Forum Replies Created
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Re: Misleading?
I would say that if they advertise no call out and have a labour charge which is made clear to the customer at the time of booking a call, then what they advertise is fact. A call out charge is a charge to get to your door, what happens once they arrive and start work which involves Labour are two different items.
We operate on the same principle in that our ads read No Call Out Charge, Reasonable Labour Rates,
Reversing the idea in that if the customer has a job and takes the bus to work, he does not charge his employer the bus fare, however once at work they would expect and be justified in being paid for their labour.
I would also say that in taking calls from potential customers that if and when they raise this old chestnut of your ad states no call out and you explain how it works that they are not being charged for you to arrive at their door but in order to discover the problem with their appliance that there is a Fixed Labour charge they are happy that they are not going to be paying a open ended labour bill plus parts. This works extremely well for us but there may be legal opinion which could offer guidance.
Re: Rogue Trader
LIke our Politicians you have to be whiter than white once you decide to start mud slinging others.
8)
Re: Trade Secrets?
DrDill wrote:Squadman: i here your point, and i dont fully agree with it, we each have different opinions and that is what its all about, but you should have read all the posts as Martin was first to pick me out for a personal attack, so i simply replied “shut up” to that, i didnt realise that was more offensive than his put down of “Yet another broad accusative statement belittling trade members, oh dear.” But i guess band wagons are there for people to jump on and in this case Martin has very cleverly diverted attention away from his first post that was seemingly an attack on this sites owner for using trade information in a public forum!(Is that a form of Censorship??)
Nigel
From what I can see Martin was merely raising the question if certain information should be posted in the public area of this site. Some months ago I was questioning if the Fault Code Guide should be made available to Joe Public, at the time Martin himself asked why Squady was getting hot under the collar about it being let loose, Kenneth was able to provide some clarity as to why it was being done.
Looking at all the posts, Martin it seems wanted to know what the general opinion was of members about technical information being published it never came across to me that he was trying to censor or have a dig at anyone.
Sure we all know that if you spend some time on the net you can find all manner of things out, how to fit carbons into a motor, why your dishwasher will not fill, how to kill yourself and much much more.I am of the opinion that there are those who will spend the time locating information for DIY repairs, same folk who ring you up and ask you how to fix their machines, or the ones that come and buy one spare after another in an effort to fix their appliances. That all said the majority of people do not have the time, wherewithall to be messing about and just want the problem solved Enter the Service Engineer ! 8)
I meant no offence to you Nigel but the blantant shut up remark came over as somewhat out of place in a normally friendly place.
Re: Trade Secrets?
I am afraid I am with Martin on this subject, what may appear basic to one person may not be so obvious to another. This place is a resource for all no matter how long, how much or how little they may or may not know. I have as yet not met a person or ( engineer ) who knows it all but have met a fair few that thought they knew it all !
Stereotyping is an unhelpful process, as engineers we have either been trained on a formal basis, picked up the trade by trial and error and rely on having a good memory and sound experience to ply our profession. By helping each other out and sharing knowledge surely that will help raise the game for everyone. By also telling Martin to Shut Up ! I see that as a form of censorship which to my mind is a totally unwelcome kind of attitude and by saying that I don’t mean to be rude to the poster.
Re: Portway
Thanks for the offer DrDill but I have that covered now, Portway still low on many lines though, see what happens ?
Re: laptop
Martin wrote:MacBook are best by miles, no probs, no fuss, outstanding battery power, does it all and more besides.
Only downside, very expensive, not the ideal thing to have knocking about in your van or get damaged in some customer sh!t hole house.
I certainly agree Martin that a Mac Book is not ideal for carting around to customers premises, My worry would be that it would get damaged in the places you sight or that other clients would work on the basis your making too much money and charging too much !
For everyday web access, parts look ups, TDS etc etc a 13 or 14 inch laptop like a Acer or Asus would suffice, I use my MacBook Pro and Imacs for other work !
Re: laptop
Being a Mac User and long time windows user before that, and having had my fair share of various laptops, Macs can and do get virus attacks, windows machines get many many more, if you want a premium product that will not overheat, fall part then a Mac Book is the way to go, If you have the funds I would get the Macbook and you can also run windows natively on it or in a virtual environment if you wish.
Re: Portway
I know this has been discussed before about various suppliers, but who else is there who maintains consistent stock levels from the likes of Bosch, Neff, LG and so on ?
