This is a bit of a well-worn topic in some regards, but an interesting one nonetheless, as well as one that will likely be revisited. How you view it varies depending on who you are and what you do, with some things here being of huge annoyance to many, possibly illegal and almost invariably seen as “sharp practices” by consumers.
But the aim is usually always the same in the end, it’s to protect one particular party’s interests, usually to the detriment of others.
And that grates me, it has done for a long, long time as I will explain.
First Lesson Learned
Way back in the 1990’s (yeah, I’m that old) working at my father’s business that was the main Zanussi agent, Candy and others for West Central Scotland as someone really “green”, young and not especially wise I failed to understand why it was that other companies were out repairing “our” stuff out of warranty.
That was a big part of the business and where the margins were highest so, it was of great importance to us.
The vibe back then from DASA (Domestic Appliance Service Association) was that all these others were labelled as being cowboys pretty much as DASA was formed by authorised service agencies to… yep, you guessed it, protect their own interests.
The manufacturers didn’t much care about this and showed little interest in it other than trying to ensure only genuine parts were used, that they profited from. So, in their interests.
Then, customers who just wanted stuff fixed etc and cheaply as possible.
In short a big melting pot of parties all trying to protect their own.
Rule Of Threes
This is (if I recall) the topic or one of them that led to my whole “rule of threes” thing, people that know me know what I’ on about, but basically I try to dumb down a lot of things into three broad groups to make some topics easier to get to grips with.
Here, there’s three groups of customers I realised, eventually:
Those that will get authorised service regardless and will accept nothing else
Those that don’t much care who sorts stuff just so long as the price and job is right
Those that will not call authorised service if you tortured them to do it
You can get into those groups and take them apart, diagnose and so on but in broad strokes this is where I landed trying to work out why it was that we didn’t get all the work.
The reality was, we never would. We never could.
Getting to that and realising these facts took me a minute, but things became abundantly clear when it finally dawned on me what was going on. For example, DASA and its mission were almost certainly doomed in some regards.
They might sway some sat on the fence but, largely, they’d only server to reinforce the views of those that would call the authorised agent anyway.
Protectionism
The thing about markets and protectionist practices is that they never work out in the long run. Sure, a company might get a bit of a jolt, some egos might get tweaked because “they have the power” and all that sort of malarky but ultimately, it fails.
Why it fails varies, could be a legislative change, could be a market change or it could be that enough of your customers (that you’re gouging) get so pissed off they go elsewhere. And that’s the most likely reason, a competitor steals the march on you with a better offering and, you’re stuffed.
The latter, which are cited mainly as “market forces” will kill off more than anything else.
Other than legislation.
But my point stands, a protectionist policy does not work, can’t work and will not work so why bother with it, all you do is piss people off and quite possibly queer your own customer base against you.
And once you lose those customers, it could be a generation or more before you win back the numbers. If you ever escape the gravitational force of the “bad brand” back hole you create.
You can hide behind “interests of consumer safety” and all the variations of it but in the end, consumers and others will see it for what it is, a basic money grab.
Just as back in the 90s I could say it was “to provide better service” and sure, that’d be true (at least from my perspective) but that’s merely the excuse attempting to justify the action.
Unless you have the law on your side with a very good set of reasons, you can’t have a protected market and even if you do, that’s not to say it won’t be challenged down the road.
Getting Back To Threes
My basic three groups, the first group it won’t matter what you do to them, these are the people that get their car serviced by the main dealer and nobody else, appliances sorted out by the agent or manufacturer service and so on. Money to them is not the most important aspect of it all, they want the security and comfort blanket of knowing the people that know what they are doing are doing it. And, they are afforded all the protections that come with that.
Nothing anyone one does will alter that.
Those who will never call on authorised service often won’t call anyone at all. They’ll be the people that will self repair or get the lowest cost option if they are absolutely forced to get “someone” in that can do the job they can’t.
Or, they’ll ditch it and replace.
For repairers, the fascinating group is the one in the middle that can be swayed one way or the other.
Those people everyone has a shout at getting and for a variety of reasons. Such as, you’re cheaper, you’re faster, more local and so on, there are a myriad of reasons why a customer will chose you or your product over another and it’s not always obvious why.
But, in our industry, specifically for makers and those that set policy, two out of three groups you can easily hack off by preventing consumer choice.
If you in any way prevent competition in the middle by restricting tech support, parts etc then you will quickly get a reputation in the trade for that, which isn’t good as that can impact sales and yes, a strong brand will carry some of that but, not all and not always. Then you really hack off the third group, big time, who are very liable to ignore your products, even if they are superior.
The only group of customers you win with is the first one as they don’t care, and you’re giving them exactly what they want until you get too greedy and then even they can turn on you. But regardless of what you do, so long as it’s reasonable, you will never lose those.
