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Re: Liebherr SBSef 7242 Fridge Freezer & Alternatives
The Smeg FQ60XP looks to be a very expensive Beko badged up as a Smeg. Save £5-700 by getting it with a Beko badge instead.
The AEG/Electrolux one seems okay for the money.
The Liebherr ones are good but are considerably more expensive.
Avoid Samsung, not good in my opinion.
LG okay but not great.
K.
Re: Discontinued washing machines
Why?
There’s probably thousands upon thousands of discontinued models.
K.
Re: electrolux cooker in demo mode ekt6045x
There’s noting about that in the service documentation and I couldn’t see any reference to it in the instruction manual either. 🙁
K.
Re: protecting your box uk
Bournemouth!
What’s the betting it’s a new name for a company we all know and, don’t love. 😉
K.
Re: Important Changes To Engineer Search
Okay so, apparently I didn’t explain myself well with this which to be fair is a thing I have a tendency to do at times as I take it a given that people understand stuff I prattle on about without checking. So, my bad, sorry for those that didn’t get this bit, I’ll explain it more.
Online Booking Form
I said that any of you could have an online booking form that uses the same system to ping back details from your own website to either email or Rapport.
What I apparently was not clear about is that, you DO NOT need Rapport to use this.
It’s also free gratis.
All you need to do this is a website basically and be able to edit it. Pretty much, that’s all you need so long as you’re okay dropping in code to a page just as you might a YouTube video or suchlike.
My apologies for not making that clearer in that, anyone can use this, anyone at all.
How It Works
What happens is that you drop in the code and up pops a booking form on a page of your own website that allows customers to your own website to log a call and send it to you.
I’m going to use Lawrence’s site as an example.
What he has is a button on his site like this…
On the page, in this case the homepage that looks like this…
When pressed that leads to the call booking page that looks like this…
If you want to check it out a bit more you can visit Careys here: http://www.careysappliancerepairs.co.uk
So far as customers are concerned that’s it, fill in the boxes, press submit and they’re done. You’ve got the call, they’ve got a confirmation of the enquiry via email.
Notification
Here’s where I and Sudeep have gotten a bit funky.
Anyone that knows me and my primary hobby that involved automation technologies will know that, if there’s a way to do something that involves zero interaction by me or another human is possible, I’ll give it a go. 😉
There’s more we can do here but that’s for the future but for now with that captured data you can do the the following:
Traditional email notification
All the details just get pinged via email in a format that anyone that’s ever gotten a job from the old repairs@, the last incarnation of the engineer search or the new search will be familiar enough with.
If you have you email set up to what’s know as “push” to your phone then even if you’re out and about you’ll get a notification that there’s mail as usual.
In essence, there’s no difference from a regular email.
This is totally free, absolutely no cost to you.
SMS notification
This is new.
If you have a phone (or whatever) that can receive SMS, you can use this.
There is a cost as, bluntly there is a cost to buy SMS and that’ll be that but, it is cheap although as it is not free we cannot pass it on as free and we have to levy a small charge for it.
When enabled this function sends the details of any enquiry to your device/s via standard SMS and via email as well as above.
Rapport notification
Also new.
What happens here is that if you use Rapport and enable the function any enquiry will come straight to your dashboard and show as a call waiting to be booked. All the details are pre-populated using the information provided by the form (or from the search on UKW/WTA) so you don’t even need to type it in.
All you need do is call the customer, confirm whatever you need to and book it onto the diary.
Done.
You do not need to enable this and you do not need to be a Rapport user to use any of these functions bar the Rapport one. It’s completely your choice.
Clever!
Lawrence was yapping last night and showed me an advert that he’d put in a local rag and, I’d never even thought of this use for it but whoever did the ad was a smart cookie as they’d put in it, basically…
Find us online at http://www.careysappliancerepairs.co.uk and book a repair online
I didn’t think of that and using it an an advertisement that way, clever though, wish I’d thought of that… D’OH!
Then he proceeds to show me that it’s being used to book DAG calls, as you can see if you look at the form and, it’s another clever use that I hadn’t thought of.
Smarter though, the message on Carey’s answering service now tells people that they can leave a message of go to the website and book it online!
Saves Lawrence typing it all in and vets stuff before they even look at it.
Clever. Saves time, saves hassle and the customer perception is that the company is on the ball and up to speed. For Lawrence, who uses Rapport, that makes a whole heap of sense as the calls are right there, click, book, done.
I wish I could take credit for the use it has been put to but, I can’t, that’s all about what Lawrence did with it and not me.
Community
That’s the thing with open source stuff and I’ve had a fair share of dealing with such things, you just never can tell how things will get used till they’re out there in the wild and being used.
People come up with all manners of interesting ways to use things and, with the feedback we’ve had already we’ve changed and modified things to suit different scenarios.
Where it will go next or how it’ll be used I have no idea. For me, that’s great. I think it’s brilliant that I don’t know that, I don’t know what the community of users will do with it or how they’ll use it to their advantage.
Have fun with it I say, it’s not costing you anything to experiment with it.
Competition
All the big boys do this.
I suspect that a lot of you are losing work just as you do not have or rather, have not had the ability to offer something similar.
Now you do.
What will customers do, book with a big national company or choose a local repairer?
Get yourself on Facebook, Google Local (as per Ally) and so on and you could build yourself a nice little bit of business from your local area out of using all these tools that are all free.
There really is no reason not to do it.
However again, my apologies if I wasn’t clear on that pretty much anyone could use this or how and I know it’s a bit long winded but I do hope it’s clearer and that you might understand just how useable this is.
K.
Re: Whirlpool to do a recall on Hotpoint dryers
Different to the Samsung escapade. Which is hugely amusing to see unfold but, digression.
What I’m waiting for is someone starting on about others, Beko would be the running favourite just due to volumes.
It’d be interesting shall we say.
K.
Re: Why be gas safe
Gas registration was a thing at one point, CORGI tried to have all gas products sold, including components, registered and subject to scrutiny.
It was not so cheap.
The DIY chains and other retailers despised it, more work for them and prevented the sale of some items from what I understood.
Punters hated it.
So it got canned.
To be honest I don’t think it’s a problem worth bothering about as soon enough I think gas will get killed off completely as all the evidence and info points that way. At least for domestic use it will be.
K.
Re: Whirlpool to do a recall on Hotpoint dryers
I just read that, quite interesting.
For me what stands out is the lack of openness over what’s led to this and the discussions around what to do about it between TS and Whirlpool.
I mooted at one stage that surely someone in Indesit was aware of this issue before the company was passed over to Whirlpool thus making it all Whirlpool’s problem and, whilst I’m no fan of Whirlpool nor them of me normally, I do have some sympathy for them on this one. I would have thought that, with terms like “corporate malpractice on a grand scale” being banded about among others that you’d want to get to the person or people that were actually responsible, not simply blame whoever you can find.
Dunno, maybe it’ll all come out in the end. Maybe not.
K.
Re: Zanussi or Leisure cooker
No idea, all I can tell you Arcelik in Turkey (Beko) made that model, all three variants of it.
K.
Re: Baumatic oven element
They’re all obsolete Andy, I know this as I was trying to hunt one down the other day but I think the top oven one is part number 1170000101. Was used by them, Flavel and more but just completely unavailable now.
K.
Re: CDA ecp102ss cooker hood fan not working
It’s most likely the motor that’s jammed or faulty by the sound of it.
K.
