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Re: Independant Service Domestic Appliance Limited (ISDAL)
Richard wrote:You lot scare the sh1t out of me!
Hey, I know I’m ugly but I didn’t think I was up up for a part in Alien just yet! 😉
No Richard it really is good to see positive stuff coming from all this and it’s part of the reward for the work put into to it by everyone and, let’s face it, most of the niggles and irritations are easily resolved with a little effort.
And, it’s a good start.
All good stuff I think, long may it continue.
K.
Re: Electrue/NESN
Bonzaco,
Just FYI
Based on a £35 labour rate…
30 fresh calls a week with a 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} first time completion and £3K stock up front to get the 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} complete, sound about right?
If you’re call per cost is higher than £25 a call, i.e. it costs you that or anymore than that then you will not, according to my calculations, make a profit on that work. Any stock bought will never be paid back but you will turnover I guess albeit with a slight loss.
The 30 calls billed actually in reality becomes 42 a week due to the hit rate. You get scared the bigger that figure gets when you realise that you can easily be in a situation where you are employing an engineer that is not producing a bean.
If you already carry the spares anyway, for example you distribute or retial spares or are Service Force then the hit rate rises and it becomes a more sensible proposition but still not a great one.
You just have to ask yourself if it’s worth the hassle and aggro of doing such work, I decided it wasn’t.
TBH, I’m doing work for other people that pays more (a lot in some cases), involves a far smaller stock to get the first fix rate, is a lot less aggro and far less technical machines which means I can get more calls done in a day. No re-programming boards or tub lifts, or very rarely at least whereas on this contract these sorts of problems seem to be the norm.
K.
Which is a load of tosh that says…TOUGH! 🙁
Oh well guys it looks as if CORGI registered engineers are about to become as scarce as hen’s teeth. I do hope all the manufacturers etc, are prepared for a very large hike in rates. 😕
K.
🙂 All fill hoses used to be 1.5M as well as drain. There used to be great debates about the 2.5M drain hoses, which you can get quite easily, as they were often not installed properly and allowed waste water back into the appliance. This is why many manufacturers stayed away from them and took the attitude that the drain outlet to your home plumbing should be installed within reach of the services.
Personally I’ve rarely had any cause for concern with the 2.5M hoses and we used them regularly for installation work with no adverse affects.
As for jointing kits, you can get them easily enough as well but obviously they can leak and it’s just another bit to go wrong if you like. My advice would be to get an extended drain hose and do the job right first time.
Any local supplier should carry them or if you ask in here tomorrow I’m sure one of the lads will be able to help you no problem.
K.
Nope I quite agree with everything there Andy, except the New Waves were garbage IMO, but then Philco’s range at the time and Candy’s Charme range were also pretty rank as well wilst Zanussi (Lux group) decided to instigate the Carboran tubs, nuff said. 😉
I know that spares costs will be driven up as usage goes down, that’s just a fact of life, but it does not explain how a manufacturer can buy in a pump for £1 from Askoll and sell it to Joe Public for over £30. I can think of no justification for that other than pushing the customer into buying a replacement appliance. Some are more sensiblel than others as has been discussed on the expensive spares thread but many just appear to be an attempt to push the customer into replacing rather than repairing. Also having experience of buying electronics and electronic components as well as finished product from the likes of Hong Kong, tells me that many of the spares are not just over-priced, they are enormously over-priced especially when you take into account the economies of scale. Most of that stuff is as cheap as chips to get made and the majority of it in the products we service is very simple really.
But as an example for you to mull over…
An Antonio Merloni washer has a landed cost, per container load of approx. £100 incl VAT & Duty yet a motor is £165 and a module £83 roughly excluding VAT. How can they justify that?
K.
Not really Andy. Hoover were already on the road to ruin with the utter garbage they pushed out when Candy bought them. Can’t remember the series but it was those “things” with the control PCB and the display PCB which had a nice wave design on the fascia which nicely got any overflow from the soap dispencer down to the PCB blowing it to bits! Aside from that we were replacing control PCB kits which necessitated a new harness and door lock from memory at a huge cost, over £150 cost IIRC. Hardly a good product.
If appliances are designed to last any more than a few years then why is a motor, normally, over half the cost of a replacement appliance? Or a PCB quite often 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or so of a replacement? Prices such as these force the customer into a replacement and does the brand name no favours either.
Thing is that I think manufacturers play the name game, okay so the customer won’t buy another appliance of that brand perhaps but they’ll buy another brand, maybe one that the company owns. If not, it’s not a great worry as another customer that’s been hacked off by another manufacturer will buy one of theirs instead. If you see what I mean, it’s just a merry go round.
K.
Candy getting Hoover isn’t the problem.
Like Hoover, Hotpoint, Zanussi, Bendix, Philco, Servis or any other brand that’s been around a long time they also did produce good solid machines, even if a lot of repairers didn’t like them or understand them. In the 80’s when I started there were so many people that wouldn’t touch anything but Hoover or Hotpoint.
However all the manufacturers as you rightly say, now play the price war game and there is reasons for that, two of the main ones being in the UK, Currys and Comet! Built to a price, not a quality.
Remember also that there is virtually no “new” market anymore for appliances, only replacement and if I were cynical I might purport that machines have a limited lifespan so as to induce higher sales through premature replacement. 😉
K.
Nope Lolly, time for an engineer with a wiring diagram to sort it out by the sounds of it. I very much doubt that the PCB is faulty, they do fail but I’ve never sen one causing no heat, and I can’t remember ever changing a door stat in one of those machines in all the years we’ve been doing them.