Re: Euro Meltdown
Martin wrote:Remind me to show Squady how to use the ‘quote’ brackets one day soon. 😀
No neeed need Martin, sent via my phone that was, but thank you for the offer 😉Re: Euro Meltdown
K. quote:
I was always taught never to talk politics or religion in a social setting as it usually doesn’t end well, to mix the two is beyond the pale. I’ll often engage in a political debate, rarely in a religious one.I was not trying to discuss anything political or religious ? but to discuss the current situation with the Euro and how it impacts on us all regardless of whatever political views we may or may not hold.
The link to the TV program was interesting but I happen to believe that as well as having one of the worlds most watched populations that the media also spoon feed the general population in various ways. You only have to look at the Murdock Empire to see how they have been in bed with the various politicians from the last two Governments and it suited those politicians to have that relationship. You have to question how it was that with the various newspapers printing stories which contained facts that were private to those being reported on, how the powers to be at no time asked the logical questions as to how they had come by that kind of information. In other words I take the media drivel with a pinch of salt and by keeping the masses frightened of a mass break down of civilisation, Wars, doom and gloom keeps everyone from thinking outside the box. Why do you think this country have never been given a referendum of Europe ?I am all for free trade amongst all nations, not just europe, but the world has traded for centuries without a single currency, its also interesting to note that the company that print our bank notes have said that they could start printing the Drachma tomorrow if required as they could do with all European Currencies, seems like the BOE and UK Government are not the only ones who have been thinking ahead should the need arise.
Re: Euro Meltdown
Another View ?
Before Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Rome in 1972, all laws affecting the people of this country were made by their own directly elected parliament. The UK’s accession to what was then called the Common Market transferred sovereignty over a good deal of law-making from Westminster and Whitehall to Brussels.There are many who did not realise that this was part of the deal. They thought Britain was signing up to a free trade area that would also entrench the peace that Western Europe had enjoyed in the decades after 1945. But the “ever closer union” envisaged in the treaty required greater harmonisation of laws in order that each member state should operate on the same basis as far as possible.
The constitutional upheaval caused by membership of what is now the EU was the greatest in the country’s history since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For almost 300 years, the “old constitution” was self-contained and largely immune to outside influences.
All this changed when we joined the EEC. As Prof Anthony King observed in his book The British Constitution: “Not only did Parliament cease to be sovereign, Britain itself ceased to be an old-fashioned sovereign state. The fact of being a member of the EU permeates almost the whole of the British government – to a far greater extent than most Britons seem to realise.”
How great remains a matter of debate. Oddly, those who are the most enthusiastic supporters of the EU seek to play down its influence on our lives while those who loathe it see its tentacles everywhere.One measure of the impact of membership (though not necessarily the most important) is the proportion of our laws, rules and regulations that now emanate from the councils of the EU. The shorthand description of these as “laws from Brussels” is slightly misleading: the bureaucrats of the European Commission may well set many laws in motion by promulgating new directives; but they still need to be agreed by politicians from each member state, even if some are outvoted under the rules.
So how much of our legislation comes through the EU? The estimates vary wildly from under 10 per cent to more than 80 per cent and the Commission claims it has diminished in recent years now that the single market – which was responsible for most of them – has become embedded.Eurosceptics tend to plump for an official estimate given a few years ago by the German government in an answer to this question posed in the Bundestag: “To ask the Minister what proportion of the legal acts passed in Germany between 1 May 1998 and 1 May 2004 had their origin in European Union regulations or directives and how many were solely national in origin?”
The German Federal Justice Ministry replied that between 1998 and 2004, 23,167 legal acts were adopted in Germany, of which 18,917, or 80{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}, were of EU origin. This information was then used to extrapolate that 84 per cent of all German laws originate in Brussels.
However, a study carried out by the think tank Open Europe thought this was “probably a step too far” and was a function of Germany’s federal system, where a lot of laws are made by the powerful Länder. It took a different approach and one more interested in uncovering the cost of EU regulation rather than the quantity. Researchers sifted through more than 2,000 of the UK government’s impact assessments for regulatory proposals and found that 72 per cent of the cost of regulation over the last ten years is EU-derived.
It concluded: “In terms of absolute proportion, we estimate the figure to be around 50 per cent. This means that the EU now has huge regulatory powers. What’s more, in terms of relative impact – which is what matters – its powers over regulation exceed that of the UK government.Denis MacShane, a former Europe minister, has claimed that just nine per cent of UK laws derive from Brussels and based this on research by the House of Commons Library of the number of Statutory Instruments through which most regulations are now enacted. However, this ignored the fact that many EU rules take direct effect. The Lithuanian government, which has been counting since it joined in 2005, reckons the amount of laws affecting it directly attributable to the EU is about 30 per cent.
