Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Alex, I laughed so hard at that simple remark which means some other poor sod remembers them too. 😆
K.
Plastic clothes line rope stuff for lifting tub springs on/off, ideal for the task.
Shedloads of self-tappers. 😉
And a magnet on a string to recover screws etc. recovered from an old magnetron.
K.
Someone told me it had two motors, I ain’t got a clue ’cause only MI5 is allowed to see inside a Dyson washer! 😉 If not it must have a gearbox or some intricate pulley arrangement I guess to give the contra-rotation.
If anyone out there remembers the old Zerowatt 1000 they’ll understand my fears of this kind of thing. 😆
K.
I must have touched a nerve at Whirlpool, a bit close to the mark there with that story I think. My phone’s never stopped all day about this which has led to some interesting conversations. The laugh is, I’ve got sod all to do with it, I just reported the information given to me!
However, let’s just say that Whirlpool aren’t the only ones treating their agents like the proverbial brown stuff right now. 😉
The thing that I always cracks me up is that manufacturers and WP’s etc seem to think that they can get service cheaper and cheaper, year on year as well as stick up the price of spares. Now, logically, there comes a point where it’s no longer viable to keep dropping the prices. In my opinion that happened several years ago and this is now no longer a profitable business to be in, the droves leaving it seem to agree with me.
Already we are seeing £23K+ salaries for engineers which is out biggest cost and I got wind of someone paying £30K the other day. Just how long does the industry movers and shakers think that we can support salaries of that order on what they pay us per call? Sorry but in the UK salaries are not what they are in Turkey or Spain, in fact I strongly suspect that this is a Northern European problem for all manufacturers but I cannot get the figures to back that assumption. What I do know is that many of the regional managers for certain manufacturers and others are getting paid handsomely for their services, which for many their job appears to be shaking us down to bare bones and it appears that the middle and upper management of a great many manufacturers have not a clue what is involved or the costs in running a service agency yet they dictate what we are to do and not to do. When you try to talk to them you get the, how often have you heard this one, expression, “but there’s no more money allocated to service” or a variation of it. 😕
In the face of that the manufacturers etc. are faced with two options give us decent support and get the job done properly or we go bust and they will have the cost anyway as they’ll have to employ their own engineers again with all the headaches and hassles that that brings. Pretty simple really in essence.
And loads of us have nothing to lose anyway, many of us are simply paddling water as it is, dangerous people are those that have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Not only that, we can go off and get paid more to do less by British Gas or someone of that ilk.
K.
Re: Public Information Broadcast
And in other news, the US Military finds yet another job for a desperate Iraqi:
😆 I think Alex found this too.
K.
Re: Li’s Christmas
I got an email from Li this morning titled, “What A Surprise!” content as follows:
I have received a Christmas card from UKWhitegoods today with £10 cash and a cheque of £170.
I am very surprise and grateful to receive both. Please pass on my appreciation to all involved for their generous gesture. As it is mainly Trevor who did the work, the money generously donated should be his. I will pass the whole amount to him today.
Thank you once again for the fantastic surprise. Now I know Christmas is really coming!
Li
**********************************************************
My thanks to all those that pitched in to help on this and especially to Jason for doing his treasurer bit again. It’s really nice to do something nice for all the effort that has been put in by Li and Trevor, again, thank you all.
K.
You know I admire what James Dyson accomplished and the fact that he stuck two fingers up at the establishment as it were, but I still don’t understand the Brit’s predilection for actually seeing the dirt extracted from their carpets spinning about. Nor do I understand how that filters are any cheaper than bags or the total ownership cost of a Dyson being lower than anything else.
As for the washer, do the math. Take two drums, two motors and an electronic control system and you have a recipe for disaster in my experience! Shoving that lot together is just asking for trouble if you ask me and a couple of my customers that actually bought the things. 😉
Look at any of the machines that last or have lasted in the past 20-30 years, every one of them has or is pretty mechanically simple but chunky, unless someone knows something I don’t. Now with Servis etc they’ve even managed to prove that if you make a simple one but build it from crap then it doesn’t last either.
Just an opinion of course. 😉
K.
Re: Fisher & Paykel
ted wrote:I wonder if Whirlpool know, as they have not told us yet, D&G have tho…
Good job D&G
Agreed, once again D&G come out the good guys by keeping their network as informed as they possibly can and not messing people about so kudos to them on that score. I strongly suspect that they had little option in the F&P affair, as in the work being switched to Whirlpool as it looks to be a global tie-up between Whirlpool and F&P.
What annoys me intensely is the agents on the ground getting mucked about with work, this decision had bugger all to do with the ability of the agents or the level of service, this was purely a financial convienence on the part of the two manufacturers. I doubt a second thought was given to the people that actually earn a living from that work.
ted wrote:ps can you let us know more…ta
I will as it happens and I get the information, but after the holidays I think unless something major happens. But do keep an eye on the site as there’s something else going off in the background that’s unrelated to this.
K.
And funnily enough D&G seem to have extended the date they stop with F&P off till the 1st February 2004, so a one month stay of execution.
Wonder how that happened? 😉
K.
Re: Electrue/NESN
Del wrote:When they first approached the independent trade to carry out this work the rates set for that time were reasonable. I must confess I even used to make a small profit on the work, Which like so many of my trade coleauges, I would duley plough back into my business to improve the quality of service that I provided to all my customers both corporate and private.
You know Del I was reading through this thread this morning to refresh my memory and that paragraph reads to me as if you’re ashamed that you make a profit! It’s a business you run, not a charity or a not-for-profit organisation and it’s not even a public service for goodness sake, you should make a profit if you’re doing the job correctly! 😉
Give me one good reason why any of us shouldn’t show a profit?
K.
LOL, yes I know the houses I’ve also seen the cockraoches wearing hard hats and overalls! 😆
Yeah, I need to upload them to the site or you can link remotely via url to a post but it’s probably best if I do it from here.
K.
So that is the manufacturer, yet again, fixing a poor initial design once the product is in the field and as usual either us, the insurer or the customer foots the bill to rectity their error. 😉
IMO, if they modify so many things the appliance was poor when it left the factory gates.
K.
Well I thought about that Mark but decided against it, same with auto-pruning as a lot of the stuff, especially tech info and fault codes, are better left there and will hopefully build into a vast searchable knowledge base.
Allowing users to delete could compromise that and really it’s that much extra in the database. So it made sense not to allow those options although I may manually trim some stuff eventually.
K.