K.
Re: Electrue/NESN
bonzaco wrote:Some years ago a certain Roy Fisher from Mastercare asked fellow independents to work on the Coverplan contract. This together with a cracking team at Nottingham allowed many of us to expand and make a little profit. Unfortunately, after a couple of years, with 28 days notice, we were all terminated, with the remark ‘we’ve passed your work to GDA’. Many of us suffered badly at the hands of Roy Fisher, some went bust, some had to downsize and some ended up working elsewhere. We now see the same Roy Fisher using bully-boy tactics to force us to join another venture, sign up to a second contract, which whilst better than the first attempt, still ties our hands over parts, labour rates and next day service.
Sorry Bonz, I meant to come back to this and haven’t had the time till now along with a few other posts.
I’ve spoken with Roy and, Roy will confirm that he and I have had previous run-ins on more than one occasion as well as with others I’ve butted heads with at DSG. However, history aside, I’m not going to crucify the man on what he was told to do by a previous employer or anyone else in the industry for that matter. I also don’t hold much of a grudge towards anyone in that position, life’s too short for that cr4p IMO.
Roy and CDSL will stand or fall on what they do and offer the trade now, not eight years ago. If it’s right, it’s right and if it’s wrong then it’s wrong, the choice in that is up to you.
That said, I fully understand and appreciate where you’re coming from here and there are many still in the trade that will agree fully with what you say.
What I will say is that thus far on speaking with CDSL I’ve found them to be reasonable and reasonably open to be dealing with. Obviously, as with any contract, if you chose to capitulate to terms with which you don’t agree with then that is primarily your own lookout all I can do is offer advice if anyone asks me based on experience and information that I have of any given situation. But try negotiating and fighting your corner for rates and terms that suit you, CDSL and others do appreciate that every business is different, with different needs and they will almost always go some way to addressing your own individual needs but you may well have to press the points hard to get what you need. Often agents are in a far stronger position than they realise and if you do not get what you want or need it is my experience that walking away from it is often the best option.
If I can help you or anyone else, any more with it in private please feel free to get in touch.
Also remember that that is now, not in six months time. I’m usually not bad at predicting things based on solid information but my crystal ball is broke this week. 😉
K.
Re: ADP 8224 Dishwasher
Hi Lolly,
E3 means no heat.
More often than not on this machine either the thermostat has tripped out on overheat as a result of cutlery or something on the heater touching the thermostat or the heater itself that’s faulty. You can check the heater visually as often they will “pop” at some point or with a multimeter simply check for continuity.
MAKE SURE THE POWER IS OFF BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING
If you don’t know what I’m talking about you may be best advised to get an engineer out.
Hope that helps.
K.
This isn’t one of those 0800 number things from Yellow Pages is it? Just curious.
As for contracts, well nuff said elsewhere I think. 😉
K.
Well the one that always tickles me from punters is that “they can get a part for the car faster”, to which my response normally is..
“Yes madam, you can. But then I didn’t charge you over £8000 for your washer and when I repair it I come to you and charge you £50 for over an hours work, whilst your car dealer will expect the car taken to them at your expense and then they’ll charge you £50 an hour to repair it.”
And all the wear and tear items are not covered!
Hence now when people try to compare us to the car industry I just switch off as it’s utter tripe, we have nowhere near that level of finance available to us.
From a Fiat franchise manager:
“Give me £250,000 for the franchise and, if you do it right I’ll be making you a millionare in two to three years, guaranteed.”
Oh and the money was for the franchise, walk in and start working. 😉
K.
Re: Electrue/NESN
Just reading about this scrap is horrific.
Sums it all up nicely I think.
For those of you not able to interpret what’s going on here between Del and Bonzaco in particular they are not arguing, merely expressing different points of view and schools of thought. It’s brilliant and is exactly what a medium such as this is intended to do, offering different opinions.
As for the subject matter, well I’ve posted loads on it and tried to keep everyone as informed as possible in the hope that you will see what’s happening and make more educated desicions on what course of action is best for you. It is all too evident that every business is different and every situation is different, some people need this work and some do not.
One thing to me is clear from the feedback that I’m getting and that is that either businesses will fail over this or that staff will be made redundant, in particular, engineers. Many of those may well leave the independent trade as it is too unstable, job security is on a day-to-day basis and the salaries on offer are poor by comparision with the big boys, such as British Gas etc. as well as far better job security. It all only serves to dillute the industry’s skills still further.
Due to the fact that we do not have any security in what we do, as is highlighted in this thread, people will not train even if they had the finances and resources to do so as staff will leave at the first sign of trouble. We simply cannot aford that. We cannot afford to lose the staff we have at present as once the skills are gone they seem to be gone for good and there is no fresh blood coming in.
This is just a symptom of the effects that matters such as these have upon our trade and, I hope, a clear indication of what will happen in a few years when many of retire or find something better to be doing with our time. The simple fact of the matter is that this “service industry” is just that in this case, we serve, but we do not get renumeration that is realistic in line with the service provided. In fact just on this one contract alone I would defy anyone running a proper business plan to show this making a decent profit that allows you to re-invest in your business, pay sensible salaries and leave you with a bit of money in the bank. Based on the figures from the inception of the contract I felt that it was not possible to do it (in fact I proved it on a spreadsheet) so I refused the work politely at that point. We can all be busy fools should we choose to be.
But keep the opinion rolling in, I think it’s great that you guys are getting passionate about all this. 😀
K.
