NESN - National Appliance Repairs

NESN (National Electronics Service Network) was formed in 1991 to offer a centralised national service for what is commonly referred to as browngoods meaning consumer electronics such as televisions and so on which branched into whitegoods or appliance repairs later in the nineties.

NESN was originally formed as a co-operative NESN was, over the years, developed into a fully fledged business and national service provider for both consumer electronics equipment and whitegoods. The network currently boasts in excess of 170 members, subcontractors that carry out work on NESN's behalf in effect.

Current clients include the following companies.

• Littlewoods
• Argos
• Makro
• Allianz Insurance
• Costco
• DSG (Dixons Stores Group/Currys/PC World)
• Asda
• Philips
• Gaggia
• Next
• Brighthouse

NESN originally started in the whitegoods area in the nineties and has therefore been around for some time but it has seen its share or turbulence in its history within the whitegoods sector.

Whilst the company carried out repairs it appeared to major on insurance inspection reports for many years and small contracts before it landed a lucrative contract with the now failed kitchen company MFI. NESN held this contract for a number of years until MFI chose to go to working directly with appointed service agents to compliment their own employed service engineers rather than employing NESN as a "middleman" around 2004.

At about the same time Currys was running a trial with NESN and CDSL providing the subcontracted labour and administration for their extended warranty repairs with Connect Distribution Services Limited (CDSL) providing the spare parts and spare parts logistics. After a few initial teething issues the trial was expanded and NESN received a considerable amount of work due to this contract.

However the NESN management at that time appeared to make a few errors which ultimately led to the loss of the Currys contract with this being passed across to repaircare which was set up to take this contract over.

The Repair Wilderness Years

It is widely believed that due to the way that NESN treated its subcontractors or "members" that it lost a lot of ground and respect within the industry during the period from 2004-2006.

With one side in the tussle over the Currys contract being blamed for shortcomings on the other and the wide use of threats over rescinding work and contracts this could almost be viewed as a tantamount to civil war within the industry as the balance of power shifted from NESN to repaircare. The struggle between the two was ugly and very public, causing damage on both sides but in the end repaircare won the contract and moved forward, NESN was not so fortunate.

After these events NESN appeared to almost drop out completely from appliance servicing seemingly to concentrate on its core business of consumer electronics repairs and, within the industry, effectively became an "also ran" until recently.

Return From The Repair Wilderness

Around 2010 NESN started to again gain some traction in the whitegoods service side winning various small contracts from catalogue companies and retailers directly. We would assume aided by connections to these from the consumer electronics repair side.

However in late in 2010 it was announced that NESN had been appointed to again carry out repairs for Dixons Stores Group (Currys) on Bosch appliances that were under Currys' own "Whatever Happens" extended warranty package only, this time, spares handling and distribution was appointed to CDSL's long time rival, Qualtex.

This led to wild speculation within the industry and many questions to be raised over the status of the relationship between repaircare (CDSL) and Currys Dixons. 

Then, early in 2012, it was confirmed that repaircare had lost the Currys repair contract and that they were taking the work in-house under the Dixons Retail newly launched KnowHow brand.

Quite where this leaves NESN for the future is, at the time of writing, uncertain.

Repair Trade Perception Of NESN

Until the disastrous events of 2004/5 NESN's standing in the trade and its reputation with the repairers was very high, even if some of the rates on offer were on the low side the company was held in high esteem.

After 2005 this was completely turned on its head and the company was regarded as next to dead in the appliance side of the repair business.

Until 2010 when NESN started its fight back but, even with the contracts that have been picked up none are of significant enough volume to put them back where they were and, for many, there are still issues over the events of the past.

Previous Contracts Held

• Currys
• MFI
• Schrieber
• Hygena
• Samsung
• LG
• Teka