The Sun has reported that Tesco is moving into household repairs and selling handyman services ranging from plumbing to pest control.
Britain’s biggest supermarket is offering a “one- stop shop” for odd jobs in a trial at its store in Swindon, Wiltshire.
Under a new banner of Tesco Home Services, the giant is teaming up with local tradesmen who pass an “accreditation” process.
Customers ring a central number and the work is shared out – with Tesco taking a cut of all the fees. Tesco launched the move earlier this month and mailed 180,000 homes in the town. The group last night insisted it is just testing the concept – but admitted it could be rolled out nationwide.
Rob Brown, home services director, said: “We are giving people in Swindon the confidence that what they will receive will be good value and reliable.” But the move will be a blow to tradesmen.
It will also come alarm home repair rivals such as Homeserve, the AA and British Gas. The latter has been throwing huge amounts of cash at the home services market.
Tesco intend having tradesmen to cover building, glazing, locks, heating, roofing, drainage and even IT support.
One blogger on the Ultimate Handyman website said: “It seems Tesco have now decided to take over the services of local trades too.
“How can a local plumber or builder hope to offer any competition to the marketing weight of Tesco.” Another reacted: “That’s crazy… supermarkets should not be able to monopolise the whole market! It should be stopped.”
Tesco said 15 tradesmen had joined in Swindon – and the initial response from customers was better than it expected.
One local Swindon builder, Gary Smith at Steele Davis, said: “It’s a new way of broadening our customer base.”
As yet there seems no intention of entering into the appliance repair business but, with sales of large domestic appliances already being made by Tesco and this scheme now starting it would appear to be common sense to extend into the field and offer direct service. Whether or not Tesco will go down that path is currently a mystery however there is a compelling case for it to do so.
That said, Tesco seems to major on low cost and (let’s face it) pretty poor quality appliances so it perhaps wouldn’t want the headache of service on these sort of appliances.
Taking a slice out of the local business around stores though, well that may well be a totally different proposition for the supermarket giant.