General Enquiries And Questions

kiddo66 wrote:Right as a Hotpoint engineer i think i had better put a few people right on a couple of points.
Domestic and General pay Indesit company upfront for any repairs that are to be carried out on products covered by their warranties(so why would they fork out for an independant)
We as engineers CAN NOT write off a machine for BER(unless the parts are obsolete) contrary to what the bulk of posters think we have to repair it.
I cannot see how you can slag off all Indesit machines Have you seen many of the Aqualtis/Moon range going wrong,any horror stories on them .
Slag my company off all you want but lets remember they do employ a lot of people in the UK albeit for the time being,how many british people are employed in the manufactur of the oft pluggedISE machine.

Yes all very well slagging the company off, but if you so-care for these jobs being cut, blame the general public wanting a price-drop, so just think how much those poor workers get paid, and the big thing in the news where their pensions have been cut, how can you say that Britain's once most trusted brand is still the same?

As a retailer I can see the benefits of both sides.

On one hand if dealers did not stock the Indesit / Hotpoint / Creda ranges they would soon be struggling, as these three brands make up the core stock for most shops. Everywhere I have worked in the last 39 this has been the case.

Yes they may still be trading on past reputation but it does keep a lot of shops open and engineers employed not to mention the amount of spares that are sold around the country everyday.

Then on the other you have the ISE which I have not stocked before, but will be shortly . However I like the concept of customer ownership you sell the appliance deliver and install it, if it ever goes wrong then it will be you that repairs it.

This way you get to keep your customer while offering a service level no one can match in the industry and at the same time you have the opportunity to to look after the customer with future purchases.

That`s my tuppenth then


Don

kwatt wrote:Hi kiddo,

I know that you will have a loyalty to Hotpoint and that's fine, we are all entitled to our opinions and yours is just as valuable as anyone else's.

I would point out however that ISE is small beer (very) in comparison to the people that pay your wages. It is built around a model of longevity (cheap spares, which Indesit don't do) and a level customer service which virtually no large company can touch, including the Indesit Company. They just haven't the flexibility to compete in the area.

Oh and all employees of ISE are in the UK and ISE generates commerce in the UK for UK businesses.

As for Moon and Aqualtis, yes, there are already some horror stories floating about, including entire inner tub/drum unit changes (as it's all-in-one and cannot be disassembled AIUI) for coin damage and one for a bra wire stuck in it.

K.

So the horror stories are all connected to customer misuse then really,they shouldnt be putting coins in them they are not a money box.
Lets face it the reason the independant sector slag the Hotpoint brand is that the fix is often too much to justify getting an independant in so the repair stops in house,sound business i would have said.

kiddo66 wrote:Right as a Hotpoint engineer i think i had better put a few people right on a couple of points.
Domestic and General pay Indesit company upfront for any repairs that are to be carried out on products covered by their warranties(so why would they fork out for an independant)
We as engineers CAN NOT write off a machine for BER(unless the parts are obsolete) contrary to what the bulk of posters think we have to repair it.
I cannot see how you can slag off all Indesit machines Have you seen many of the Aqualtis/Moon range going wrong,any horror stories on them .
Slag my company off all you want but lets remember they do employ a lot of people in the UK albeit for the time being,how many british people are employed in the manufactur of the oft pluggedISE machine.

now that IS funny

you want the horrific moon stories?

hows about the one that stuck full of water, and cos some brain dead italian decided not to put a glass porthole on, the customer had no idea, and opened the door to waves of water, pouring all over their week old floor?

or the ones where the heater brackets work loose and ruin the drum within weeks

and the aqualtis? say no more

your trying to preach to the converted here mate... i work for comet, and id say a good 75% of the machines i see are these things, and i seen a lot of problems which could easily be prevented by spendin another £5 - £10 on them

i had a widl125 the other day, on d&g which burst into flame in front of my very eyes... no prizes for guessing where that ended up

your statement of nothing on d&g gets written off is cobblers, that customer would not dream of having a repair.. i know.. i do it on a daily basis

the facts dont change, a simple google search with the words 'indesit' and 'faults' brings up no less than 48,700 pages for people to peruse

and then you have the gaul to slag off the ise? what you gotta remember is that these traders feel they have a duty of care to look after and keep the customers that remain loyal happy, and that doesnt involve selling them a machine they know simply isnt reliable... and unfortunatley ANY merloni machine is just that.. unreliable

badly designed pcbs for a start, with several eproms with different software variants (2.7 and 3.5) not to mention the hot and cold fill issue, and now, to top that, u gotta start measuring the motor stack now , cos thats different too... whoever created that wf860 wants raking out with a rotating cactus

shall we move on to the vtd and its umpteen 'fixes'

or the ctd fan problem/ and the differing boards and eprom problem?

