Repair vs repaired rate.

Techman

What is the typical repaired % rate? By this I mean. you get 10 service call , you respond to all 10 of them, but only 5 customers have heat ,5 don't. I'm very curious ,due to all the different circuit boards , sensors,controls  etc, ect, Just curious.

RobG

Could you

Could you please clarify your question? I am not sure what you are asking. Are most service calls controls or sensors? Is that the question?



Rob

Techman

repaired

I'm talking about how many service call are repaired the same day, because you had the parts on the truck or in the shop, as compared to , parts have to be ordered so no heat tonite/today.

bill nye_3

we try

We try for 100%. Almost never have to leave a customer w/o heat or hot water. But we only serve our customers and they are oil heat not gas. There are not too many oil equipment parts that are that exotic that you can't get them or interchange them to make something work.

Dave_132

OEM parts available

This problem does occur when local reps refuse to carry replacement parts. It should not be the contractors responsibility to stock these items. It is time that the manufacturers reps increase there inventory and eliminate this problem. I can't tell you how many times over the years a rep has told me that we will have to order the part from the factory and is your customer willing to pay for overnight shipping. My feelings are if you are going to be a rep than be a rep. Don't provide excuses rather results. This way everyone will have a good day, especially the homeowner.

icesailor

My take:

My take is somewhat the same only:

I always bought what I needed from one basic very well stocked supplier. If they carried a two lines of boilers, and one they didn't stock parts as well, I didn't buy that line. If Reps were difficult to deal with for the supplier, I didn't buy that product line. I considered my well stocked supply house as inventory for my truck. I always stocked Bread & Butter items in my truck that I used often.

The owner said to me/us, when he contemplated building the store, that he wouldn't build it unless he had a minimum of $1,000,000 worth of inventory in the store. He made good on that promise and more. Time is money. Maybe I could get some things cheaper at another store. But if I went to the other store and needed 12 items to fill the order, they might have 7 of them and would need to order in the missing items to come the next Wednesday from the main store. So, I would go to my store of choice and get the other 5 items to fill the order. When I could have gotten all 12 items at the first store. If you charge $60.00 per hour, that's $1.00 a minute. Time and money add up quickly.

I once had to go to Boston to change a water heater for my daughter. I picked up one early (6:30 AM) near where I lived and drove to Boston, knowing I could go to the Grand Poo-Bah of Home Depots in Massachusetts. The one beside Rt. 93 in S. Boston, open 24 hours a day and a requirement to work there is that you be TRI-Lingual (speak 3 or more languages). English, Spanish and some variant of an Austroasiatic language group.

While looking for what I needed and how I would adapt the available parts for my needs, I noticed three employees from some Plumbing & Heating company looking for something. They were all dressed alike wearing identical shirts with a company name and the individual names of the employees on them. One then got on the Banana and called the office (I suppose) to tell them that HD didn't have a 3/4" T& PR relief valve so what should they do?

Lets see. At $60.00 per hour, X3, equals $3.00 per minute. Times the time it took to drive past at least two legitimate plumbing wholesale houses that had a shelf full of Watts 3/4" 100 XL-8's?

Are you kidding me?

Harvey Ramer

Under stocked supply houses.

In my opinion are an abomination. It seems they only want to stock what can be sold effortlessly. I could go on and on about this but you all know what i'm talking about. Those of us who strive to provide superior service are left waiting and paying high shipping charges again and again. They take the attitude of, show me the sales potential and we'll think about stocking it.



Listen up brother! If you don't have it, you can't sell it. And by sell it I don't mean waiting till somebody orders it. Go out and explain to them why they need it and how it will make their job easier and more professional! It all boils down to some knuckleheaded pencil pusher in some corporate office that penalizes the managers of local branches if they have a product sitting on a shelf for to long. This scares the local branches away from innovation.



I could go on but I need to stop now.



Oh, and it's always the contractors fault.



That's all.



Harvey

RobG

As Well

The supply house ends up losing business in the long run. For instance, you call your supplier for a part and they don't have it but they can have it shipped from their distibution center. You just go online and have it shipped from Mr Pex et. al. The supply houses owe their business to us, not vice versa. With the advent of the internet (thank you Al Gore) there is actually an alternative. Have any of you tried using the big blue supply house's web site? I would rather shop elswhere. With most of the morons that are working the counter at your wholesalers, and your salesman on the road trying to promote the latest widget, you may as well just go online and order it yourself. It's almost as bad as going to the big orange box store.



Sorry for the rant,



Rob    

SWEI

Out here in the sticks

we really don't have a lot of options.  We have one local supplier here thanks to the mines, but they stock none of the brands we use, charge at least 15% more than the other locations in their corporate family, and have almost no repair parts.  I'm in there about once a month.