In the past twenty four hours it has become apparent that NESN are to provide warranty service on Merloni Group products. Merloni Group currently sell the Hotpoint, Indesit and Ariston brands primarily in the UK.
One CIH retailer has been quoted as stating that “since Merloni bought Hotpoint the service has been utter rubbish”. Complaints of two week lead time to an initial service call are not uncommon, with many longer lead times for gas products. Unsurprisingly many retailers seem now to be considering voting with their feet and not retailing Merloni Group products, a situation that could not be allowed to continue.
Now, obviously in an attempt to alleviate those issues, NESN have been signed on to provide warranty service for the brands. NESN of course have been a much troubled organisation of late with the removal from office of the former MD, Jonathon Trubshaw who is currently suspended and under investigation as far as is known.
However concerns from within the industry and, indeed NESN’s own network, have already been voiced over this contract which, as usual, has been foisted on the membership with no consultation at all that we can uncover.
It has become apparent that the work on offer is on in-warranty appliances that are under a year old. Most of these appliances are now far more complex and carry extensive electronic control systems using different PCBs and EEPROMS to control them and, to date, no training or technical information has been given to the agents. This would imply that the engineer will have little or no knowledge of the appliance to effect a speedy repair. How this problem is to be overcome has yet to be seen.
Also it is clear that Merloni Group will not be supplying spares to NESN or direct to agents but they expect the agents to use their existing suppliers. This is more than a little strange for in-warranty repairs, in fact it is unique as universally manufacturers will insist on using OEM spares under warranty. Does this mean that pattern spares will be used under warranty, possibly even sub-standard spares, again we don’t know as yet.
It is also very clear from the above that the agents will have no recourse to return unused stock as distributors will not accept returns of that nature. Some agents are extremely nervous of this as they are still trying to return stock from the last time that Merloni used outside agents to provide service, nearly two years ago!
Recently some agents have even had a visit from Merloni’s collection agent seeking payment for stock that has been or has to be returned.
The rates on offer thus far seem, on the face of it, very attractive to the agents but those are being tempered by the conditions as mentioned previously.
The work also arrives with the agent in a “pre-booked” state for an appointment four days hence with the onus on the repairer to contact the customer to confirm or bring the appointment forward.
It is also worthy to note that this “trial” is taking place over the busiest time of the year in the service industry and that some think this is merely a stop-gap to bail Merloni out over that period. As yet there is no guarantee of how long this work will last so agents should be very nervous about holding any stock at all, which naturally leads to a lower first time completion rate. When you couple that with the lack of training it looks as though Merloni’s woes are not quite over just yet.
Of course only time will tell if this is a successful partnership or not but given the information thus far I would have to conclude that this arrangement will falter at some stage.
Kenneth Watt
The author’s views and comment are personal opinion and not that of any company or organisation and based on the information available.