According to research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA), there are currently 16,980 EU acts in force and between 1998 and 2007 there was a net gain of 9,415 EU laws. In 2007, 3,010 EU laws became UK law, while only 993 EU regulations were repealed – a net gain of 2,017 extra laws.The pace at which new EU laws were promulgated also increased at a record speed, with a net gain of over 2,000 new laws in both 2006 and 2007, compared to an annual average net gain of only 942 new laws between 1998 and 2007. Almost half of the extra 9,415 EU laws created in the 10 years to the end of 2007 were introduced in 2006 and 2007. Ben Farrugia, a policy analyst at the TPA, says: “Despite EU rhetoric about reducing regulation, it is growing at a record rate.
According to the figures from the official journal of the European Union, there are about 14,000 legislative acts in force in 20 areas of competence. While the pace of EU law-making may slow now that many of the single market reforms are in place, its legislative impact on member states is set to grow with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty.
This because the EU will be able to propose laws in areas that have hitherto been the preserve of national governments and agreed by way of inter-governmental negotiation. The Treaty transfers 105 new “competencies” from the national to the EU level, covering policy areas including foreign, security, defence, trade, justice and economic policy, the single largest transfer of powers in the history of the European Union.
The problems do not only arise from the volume of EU laws, but also from the way they are applied in the UK. There is a propensity here either to add to them or enforce them more strictly than is necessary. This is known as gold-plating and has added billions to business costs in recent years. The TPA estimated that since 1997, Whitehall has added at least 7,700 pages of UK Statutory Instruments to enact directives passed by the EU.
EU Regulations (as opposed to Directives) do not always give rise to a new UK law yet are nonetheless directly applicable. Even if we are talking about half of all UK laws and 72 per cent of regulations coming from Brussels, it is a staggeringly high proportion and of great importance to the way the country is run and governed.
In many ways the numbers are irrelevant since one very bad law imposed by Brussels would outweigh a dozen footling changes emanating from Westminster. What is really at issue here is the question of sovereignty: when a law follows the EU route it is rarely scrutinised properly and cannot be changed. The connection between those who vote and those who pass our laws, the very foundation of democracy, is broken.In truth, however, these laws have not been foisted upon us. British ministers have invariably been party to the discussions that have brought them about, British government officials have negotiated their provisions, British MPs and peers have discussed and debated them (though often only in the most desultory fashion) and legislation to enact many of them has gone through the British parliament.
We have been accomplices in the process, though not always willing ones. But that is the way the EU works. If you want to be a member you have to accept the will of the majority, save in those areas where the veto can be applied – and there are far fewer of those than there used to be.
I heard that the EU charter that Heath signed back then, and the observers at the time now say the documents ran to thousands of pages, that it was not fully understood, Politicians and Government departments have a track record for cocking it all up, so I think that either they never took it to the logical conclusion as to how the end would be, that they just did’nt care, or that whoever was reading those documents did not fully understand them.
Whatever the reasons thats where we are at
Re: Euro Meltdown
Bring back Guy Fawkes eh?
I not sure about Guy Fawkes, but the whole European Model is unworkable, none of them can agree, history shows this to be the case and when faced with some or all of the scenarios you put forward it shows how unwise the single market is, all the time each country had its own currency, its own markets and individual companies we had ebb and flow of the financial markets, for hundreds of years the world went around like this and to my mind it worked.
Now in the last 20 years we have witnessed ever more control being exerted from Europe, the idea of a single currency, centralised Government from Germany and the colossal vast sums of cash we as a country inject into that idea is worrying. Travelling in Europe often people from various countries all say the euro has pushed up prices and costs for them, many do not want it. The whole Euro Experiment is a product of politicians which is showing so many flaws that they are scared silly of it now and while they want a single currency, centralised Taxation system and to impose laws on the UK the EU have never filed a set of accounts yet !
Your right some of its bad luck, but lets not forget the 1920’s and great depression, no single currency involved there and the world recovered from that. The medaling of the EU to bring in countries like Turkey and Greece where the banks were involved in massaging the figures to get them in is another example of how desperate they are to make the EU work, now they are paying the price.
When Edward Heath Signed us up for the EU, he was signing to join us into a Federal Europe and we have never had a say in any of it. Having trading partners in Europe was how it was presented to the masses at the time and if that’s all it was that would be good for all, but its not just that We are living in dangerous times as there are no reference points for any of this, your right about Greece, Turkey and all the issues that could arise but we have left ourselves exposed to those issues by being in bed with partners who maybe would should not be.
There’s never been a better time for us all to use our heads 😉
Re: golocal reactive
Jackal wrote:
squadman wrote:
Jackal was right then.
When is he ever wrong ?
Accordingly to Mrs Jackal “All the f***ing time” but lets not go there.
:))))))
