that’s also partly the reason I won’t prune the forums as someone put a lot of effort into doing them in the first place.
I do believe that Penguin is correct in that we have a unique opportunity here to express our views and just maybe inprove the trade in some fashion. I think we’ve already made some progress in that regard, or at least I hope we have and that manufacturers etc. can see that we are trying to help them, not hold them to ransom or any such nonsense. Although, sometimes as the old cliche goes, you have to be cruel to be kind. 😉
I’ll have a think about the reviews thing over the weekend and see what I can come up with, I’m sure we can do something. Some people in the industry may not like that though although, IMO, the more and better information/feedback that manufacturers get the more they are liable to pay attention.
Thanks both Del and Panguin for some excellent and thought provoking posts, I know I’ve probably gone off a bit and not answered some points but I do have to work! 😉
K.
Thanks Del it will be a good event event I’m sure and it’s been a great laugh every single time as well as very informative, frank and open.
Well worth popping along I’d say.
K.
Hi,
That should be easy enough but it will have to wait till the morning when I’m near a PC with all the Diplomat info on it. 😉
K.
Funnily enough Dave noticed that earlier as well, we have no idea but no doubt he’ll be back with a vengence soon enough.
K.
That is, frankly, just totally UNBELIEVABLE!!!
How to win friends eh? TBH if that’s how Hotpoint/Merloni are going to treat customers and dealers then I can see why the engineers are hacked off as they’ll get it as soon as they walk over the door. As for service work, well you’d have to ask yourself, “do I really want to work for a company with that mindset?” 🙄
K.
I got this email as well, it would appear that CHC Internet seem to think they’re on a winner here without realising that any of the repairers will not have the kind of cash they want I suspect. The only real use it would be is to Service Force, as in Lux themselves, IMO and since they’re already pretty much sorted because some t**t has been, what is known, as cyber-sitting the domain I think they might be stuffed.
Just to put this is perspective this is selling the domain name ONLY there is no traffic, no existing website, no business, in fact, no nothing other than a name. It will not also guarantee ANY preferential treatment by any search engine at all in terms of traffic or ranking.
What these people do is buy up anything that they can and try to flog it on for vast profit, to register this domain probably cost them £15 back then, plus a few renewal fees along the way and then they’ll ask for thousands for it, if some mug is daft enough to pay them then good luck to them. Cyber-sitting is at best immoral and has been proven, in court, in some cases to actually be illegal, Marks & Spencer won a big battle over it IIRC.
K.
No you’re not. I have one on one machine that I just cannot get eliminated despite my best efforts to find and zap the bugger. I suspect I got it from an email or possibly a download, but tracking the problem down is proving to be a tad difficult. This from the person that sits behind two firewalls and a virus scanner! 😕
K.
Re: WMA blows board
Martin wrote:It’s OK for the likes of Merloni to send an engineer (if they have one that is?)
ROTFLMAO! 😀 😀 😀
K.
