Myself and others are often dismissed as being just “grumpy engineers”, “gobshites”,, negative”, and a lot more, accused of “doing the industry down” and holding a very downbeat view of the industry. Very few stop to think indeed ask why that might be. I will try to explain, at least in part, why that is, in part anyway, as this isn’t all the reasons.
I get fed up hearing this from people and of being accused of being “down” on the industry all the time as, given the passion I approach it with through UKW, the WTA, here and in all the other stuff I do, I’d have to say, that’s a bit of a reach to accuse me of this.
Given my level of involvement, engagement, and immersion in the industry, I’ve have a vested interest in seeing it thrive. And it’s not just me; most repairers are in the same boat, they want the appliance repair sector to thrive.
Therefore, the irony in some of these accusations is not lost. Still, it’s at times, borderline stupidity to make them as they are irrational statements that I can only assume to be dismissive of opinions and knowledge that doesn’t fit some people’s agenda. To sideline and belittle them is trying to wish away racts, reasoned logic, knowledge, pragmatism, experience and often reality.
There again, often the people telling us we’re negative etc are being paid to be positive about what they’re pushing, you need to bear that in mind as well. We’ll come back to that in a bit.
Being constructive does not involve simply batting away people with decades of experience when they suggest that you might have a problem.
Lowest Rung
Rightly or wrongly, you can argue the toss on this till the cows come home, a lot of the repairers see themselves as the lowest of the low or, they feel they are regarded as such.
When you take a moment, it’s easy to understand why.
They get grief from all sides. Customers want this that and the next thing from them, some with completely unrealistic expectations given what they guys get paid. And, clients often have exactly the same.
Everyone wants A+ service for G- money.
Most days, all they hear is people whining at them about one thing or another, and they’re left to sort out everyone’s problems, which are, in effect, made to be their problems.
Is it any wonder that they don’t hold a happy, clappy, positive view of the world? They haven’t got a lot to be positive about from the jump.
And that’s not really even considering remuneration or what they are expected to do on wafer-thin margins.
But Business
I will often come across people, often who have never picked up a toolbox in their lives, trying to tell me how repairs work and how that you can make £XXXX from whatever contract etc.
Make no mistake, these are sales pitches.
They are trying to sell repairers on the idea that they can make money from whatever it is they’re peddling, with them often thinking that we’ve not heard this before (scores of times) and that their “thing” is brilliant, unique and unlike all that has gone before. Invariably, it’s not.
Manufacturers and insurers often think that repairers are businesses like any other and that, much like the suppliers of goods, they will just bow down and agree to whatever because they’re getting a “big contract” with a big name.
That might well work with parts suppliers and so on where they have more fixed costs and exposure, with service, not so much.
These are often small or micro businesses that carry out repairs, so their outlook on things is completely different from that of larger businesses, and their priorities are often very different, too.
Plus, being an “authorised agent” these days just doesn’t carry the gravitas that is used to in the past. Sure, for some it does work but, it’s not as desireable as once it was.
Given most independent repairers size they will not have cash laying around to invest in stock etc or take a punt on whatever it is you’re presenting them with as, for them, £100 is a risk let alone asking them to invest thousands in something.
If you want repairers onside and prepared to back any new venture, it’d better be bloody good.
New Ideas
I get why some think that as they’ve come up with what they think is a splendid idea, revolutionary, it’s going to change the industry and often as not, they’ll stand to profit from this splendiferous idea that they’ve hatched.
In the past twenty years or more we’ve not seen any truly “new” ideas” wihen it comes to appliance service. Sure, we’ve seen rehashes of old, tried-before stuff repackaged and rebranded, but it’s the same old.
This means that, invariably, what will happen with said idea/s can be dissected, analysed, and the most probable outcomes predicted before anything is enacted.
It’s not rocket science or some ritual involving crystal balls or whatever, it’s just plain old simple market analysis based on presented facts and historical data.
