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Hmm, 1.5M in sales, hmm. Is that out there without attacking bigger contracts like Coverplan I wonder?
I’m glad Whirlpool realise that they would not probably be able to cope with third-party work entirely in-house.
I’d go with the £350 a day, seems reasonable enough unless it’s an extended course. Or the cost of an engineer’s time per day, but it all comes down to numbers really I’d say, without that pricing it would be a nightmare.
Okay, points taken re getting this out but we really need to get ourselves organised on this and get the jump on the competition.
K.
For the moment it is. What I was meaning was asking something like, “Would you be interested in taking part in a national network of indepenent repairers knowing that there may be a small cost involved in the running of it?” Or something as generic as that.
If they find out, so what? Blame me! There’s not really one of the big boys that can hurt you guys that will be able to touch me after that it’s only a business decision on the part of the agent. 😉 Not only that the whole Whitegoods thing is the ideal masthead to plant there for the idea, then they think it is me that’s doing it and not DASA, therefore it’s divorced from you guys and I’m regarded as a bit of a maverick anyway for some strange reason. 😆
Smoke and mirrors, they do it to us and I was always taught to do unto others… 😈
Darren is “reputedly” out to get third party work, in other words, steal NESN’s business, but I don’t know how well that will go. You of all people should be only too aware of how well that panned out for Service Force and, that aside, GDA! 😉
Quite simply, not a viable proposition IMO, but they’ll all have a go at it, it won’t work and it’ll all come back around again in it’s usual cyclic pattern and the losers will be us as ever no doubt. 🙁
K.
Time off, tut tut! 😉
TBH I’m not surprised, I’ve had several calls in the past few days from people getting very jittery about NESN and the non-payments. Not just the partial payments, but work not paid for, rejected and generally getting pissed about. Then on trying to speak to their accounts people no-one wants to know about it.
Your scenario is exactly the one I was worried about Phil, as if NESN do go titsup I think you are still left with having to pay them for the spares. Just the very position I’m in this month with MFI as I owe them for spares from June , bought to do NESN work with but NESN ain’t paid me for them, but MFI still want paying. Sadly Paul Brooks is on holiday till the 8th of September so I’m going to speak to Sunil Kapoor about it tomorrow and attempt to get MFI to just debit it from NESN’s payment, feck ’em. It’s all I can do as I’m not prepared to incur further loses by paying for spares that I’m not getting paid for, in effect doubling the loss in cashflow terms!
I would keep the Darren Harrison thing quiet just now and that only says to me that we need to get organised quicker. Although, it won’t work I don’t think as it never has done in the past for any other network of that ilk, so why should it work now?
K.
Rosieres is a brand owned by the Candy Group and spares are available from them.
BTW, it’s a Paul Bocuse range cooker, probably a 2040DBUK or a 4040DBUK and the *FULL* model number including the letters to get spares correctly.
HTH
K.
If you want a good business phone you can’t go wrong with a Nokia 6310i, except that the Bluetooth utilisation on it is totally pants. That said it works fine for headsets and car kits…so far, but forget data unless you buy Nokia’s BT adaptor at over £100!
Sony Ericsson T610 seems a decent bet as an allround decent phone.
Or if you need near PDA functionality as well as all the bells and whistles as well as not minding a more chunky model this season, then the Sony Ericsson P800 is a nice bit of kit.
The new Nokia’s I don’t like, too teen girly in design for me. 😉
K.
If NESN manage to pay the full amounts this month I’ll eat my shorts! Quite simply there’s no chance of it I reckon.
They will pay as much as they can or are willing to this month (September payment) but after that I’m not taking any bets as I don’t think they’re going to survive till Christmas TBH and I’ll explain why…
Too many people are too nervous about NESN right now, not just us poor agents, but some of the manufacturers and insurers as well. I know of two manufacturers that think it only has a lifespan of months at best and I also know that more then half a dozen of their major *current* clients are looking for alternatives right now.