or maybe we should be looking at the ff178e.. no problems with them is there (ahem)

oh and those new gas cookers (cannon/indesit/hotpoint/creda) where will it all end

of course its easy for you, you just have maybe 4-5 boards and a box full of blank eproms, a quick flash from washdoctor and your off.. not so easy for us, cos merloni decide were not privvy to wash doctor, and even the tech info on partfinder is removed, because YOUR company want all the work for themsleves

if your gonna come on here tryin to put us right, make sure what your saying IS right, because some of these guys have been around an awfully long time, and they are well aware of the facts

ive never seen an ise macheine, but these guys wouldnt sell them if they didnt think it was something they knew would be reliable for the CUSTOMER.. something merloni seem to have forgotten

one day, and that day might come sooner than you think, you'll be on here, not workin for merloni, and you'll have a different view, trust me

rant over....

You didnt read wot i wrote mate as an Indesit employed engineer we cannot write off D&G machines even though customers are told we can, it is not an option.
Frankly i dont believe that you are seeing that many Aqualtis machines i think i could count on one hand the number of these machines ive seen.
Anyway if you are a Comet engineer then what are you grumbling for as you pass all the drum work over to Indesit!
I was recently on a course with a guy who used to do training for Comet so i did get to know all the ins and outs of what Comet engineers have to contend with and i think you are on a hiding to nothing,no back up,no technical(not that we have either)must be a nightmare
Maybe thats why you come across so aggresive.

another underinformed individual

we do all our drum work, rakes of it too

i aint gonna fall out with ne1, i know what we do, and i know what we see, im not aggressive, im honest

shouldnt this be moved to technical, so the public dont see it?

More good news for you independants Indesit are introducing fixed pricing on all Indesit branded machines in a couple of weeks time so the customer will not be in for any suprises, they are also introducing prepay so we get the money up front then turn up to do the repair.....

This does indeed show the public what the independant sector think of Indesit company but i would like to redress the balance by pointing out to them that Indesit/Hotpoint will spend as much time as is needed on the customers machine and will fit only genuine parts to it and will honour the repair for 12 months all for the price of £89.98./£99.99
This is true of all employees of the company and its franchisee,s now hand on heart how many of the independant repairers will offer you the same package(oh and i do hear plenty of horror stories of my customers)
Maybe you could start a thread with this in mind you know name and shame repairers that offered less than adequate service.

Helo 75, I am totally 100% agreeing with what you have to say, dispite any disputes in the past, you do know what your talking about, which customers like. I have now got a good job if anyone would like to know, at a kitchen design place in Selby, just down the road from me, but don't fear, they sell only Neff and Miele appliances.
Great eh?

kiddo66 wrote:More good news for you independants Indesit are introducing fixed pricing on all Indesit branded machines in a couple of weeks time so the customer will not be in for any suprises, they are also introducing prepay so we get the money up front then turn up to do the repair.....

This does indeed show the public what the independant sector think of Indesit company but i would like to redress the balance by pointing out to them that Indesit/Hotpoint will spend as much time as is needed on the customers machine and will fit only genuine parts to it and will honour the repair for 12 months all for the price of £89.98./£99.99This is true of all employees of the company and its franchisee,s now hand on heart how many of the independant repairers will offer you the same package(oh and i do hear plenty of horror stories of my customers)
Maybe you could start a thread with this in mind you know name and shame repairers that offered less than adequate service.

yes we too offer a 12 month guarantee on parts/labour which is a big ask considering we pay over the top on spare parts.I think you will also find the horses left the stables years ago
dave

Personally I feel this needs to be in another thread.

Perhaps leave this as it is, but take the future debate into another topic, and out the public gaze. This started as a "one-off" where a customer was unhappy and rightly so, but politics should not come into this, and I think we have detracted from the origin of the thread somewhat. Just my opinion. I suspect the person who started this thread has moved on or got fed up of reading it all by now, and probably does not really want to be an innocent bystander in all this.

It is a good debate, and there is plenty to be said from both sides. However an open forum may not be the place as the public readers may feel all we do is argue & slag each other off. (As if)!

