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Nope, she’s from outside the industry from BT I think. So she’s an unknown quantity basically as yet and hell knows what she’s there to do.
They could have employed better to sort it IMO.
K.
Re: Directories
Martin wrote:You had me guessing on this for a while but I finally figured it out what you meant 😕 …………..You have changed the name from “Database” to “Directories”…….right? 🙂
Well I had assumed everyone would read the article on the frontpage. 😉
Martin wrote:P.S. I see there is no listing for “Franchises” yet? 😆 LOL 😆
LOL no and I see little point as none of them have ever lasted long enough to be worth the effort. 😆
K.
A thought that just popped into my head is that NESN also tried this not so long ago, exactly the same drill and it to failed miserably.
In fact I think we have one or two casualties of that little sordid affair as members who may like to comment.
K.
Re: Hotpoint Advertise Franchises!
kheath wrote:This will not work….full stop. None of my guys will apply they work for me because they DONT want the hassle of self employmaent oh and they prefer paid holidays…………
Quite! (Even if Kev has been at the rum again ;))
Simple fact of life is that there are no redundant engineers out there, they’re snapped up as employed engineers or they go self-employed and, to be honest, there’s less of the self -employed or self-employed wannabes around these days.
Why?
Simple, there’s no money in it!
K.
In the real world I’ve found that there’s little can be done.
All you can do is tell the customer, note it on the jobsheet and note it in the PC that they’ve been told. At least that way you have some evidence that you told them to rectify it.
K.
Martin,
In my original post I was deadly serious. Hotpoint/Merloni could do a lot worse than approach the independent trade for help and I’m quite sure that many of us would be only too happy to help them. The thing is that having been shafted in the not so distant past a trust has to be rebuilt with many of the independents and that can only be done by Merloni themselves.
I’m also pretty sure that word will get back to the people that matter of the discussion here and, let’s face it, it’s not hard to get in touch with us.
As I said, the door is open.
K.
I seem to remember Service Force toying with “franchises” as well, it too died a swift death.
The problem with franchise is that in order to pay for the initial franchise or an ongoing rental type franchise there has to be a substantial return on the investment. In this industry there is not the high profit margins to enable the franchisee to afford it.
Show a bank manager the fancy spreadsheets and projections and he’ll uhm and ah about it but be okay. Show him the reality of the situation and he’ll fall about laughing. The same tends to happen even for just being given a service agency as the payback time on the investment is just too long, if it ever pays back. Plus, when you look at these plans business managers at the the banks aren’t stupid, they can see that if costs to you rise you’ll be sunk.
Let me put that into perspective a bit and, anyone doing major service agency work can probably verify this. If you have to kit out say, 6 vans, with £4K worth of stock, plus a base stock of about £10K or thereabouts with a profit of £5 per call that’s one hell of a lot of calls to be done before you even start to make a profit. Then you have the investment in office equipment, staff, premises… trust me the list and headaches are absolutely endless. On top of that you’re normally locked to a fixed labour rate for at least 24 months, so if it’s wrong at the start you have to suffer the losses for two years before you can rectify it, if you can at all. In reality of course, you’d see that at six months, then you have 18 months to ride the storm. If you are losing money the bank, a supplier or the tax/VAT man will have shut you down long before then.
I recently saw a couple of business plans from a major manufacturer for their prospective agents, neither business was evn anywhere close to the projections the figures given where either grossly (and IMO, incompetently) calculated or just a total fabrication. This is what you could be betting your entire financial future on as well as your house and all sorts. My advice is simple, don’t do it whithout a lot of your own research and projections of the worst possible outcome as the person/people trying to sell you it will only paint a nicey, smiley, happy future. Meanwhile, you’ll be carrying all the risk!
K.
You are more than welcome.
Good guys! According to some at NESN I’m the Spawn Of Satan about now! 😉
K.
IIRC Paul has been away from NESN for some time now so DON’T open it! When I was working for NESN I told them so many times about security issues they had with viruses it’s unreal, in the end I gave up telling them. More holes there than the Titanic has. 😕
They probably had your address from trawling for agents.
On another note…
There has apparently been massive changes made at NESN of late and I’m awaiting *OFFICIAL* comment before I post anything on the subject. But what I am hearing certainly sounds like a step in the right direction for them, whether it’s too late or not remains to be seen, that can only be decided by the members.
K.
APG, you need to subscribe and get to use Shop@ when it goes live. 😉
You’ll be real pleased to see the post I just made in The Rumour Mill at a guess. 😕
K.
The trouble is Martin that in that part of the world a decent plumber can cost up to £60K to employ, from what I hear the minimum around London these days is £30K for a plumber and they’re even getting paid that in Scotland now as a matter of course.
So, if you’re gonna pay those kinda wages you have to charge for it and you have to look the part to be able to charge for it I should imagine. That doesn’t mean you’re good at anything except for marketing yourself to those willing to pay the price you set. 😉
As for this industry, not a chance!
A house, to which plumbing is normally fitted ;), is of a far higher value and concern than even a Miele machine. Hence the plumbers can get away with charging almost what they like whereas we cannot and, until lately, there’s always been some other fool down the road that would do what you do, only cheaper.
K.
You can change the bearings on their own but Servis supply it as a backplate complete, which saves a lot of time and hassle TBH but costs. Paul at DATA knew what the kits were and probably Dave does too, just watch the drum shaft is okay. But if the bearings haven’t totally collapsed the drum should be alright.
You can do the job (my pricing :twisted:) for about £80-100 and be making out that if it only needs the bearings.
K.