Couple that with the debt factoring, payment shortfalls, staff leaving, staff turnover, no organistation, an accounts dept. that doesn’t speak to anyone and all the other assorted problems and a blind man with one good ear can see it’s only a matter of time before they fall. They could rescue it though, the first step being firing JT, but I doubt they’ll do that anytime soon.
*IF* and i do mean *IF* any more than half a dozen agents put them on stop for any time at all then the situation gets even more precarious for them as that will put a dent in their cashflow and, more seriously, their credability as a service provider.
Mark, I do hope you get your two months out them but I’d say it was touch and go at this point whether you will or not, or at least get all your money out of NESN.
K.
Just to whet your appetite, up for discussion is the following at the meeting on the 3rd:
Prices of Appliances
Prices of spares
Gas work
Rates
DASA
Abortive calls, who pays ?
Spares mark up (contract work)
Liability insurance
Minimum standards we should adhere to
The UK white goods site and what it can do for us
Putting accounts on stop – Tactics to get even!
Work providers (do we need them)
Repair network of independents, is it viable?If there’s anything else that anyone wants on the agenda please let us know and we’ll see what we can get around to as obviously there’s a lot there as is to go into and we’ll probably get pushed for time.
Neil or Mark, is there any chance you could prepare a short run down on DASA for us for the any non or lapsed members to encourage them to sign up or renew their membership?
The intent is to have an informal atmosphere and an open discussion on all the above subjects and more besides no doubt, but Neil has the chair to control my babbling! 😉
Oh and apparently all this is followed by some drinking spree so I’m told! 😀
K.
I don’t bother calling mobiles from the office anymore for several reasons:
1. The cost from a fixed land line to mobiles and I am not reimbursed for it!
2. I found a few customers using “lifetime” numbers which look like mobile numbers but cost you about a £1 a minute.
3. Many customers do not want calls to their mobiles when at work.
4. Many companies have now banned the use of mobiles in their offices other than for business purposes, so customers have complained when we called them!
So, now I have a mobile connected to the PC (via Bluetooth 😉 ) and I just SMS a standard text message asking that the customer calls us, that way they do it when it is convienent to them and at their own cost and not ours should they wish to use a mobile.
We still get some of them whinging about it but it seems to solve the problem and lowers the cost. Two years ago when i started doing this the cost of calls from the fixed lines here dropped by 30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} overnight when we implimented this policy so it does work.
K.
So far, in testing the technology I’ve gone through four, yes *4*, Bluetooth enabled phones, two Ericsson, one Nokia and one Sony Ericsson P800. A word of advice, don’t by a Nokia if you want to use it for data. 😉
Also, one headset, one laptop, one car kit and several PC add-on BT adaptors which, thus far, I’m damned if I can get to work for WLAN purposes but for synchronising data to a phone it’s useful or an emergency net connection via a GPRS account it’s pretty cool.
K.
Dave_Conway wrote:It would be silly not to really as I’ll need to recover from the hangover before I attempt to drive all the way back down to Devon. 😕
So you’ll be heading home at the weekend then? 😉
K.
Yep, I’ve stayed away from the topic on the list as well as in the main forums here for that very reason as, as soon as it is “public” NESN, ISDAL, Anglo and a few other people are going to start squatting! 😉
To be quite honest we have the power as a group to knock these buggers out the park and we have had for a long time it’s just that no-one has ever bothered to get the trade organised in any way at all and, where they have to any degree, there has been a hidden agenda which was mainly to do with money.
I don’t want or expect money from it persay, I want a future in and for this industry and if we don’t do it no-one else will without ripping us off for “management fees”.
However as soon as we do decide to go public with the idea I’m quite sure that we’ll get a *LOT* of support from the industry as a whole as I think a lot of other people higher up the food chain than we are, are just as sick of the WPs and being held to ransom by them.
K.
eastlmark wrote:we would be interested subject to where/when etc.
No idea yet, the idea has just been talked about.
eastlmark wrote:But why would a major detergent manufacturer be offerring such “free Training?
It benefits them that engineers are informed and it makes us better at our job plus we in turn promote the usage of qood quality detergents to customers. So everyone wins.
K.