Customer loyalty and opinion are fickle things.
Bad Legislation
This gets really murky as I’ve seen a number of things being proposed over the years on several fronts and let me use one example many of us will know, Gas Safe.
If you’re not Gas Safe registered then you can’t repair a gas appliance and it’s been that way since the inception of CORGI which was a reaction to buildings blowing up and killing people. Like, quite a few people.
That added costs which many didn’t want or couldn’t afford and introduced a layer of complexity so a lot of repairers didn’t bother with it as it wasn’t worth the trouble for all the gas work they did.
Over time, the number of gas repairers dropped and dropped to the point now where, you cannot get gas cover nationally.
Nobody has done anything about that.
The reasons for that are complex but essentially government wants to get shot of gas eventually, so there’s no appetite to sort that problem.
It’s gotten to the point however where even plumbers are ditching gas as it’s too much hassle to be bothered with and, not enough money in it to justify the high cost of maintaining the requirements.
The point being, some legislation doesn’t help anyone. Sometimes it can even have very negative effects.
When I hear things about introducing some sort of mandatory qualifications, laws or whatever I baulk at it and am very sceptical of many I hear proposed as I know that much of what gets banded about will not have a positive effect and, almost invariably not the one intended.
It also means, getting back to the popular excuse of restricting info, parts etc of the company in question acting “in the interests of consumer safety” to be a big pile of steaming crap.
If that were true and there was this supposed level of danger, there would be laws preventing any company from acting in that way, not just their own policy propping up the ridiculous notion.
I hope this demonstrates to some that getting legislation in place to prop up your own protectionist notions is liable to be a non-starter. If what you propose doesn’t act in the interest of many parties and, primarily, end users/customers, it’s liable to be dead on arrival.
Good Legislation
That’s not to say all legislation is bad, it’s not.
From memory, way back when BMW decided to put service indicator lights in their cars and, to get those reset it had to be done by a BMW dealership or service centre.
This spawned outrage from the independent repairers and let to the introduction of a European block exemption that basically curtailed protectionist practices on a number of fronts. Independents had to be provided with the same service equipment, information, parts and so on whilst in the midst of this you were now allowed to get a car serviced with genuine parts by third parties and not invalidate the warranty.
There’s a lot in that but what it did was to open up the ability of third parties to compete thereby allowing competition in the marketplace and, importantly, consumer choice.
Nowadays car manufacturers must comply and must allow the free and fair distribution of pretty much everything.
I have long argued that similar legislation is required for the appliance industry so as to ensure customers get a reasonable shake, choices and there is free and fair competition in the appliance after-sales market which, as I write, there really isn’t and certainly nothing to protect consumers.
It’s more akin to the Wild West than a mature, adequately regulated market.
Right To Repair
The requirement to provide service information, parts and so on has become a larger talking point in recent times with the advent of Right To Repair. A growing body of consumers want to repair, not replace their goods and wish to have the ability to do that.
Some manufacturers have not responded well to this.
And, let’s be real, if a maker is resisting allowing consumer and third party access to repair the products that they produced there is really only one fundamental reason for that, they are protecting and feathering their own nest. There’s really no other logical explanation.
Customers aren’t completely stupid, they can see that as can the trade and other bodies.
Excuses I’ve had are often absurd for not allowing access, like it’s GDPR related, there’s some EU law and more all of which are, to be candid, utter bollocks.
For example, Neff recently told a repairer friend that they couldn’t provide wiring or any technical support due to health and safety legislation. They failed to specify what H&S legislation, and I know why because there isn’t anything specific that would prevent that; it’s just a crap excuse to prevent assisting.
I’ve even heard of cases where wiring diagrams some won’t give to repairers but, will happily give them to consumers… go figure that one out!
Combatting Protectionist Practices
Aside from pushing for legislative change, making people aware of it is the best thing to do.
This I have tried to do over the years with the likes of UK Whitegoods by listing most manufacturers and commenting on what their service arrangements are like. And a few brands are not too happy about that.
This underlines the premise that they do not want people to be aware of this stuff as, if they had nothing to hide, they’d have nothing to gripe about.
There’s not a lot they can do about it though as, it’s the truth and you can’t get into any trouble for speaking the truth or, offering an opinion.
Over the years, I know that this has cost some brands hundreds, if not thousands of sales to be lost and some don’t deserve that as the products are good but, if they are going to screw over consumers and the independent trade through protectionist practices then I’m afraid that the outcomes of their actions and policies are their problem, not mine.
Calling these companies out, letting buyers know and pushing for changes to legislation in order to support a free and fair after-sales market and consumer choice is about all we can really do.