Alex

Sorry Alex i would love to but i was banned from the trade forums for something that i posted on the Indesit forum,one of the mods took exception to my posting and my membership was withdrawn.
How he got to read it was a mystery as you are supposed to be in Indesits employ but he was reluctant to tell me.
I have the highest respect for a lot of guys who do repairs as independants however up in my neck of the woods we have a high number of cowboys and they get away with murder this is particularly true of the gas engineers,charge a fortune and still dont fix the fault.
Kladave that is commendable to offer such a long warranty im sure you have a good reputation and thrive on it.

Well, well, well.

What do we have here then, hmmmm.

Just though I'd pop on to see if things had progressed with this thread and look what I find (im still hiding in the background).

Now, kiddo66 you wouldn't be the same engineer who has visited me at some stage would you? Just all sounds so familiar, what with all the praise for the aqualtis, not many problems with it? Hmmmm! Ok, you may not be one of the engineers (out of 15) who has visited me, but whether you are or not just read on.

Lets get back to the story shall we.

The engineer turned up on the friday, and lo and behold couldn't find a thing wrong with the machine this time. Apparently they had changed the software in the machine so that it spins for 5mins when its on a dry cycle so it appears its washing, fair enough I'll go with that one for now. The disco lights display never happened whilst he was there either. Now the observant people amongst you will probably guess the rest of the story from here on but im going to tell anyway.

Ok, so no new washing machine after all as he couldn't fined a problem with it, we just weren't informed there was a new software update which affected the drying cycle when the last engineer visited.


So I speak to D & G and we agree to allow 30 days to make sure the machine was working properly. Fine the machine works for exaclty 34 days with no problems at all (yipee)

Ah, did I say 34 days, boooooo, 'cause on day 34 it caught fire and blew up, yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Being cynical here, but as kiddo66 has sung the praise for Merloni, then Im sure he can put my mind at rest.

Having 5 new modules, a leaking machine god knows how many times (ruined kitchen cupboards anyone), the best electrical light display you have ever seen, bangs crackles wallops galore, 15 engineers, and not to mention the drying side of things all inside exactly 1 year.

Can I just point out at this point that the machine is used maybe 3/4 times a week (we would do the drying but as they have changed the software we don't trust it anymore), there has never been any bra wires coins etc etc in the machine. Just read back through my posts, most of the problems we have is water leaking (due to holes in the hose coming from the soap drawer which 8 engineers failed to spot, and the drum seal coming away from the drum which took 2 engineers to spot) and shorting out the modules. Where does any of that mention bra wires or coins and I'd like to see a coin punch a mm hole in the hose coming down from the soap drawer. Oh and not to mention the engineer who really couldn't be bothered at all and replaced virtually everything but the drum and the hose from the soap drawer (i'll let you make your mind up on this one, but it didn't fix it). Oh and about your post regarding fixed pricing and spending as much time as needed. Just how much are Merloni willing to waste on a £350 machine that still doesn't work. Just add up the man hours (approx 17.5 hrs), 5 new modules, new motor, new wiring harness, new door latch, new hose, new heater. Would it not have been cheaper/better to replace the machine? If that had happened then this thread wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't be invloved in a flame war with other people who are also fed up with Merloni. Oh, and visit www.which.co.uk and see the great reviews on hotpoint from customers of Merloni (maybe not).

Kiddo66, you maybe one of the good guys who visited me, and spent time trying to fix it. But hey, it ain't the engineer im blaming here its the poor quality of the machine. If it was of better quality then I wouldn't have to keep calling out the engineer's would I? And who makes this machine Hotpoint/Merloni of course which brings me nicely on to the subject of this post.

You have tried to defend Merloni, and others on here have disagreed. Now im not trying to start a war, but im sorry to say I have to agree with the other guys here as all you need to do is search the web and read the horror stories there. Doesn't matter whether its old models or the brand new ones (aqualtis, moon etc etc), you will find a horror story somewhere. So in answer to your post, I wouldn't buy another Merloni product and thats exactly what I have said on here (oh, and many other forums, friends, family, every tom, dick & harry I could speak to.)

Comet were willing to help if needed, and D & G chased up with Hotpoint regarding this and took action, and would have provided a new machine if needed.

But what happened to Hotpoint customer (i couldn't give a damn) service? All they wanted to do was keep sending an engineer out at D & G's expense (nice). No one wanted to help, no one wanted to take responsibilty and twice I was elevated to a new machine only to be turned down.

Ah well, its blown up now and caught fire so lets see where we go from here. And i'll be talking to D & G not Hotpoint from now, once bitten twice shy as they say.

Anyone wanna buy a slightly used (just over a year) burnt out Hotpoint machine (nice smells by the way, and the smoke detectors work in the house, lol)?

I await the many replys on this subject.


Disgruntled_Hotpoint