I understand that the analysis of many of these things over the years has been disparaging at times, with some scathing, but it is just that—an analysis of it. You can agree or disagree with the assessment as you please, but when it doesn’t go the way you wanted and, in my and a few others' cases, you don’t get an endorsement of whatever you wanted, please don’t shoot the messenger.
It’s not just myself that has done so.
A far more productive use of your time is to re-evaluate what you’re doing and, fix it so it can work or, move onto to something with a better chance of a positive outcome. That way you save yourself and others a lot of time and money, not wasting resources flogging a dead horse.
What you find is the troops aren’t as stupid as many think they are, and they can do this as well as I or anyone else can at times, albeit they might not explain it well, but they will not jump on new things with enthusiasm if they know it’s a dead duck. Or, they understand a bunch of other things I’ve tried to explain in this blog about rates, volumes and more and determine it’s not worth the bother.
A lot projects we’ve seen, we know in advance that if we take them to the guys what’s gonna happen so there’s no point in doing so if it’s a lame idea.
Again, not opinion, not “being down”, “negative” etc, just plain old facts.
Not Just Rates
Several years ago I was told a story of how that an agent, almost solus for a large appliance manufacturer, suffered a heart attack as a result what was presumed to be the pressure of the job, running multiple repair techs etc.
He woke up from surgery only to declare that he had to get back to work and complete all the calls in the manufacturer’s system as if he didn’t, he and his staff would not be paid and they could lose payment on claims as they’d expire.
Sometime later, he died. From a heart attack.
That is a true story with the names not given, and saldy, it’s not the only one like it.
Money ain’t no use to you if you’re dead.
Worse still, nobody cares.
This is a small part of the reasons I left the service and decided I didn’t want to run a business as such any longer. In my view, the work for manufacturers and insurers had become almost toxic.
When we look at contracts as repairers we don’t just look at the money. Sure, the money is vitally important and almost never enough but you also need to look at the admin burden, the products, the type of customers you’re having to deal with, the areas and a whole bunch of other things as well.
Therefore, those of us who are “seasoned” and not daft consider more than just the money, we also think about how much work is involved and how much pressure it’s liable to pile on. Too much hassle and we’ll walk away as honestly, it’s sometimes not worth it.
When you see low rates and lots of demands for completion in certain timeframes, contact demands and so forth, you look at the client, the products, and the rates and try to work out if it’s worth the bother. If you already have enough work to get by with and this work won’t markedly add to it or your profits, you walk away.
Any fool can work for nothing.
Investment
A lot of contract work comes with strings, those can be said and unsaid but one which crops up a lot is investment into stock or on occasion some other stuff.
So first off, why should I fork out to do your work for your customers unless there’s a bloody good payout down the road?
Even fronting the labour and other costs for a month or two until it comes up the client’s humph to pay you? I mean, think about it, if you employ someone, are they going to pay out to do work for you and not get paid for a couple of months and, most probably, have stuff rejected and unpaid for often inconsequential errors?
Of course they won’t, why should repairers?
And if you believe this doesn’t happen, think again as I can 100% assure you it does.
And as it does, and a number of clients stiff the troops, the repairers will often ask in the forums before doing work for new clients or, look them up to see if they are known before undertaking any work.
Back to the investment thing though, even if you have a decent rate and it’s perhaps worth it to invest in the contract, how long wil it last?
There are no guarantees on this, pretty much ever, clients can ditch any repairer almost overnight without penalty and it often happens. Sure, there’s often a three-month termination or whatever but in practice that’s about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
You have no guarantee of call volumes either, you get what you get. At best you’ll get a rough estimate based in historical data, at best.
So these guys are being asked to invest in a contract to do work for someone else’s brand, using stipulated parts, inside defined service levels with no guarantee of work let alone any particular volume of work for an undefined period of time. Usually for a pittance of a rate.
Hopefully you can now begin to understand why they will not invest in some of the stuff that gets put before them? And why they are not “positive”.
Geographical Areas
To add to that they will often get defined areas that they have to work in, postcodes usually, which is absolutely fine for the most part, when everything is equal.
