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You can extend the warranty through MFI Extracare pretty easily, just ask them when you’re on the phone to them and I’m sure they will be able to advise accordingly.
K.
Sean has Dave spoken to you yet about this?
We had a bit of a chat last night about it and have done some strategic planning on the meeting, Kev also knows the score.
We’re gonna move the venue to a better one at the bottom of the M1 to here:
http://www.ramadajarvis.co.uk/hoverview … hotelID=10
We have reasons for this, too much to type out, plus I can’t be arsed to do it now as I’ve been typing all bloody weekend. Talk to you later on Skype or summat.
But thanks very much for volunteering, it is very much appreciated.
K.
Hi Donald,
The likely suspects are the motor, pump or module and not nesessarily in that order but any one of them could cause the fault described. There are other possibilities but they are the most obvious.
My experience is that MFI are a decent company and I do carry out service on their behalf, but they sort these problems pretty quickly once you get through to the call centre. It’s actually one of the better call centres to get through to as I use that number to call MFI as well. 😉
K.
In the end it’s the customer’s choice and if you can get paid to do the work on the spot then fair play. I would also point out that the customer would most likely have to wait for a wek or so before a Merloni/Hotpoint engineer even turned up to see what the problem was let alone repair it.
IMO, if the customer wants a premium service then they have to accept the premium price for that. It appears to me that streetlighter is merely offering a quicker service than Hotpoint for a premium and I can’t see anything wrong with that.
K.
There’s a few in Amazon that will do the trick for a lot less, it’s just I tend to go overboard with security and features.
WBR-G54-1 from Buffalo is a good product and damned cheap at £69.99 for what it does. That one gives you the newer, faster 802.11g spec for wireless which runs at 54Mbs which you may not need now but you may in the future.
Link: http://www.ukwhitegoods.com/modules.php … B00009ZK4N
If you want a really cheap solution but still from a decent manufacturer then the Netgear MR814 also on Amazon is a good enough choice but it’s limited to the older 802.11b spec for wireless which runs at 11Mbs.
Link: http://www.ukwhitegoods.com/modules.php … B0000C1WNY
Generally I have found that the 54Mbs products do have a better range and suffer from fewer dropouts, bear that in mind.
K.
I was always told, many years ago, that the traditional manufacturers with production in the EU were unconcerned with the Asian market due the shipping costs from the Far East to the EU which, at the time made buying from there impractical at best. How times change.
What I have noticed about the Far Eastern companies is that they seem to manufacture in the cheapest possible way and give little or no thought to after sales service and that attitude seems to extend to information and spares. What they do do is offer the customer a seemingly good buy with all the bells and whistles at a very keen price up front.
Customers IME tend not to think about the costs further down the line.
In time the emerging Far Eastern companies may well come up to scratch and basically become like the Japanese in manufacturing terms but with that the costs of production will have to rise. Then there’s the politics of it all as well. 😉
K.
XP will detect and configure the network for you then, it should be pretty painless using either wired or wireless. If you do have any hassle just ask as I have networked one or two PC’s in my time. 😉
If you’re going the wired route then yes, you need the 4 port (at least) router, one port per machine or device connected but that can be easily and cheaply expanded upon. It really depends on what you want to do with it.
When you say PCI devices I assume that you mean wired network cards. That being the case then all you need is a lump of cable between the machine you want to connect going to the router, plug it into a port and, basically, away you go. These days under XP and the likes this is very simple normally. All you really need to do is remember to add all the machines to teh same “Workgroup” in XP, the network wizard will pop up and it asks you for this anyway, from memory the default name in XP is “MSHOME” and in older versions of 2000 etc. it’s “WORKGROUP”, hardly challenging.
However, I would advise that you get the router foirst and connect it to one machine only to configure it first for your ADSL account and set it as a DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol) server. The reason for that is that the router will then automaticaly set up all the IP stuff for you on your network so any old PC is just a case of pluging in, running the network wizard and that’s all you need to do.
If you start to get hassles doing it don’t hesitate to gimme a holler.
K.
Re: NESN Joining DASA
There’s no cause for alarm it’s really very simple…
They fuck off or we do.
See, simple! 😆
K.
Heh, that was a big thing in Kiwi Land you know.
Apparently they like their butter or something and some saw that F&P doing away with a butter compartment was un-patriotic in some way. 😕
I don’t make the news (most of the time) I just post it up. 😉
K.
If it were me I’d buy the Vigor 2600G’s if you don’t need VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) as the firewalls in them are superb and they are highly configurable.
Wireless is easy but not secure, even with security measures in place but the chances are you’d never be compromised. But it is best to be aware of that.
BTW, 4 Port means a 4 port “switch” built into the router for a LAN (Local Area Network) so you can get up to four machines to connect through it using CAT5 cabling.
The link is: http://www.seg.co.uk/products/a_vigor2600g.html
They are listed at £179 a pop, but if you want I’ll check out what I can get them for although you’re generally looking at about a 10-15{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} margin on such things so not a huge saving, but a saving. 😕
K.
LOL, yes I do know about them to some degree strangley enough. 😉
Is it for cable or ADSL? Do you want a wireless network (known as a WLAN for Wireless Local Area Network) in the house or office?
You want the best, bar getting into silly money, then the Vigor’s are the ones to go for by a country mile. Look at http://www.seg.co.uk at the range, if you want one ask me as a good friend happens to be a reseller. 😉
Lower down the scale things start to heat up with more choices than you can shake a stick at but wherever the budget allows go for a well known name in networking as you’ll get support and updates for it.
Anything else, just ask.
K.
Fair enough, on low volume fixed costs repairs are not practicle IME. I struggled with them once before on a volume contract as well, but each to their own and if it works for you then fine, if not then you just can’t do it especially where it pushes you into a loss. In regard to Servis I can fully appreciate that as the spares pricing is just stupid IMO.
I have heard a little rumour, with no confirmation at all, that this is overspill work from Merloni that will dry up in three months. How much truth there is to that I really don’t know I would suggest that any enquiries on it are directed to D&G.
K.
I meant to post to this that, if anyone needs a reference number please don’t hesitate to ask for one by PM, email or even that phone thing. 😉
K.
(Not a good day to call me as it’s getting surgically removed at 5pm from my right ear :?)
Would D&G not talk to you about it Lawrence as, if so, that’s most unusual for them as they do tend to be pretty reasonable IME?
The biggest single problem that is faced by many now doing this sort of third party work is the lack of technical information. Just look at the sheer volume of posts looking for Indesit fault codes alone! So I can understand the trepidation there, very high double visit rate I expect.
Now, if Merloni decide (as I suspect they will) to stick Indesit/Ariston in a Hotpoint wrapper and sell them badged then a lot of the trade simply won’t want to know them. Perhaps some of the manufacturers should consider the effect of a few hundred engineers floating about the country telling 8-10 potential customers a day (at least) not to touch XXXXXXX brand. 😕
K.
Penguin,
Not to get too technical about it all but you’ve mentioned something worth explaining that a lot of people don’t understand, all washing detergents contain a kind of time element to them. Many of the cleaning agents (there are over 130 ingredients in a standard soap powder) are designed to kick in at a particular time in the cycle using the internal heat of the machine to time the release. There’s loads more on detergents but I’ll stow it for now.
Suffice to say I often remind customers that there is no point in buying a decent machine then using some rubbish detergent in it as the detergents etc. that you use are as equally important to the result as the appliance chosen.
K.
