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Re: Pattern Heaters: A cautionary tale 🙁
So the moral of this tale is to only fit heating elements with flanged seals, regardless of whether they’re genuine or pattern 😯 .
Qualtex and Connect, if you’re reading this, take note.
Re: Whats the most annoying thing customers do?
Micky 32 wrote:
I go to the house and repair the washing machine. She lives not too far from me so when i charge her it’s very reasonable. So i give her the bill. She then says that i can do a lot cheaper blah blah blah… So i agree to knock something off and we agree on a price.That’s fatal. Once you do that they know they’ve got you. If the price you’ve quoted is fair, stick to it and explain why. Once you’ve haggled you can never go back to charging the proper price on future visits. If she claims not to have enough cash on her, take what she’s got, make sure you receipt her invoice accordingly and go back for the rest later. That way it won’t happen again on the next job. Even if you never get the balance of it, you’ve got the upper hand if she calls you back for another job, or if it goes wrong under the guarantee.
But whatever you do, don’t be tempted to do a ‘cash job’ with customers like that.
Re: Whats the most annoying thing customers do?
Madmac wrote:What have i learned from this? well i HATE Merloni products more than ever 👿 but it does prove there ARE a lot of nice people out there even though some weeks you dont seem to meet any 😉
Yes there are. The other day a woman I didn’t know phoned up and I talked her through sorting the problem out herself. I’ve forgotten what it was now; unblocking the washing machine filter or something. At the end she was really grateful and asked me how much she owed me for giving her the advice. 😯 Can you believe that?
Oh and while I’m writing, another opening line that should set warning bells ringing: “My husband’s an engineer and he…..”
Re: UKW cheaper than Connect for some spares?
I posted this on another thread on 13th August:
“Connect seems to have woken up to the increased competition they’ve been getting recently. I got a phone call today from a nice young lady called Amy who asked me why I’ve been spending less with them over the last year or so, so I told her that Qualtex are, in general, much cheaper and give an excellent personal service.
She told me they’ve taken on six new account managers [including her] to look after their smaller clients, who they must have noticed have been spending less recently. She knew exactly how much I’ve spent each month this year and last and said I should find that the prices I’m quoted should start coming down.I mentioned about how their trade prices are very often higher than the manufacturers’ retail prices but she didn’t pass comment on that one.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks.”
I have noticed a reduction in their prices since then and sent them an order on Thursday – which didn’t arrive as it should have yesterday.
I did tell Amy that that even if they did sort out their pricing policy I would still be using Qualtex and others as well, as it’s fatal to just rely one supplier.
Geoff
Re: Pattern Heaters: A cautionary tale 🙁
roly16 wrote:I fitted a Qualtex HTR72, the equivalent of the Connect one in question, in May.
GeoffI went back to check this job today; it was fine. The Qualtex heater seal does have a flange, so I don’t see a problem with fitting them in future.
Re: mfi
Yes, MFI just didn’t want all the hassle of having to deal with the 3 or 4 different insurance companies themselves, invoicing them and paying us; they just made us do it 🙁 . It simply wasn’t worth it; well, not to me anyway. When I first started with them, only a couple of years previously, there wasn’t any of that; they were very straightforward to deal with and they paid promptly 🙂 . Don’t know what changed, but I’m sure Ken will do….. 😉
Re: Indesit WIDL146
Flyman wrote:You can also get a clear plastic cover to go over the module to protect from water drips. Don’t have the part number to hand at the minute.
Or you can get this
Re: mfi
I had this problem as well. This was one of the reasons I stopped working for them, about two years ago. The admin got to the point where what they paid just about covered the time spent doing the admin, let alone going out doing the jobs.
Re: Plastic bags to protect modules from damp.
Or this one which is a bit more expensive but can be soldered through:
Re: Pattern Heaters: A cautionary tale 🙁
I think the question robbra was asking Martin was whether he got any compensation from Connect for the pattern Bosch heater that pulled out and flooded the customer’s house, which was the original aspect of this thread.
I’ve just gone back through my records as I remembered fitting a heater to a Bosch washing machine recently, and found I fitted a Qualtex HTR72, the equivalent of the Connect one in question, in May. If anybody has one of these in stock I’d be very grateful if they’d check to see if this one does or doesn’t have the necessary flange on the rubber seal as shown in Martin’s pictures, as if it doesn’t I’m going to have to go back and check it for pull-outability. According to the photo on Qualtex’s website it does, but I’d rather not rely on the photo being of the correct part.
Thanks
Geoff
Re: Pattern Heaters: A cautionary tale 🙁
I’ve tried running new oven elements with low insulation resistance on the bench [held in a vice, before anyone asks!] without the earth connected on a number of occasions to cure the problem, but only once or twice have I got it to work. In my experience, when I’ve disconnected the supply and checked them when they’re hot, the IR is nearly always worse than when cold, which is odd as I also always thought it must be moisure in the ceramic insulating material causing the problem. The only explanation I can think of is that the inner conductor isn’t positioned correctly down the centre of the outer sheath and when it heats up and expands, it [almost] comes into contact with the outer sheath.
Qualtex elements always come with silica gel in the bags now. Not sure about Connect’s.
Regarding the relative quality of genuine as against pattern Bosch half-moon elements, I’ve not found the former any better and a Bosch friend has confirmed that in many cases the gen ones don’t last very long . I suspect that a lot of the time gen and pattern elements are exactly the same, from the same factory.
G
Re: Whirlpool AWZ681 Tumble Dryer
Martin wrote:are minge and DNA the same person here or what? 😕
whirlpool wd’s are as useless and incomprehensable as George Dubya’s diplomacy skills! 😈
No, Vladimir Putin’s diplomacy skills.
