Mailing List

Now the old mail list is of course history but the list was founded on Yahoo in June 2000 by Kenneth Watt to allow service agents to better communicate with one another on matters related to general business, technical issues and of course chit chat.

The list was little used until the middle of 2001 when posts started to appear in earnest opening up a whole new way for agents to talk. From there the list just seemed to grow slowly until it has reached the point it was at when it was shut down.

Much of the talk of course swayed to who was or was not being paid by manufacturers, work providers and insurers which is one of the biggest single issues in the trade as a whole. Some people want the work done but don’t want to pay for it, or pay for it in full and often it is left to the agents to bear that burden.

Early in 2003 the Yahoo group was closed after being the home of Whitegoods for nearly three years and this was under very mysterious circumstances.

We know that some people in the trade wanted this list to be gone and the assumption is that one of the people being critisised on the list complained to Yahoo about it. Yahoo made no comment on it of any substance but did indicate that this may have been the case.

Pretty much, we even know who was responsible for that and, it ultimately didn’t end well for that individual.

So briefly, as an emergency, the list moved to Topica for a short period of time.

The members, more off list that on it, decided that we would be better served by placing the list on a private server, thus allowing us to see if any action was taken against the hosting company for the list.

So that was done and on Sunday 13th April 2003 the whitegoods list re-opened on a private server kindly hosted by K.C. Li from Laser Business Systems. And to this day LBS still host UKW as, we are a loyal bunch.

The list members were threatened by certain companies for the use of it that they will lose work over it, even with legal action over it despite the fact that it was a private mailing list that is not available to the public.

In fact, the list was only open to whitegoods service agents and no-one else.

One member has also had a contract cancelled or terminated because of it, just because they talk to one another!

And people think we’re paranoid… err, not so much, no!

However, the list went from strength to strength and action against it only seemed to strengthen the members resolve to make the trade more open than it ever has been before, which is extremely admirable indeed.

So, what’s the future for the Whitegoods Group, no-one really knows as for the most part we are winging it but it is a fantastic melting pot of ideas, information, skills and technical knowledge in various fields and it can only get better as time passes.

  It’s Dead

Many years ago we killed the list off, retired it.

The reason was that the current trade forums overtook it completely becoming way more popular than the list ever was so it got around to the time when it made sense to just drop it and, we did.

None of the people involved however will ever forget it with most of the opinion that this little mailing list dramatically altered the history of the appliance reapir industry in the UK and, gave rise to UKW in the process.

We have no fear whatsoever of embracing change. Change can be good.