I’m not going to get into the whole area pinching stuff here, that’s a topic for another time but what you do get these days is often no guarantee that the calls required in your area, you’ll actually get.
Apart from that you see all the London guys on about an uplift in rates due to the emissions zone stuff, parking etc and manufactuers et all will often pander to that but, here’s the thing, many other large cities have the exact same problems yet they get nothing.
What a lot of people in London and the home counties etc, where a lot of clients seem to base themselves, forget or just don’tr realise is that, once you get out of the large citries and into rural areas like the South West, North of England, Wales and Scotland (largely the rest of the UK) you can be driving for 30 minutes between calls. So the cost in time and fuel outside the cities is disproptionately high but, that’s usually ignored.
In the densely populated areas, to repairers outside of that, it means you can chuck stones between calls, with almost no travelling.
The point is problems may differ in different geographical areas, but there are always more costly things to do, and the reason everyone is moaning about something isn’t that they’re just grumpy buggers; it's because they’re not paid enough to cover their costs.
Clients often get a bit huffy when you say you can’t go out of area to bail them out as someone else has let them down or whatever but they forget, we’re not driving about on a map, we need to travel and that takes time, costs money and detracts from the work we already have.
Inflation
I love this one. I should qualify that, I love throwing it at especially manufacturers, brand owners, insurers etc. as there is little to no way for them to argue with or contradict the point.
All the time and, in the past few years with inflation rates being so high, we see parts prices etc going up, markledly in a lot of cases.
The guys ask for more money to do work but get told that clients can’t afford to increase the rates as things are tight.
But they can put up the prices of parts, products et all yet the troops on the ground are expected to just suck it up and soak up these costs, when they didn’t have any (or much) margin to play with in the first place.
Consider this from the repairer’s perspective, how do you think they feel about that?
I recently did a little thing using one of the okay, not best, not worst base call rates from 2014 and plugged that into an inflation calculator, which wasn’t even my own. It was the ONS or one like that using official UK inflationary data, and you know what happened? Now, that basic call should cost almost £85 in today’s money.
I know a lot of the troops are still running about like headless chickens for £60 a call or less. They shouldn’t be.
Yet worse, this has been the sort of thing that’s been going on for decades.
If I was being paid what I was in 1989 by Zanussi, inflation linked to today, I’d be getting paid over £100 per call for a warranty call, which was about 30% of the work we did. About £140 a call for extended warranty calls (30-40% of volume) for D&G, Currys and the likes and over £150 a call for end user repairers.
Nobody is being paid those sorts of rates and the prices of the appliances can’t stand it. Largey, it appears, as everyone is concentrating on being the cheapest.
Because makers can’t afford to pay for decent service is not the repairer’s problem; it’s theirs because their appliances are too cheap to be able to cover the cost of the service that their customers expect, I’d argue.
We then circle back to investment and ask, is it any wonder the guys today can’t invest in their businesses as they’re being asked to run them on next to nothing. I suspect a lot of it below cost.
This is why, as I’ve mentioned before, even askling the guys to part with £100 is a big ask for many as, they often do not have any cash to spare.
Reasons To Be Grumpy
The next time that someone says to you that we’re just all a bunch of whiners, grumpy bastards with nothing positive to say and we’re down on the industry, send them a link to this article.
They may start to understand why the troops are not happy teddies and are seemingly always negative.
They might even see that they could well be a good part of the reason why that is.
Some of the repair guys might even discover some more things they’d not thought about to be unhappy about in this article.
The repairers are not “down” on the industry at all, they’re downbeat, ground down, dispondent, seen it all before and have little time for things that are wasting their time. That they take the time to explain that and why is a testament to them, not a problem.
They are wary of many things and naturally suspicious as, they’ve been burned before. Often many times.
And what others may see as a great opportunity, they often see in a completely different light.
They do not want to kill off any good ideas, they’d welcome them, if anyone would care to give some.