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Whirlpool: Whirlpool Shuns It's Own UK Service Partners!
Word has reached UKW of the reasons for Whirlpool’s UK Franchise Manager, Tim Lynch, leaving the company at such short notice as we reported on 9th December 2003 which came as a surprise to many people.
The story recounted is that Mr Lynch was trying to back the agents in their attempts to get better rates for Whirlpool warranty and extended warranty work as he said that the network was under-funded and under-resourced. He was scheduled to have a meeting with Whirlpool’s European Service Director, to explain this and provide possible remedies, a meeting which we are led to believe never took place. He was also very critical of the management at Whirlpool’s customer care and spares operation in Croydon and he wanted changes to be instigated. Some of that management have been implied as having some hand in the reasons and method in which Mr Lynch has left the company suddenly.
The unofficial reasons for Mr Lynch’s services being dismissed is that he was too sympathetic to the network and that Whirlpool was to continue a policy of getting as much as possible for as little as possible from its partners. However, this current attitude seems to breeding discontent within the Whirlpool network of agents from the ones we’ve spoken with recently.
This was due to complaints from the Whirlpool Service Partners Network that they were being paid a scant £2 more per call than it was actually costing them to get an engineer to a customer’s home and that spares’ pricing was all wrong. Even with the discounts currently enjoyed by the agents major spares suppliers like Electrue/Connect can still easily undercut them on many items. So in effect the service partner can be losing money and probably is, on every single warranty job that they complete on Whirlpool’s behalf as well as not being able to compete in the spares market.
The situation becomes worse when we learned that spares chargeback is currently under investigation and that if an agent charges back any more than 80% of total sales from Whirlpool back as being used warranty or extended warranty then the difference may well be debited from their payments, thus putting even greater financial strain on the network. Given that many of the agents do little in the way of spares sales as, remember you can buy cheaper elsewhere and many of the companies involved do not sell over-the-counter spares, this strikes many as a farcical notion when three agents we spoke with stated that over 90% of the spares they bought were used on work charged back to Whirlpool. Bear in mind that the volume of chargeable repairs (especially with the cost of many Whirlpool spares in mind) are low as they are for the entire industry and getting lower year on year as appliances are cheaper and easy to replace instead of repair from the customer’s point of view.
With at least one notable Whirlpool Service Partner having already gone bust it seems to us that this is only going to push still more service companies into the red and may well actually bankrupt some of the network partners. In my own personal view this is no way to treat people that you rely on to carry out a service and represent your company in a customer’s home, nor is it congenial to a good working relationship.
We would hope that Whirlpool listen to its loyal network of service partners and instigate remedies to appease both sides and help them to help themselves. Poor service does and will cost you sales and driving your own network of repairers to the brink of or, indeed to, bankruptcy hardly seems a sensible course of action.
In fact it strikes me as well as others that this sorry tale could adversely affect Whirlpool's current standing in the industry with the independent repairers and that any reading of these events may well be put off joining or remaining with a network that treats it's agents thus. Or is it Whirlpool's intent to re-employ all the engineer's, getting rid of the agents by bankrupting them to avoid complications?
No comment has been made officially by Whirlpool and no official reason for Mr Lynch’s departure has been forthcoming to the few Whirlpool agents that we’ve spoken with nor has there been any form of official statement to anyone else that we are aware of at this time.
Coincidentally when speaking with one of the agents he had no knowledge of the upcoming takeover of Fisher & Paykel service by the Whirlpool network. Whether this is merely an oversight or not is unknown at this time but it goes live on January the 1st and he has no training or even product information as yet.
Also see the followup stories on this article here and here
Posted on Monday, December 22 @ 16:00:00 UTC by kwatt
