Need my Neff washing machine repaired...

Jockthearab · 20 June 2009 at 10:47PM

Looks like our Neff integrated Washing machine has died

It loads water into the detergent compartment & clicks through a cycle but the drum doesn't rotate or fill with water.

A quick check on the net has thrown up a 'National' company who I hadn't heard of before, that can repair in my area (Dundee) for £104 which includes callout, parts & labour & a 3 month guarantee.

Any recommendations of perhaps a local company or does this actually seem a fair price?

As always thanks in advance if you can advise!

JtA

amarg · 21 June 2009 at 12:24AM

I'd see if there are any local repair shops in your area. Where I live there are two shops and they are really cheap and will come out and fix it in situ.

You should be able to get a free quotation from them before you commit yourself.

CKdesigner · 21 June 2009 at 8:49AM

Hi,

The national company is probably Appliance Care, they are the service company that is part of BSH the parent company of Neff, Bosch and Siemens.

Jockthearab · 21 June 2009 at 11:48AM

Well I've took the plunge & booked it for a callout this Wednesday (my next day off). It's a company called 'repaircare' which I hadn't heard of, but seems to be legit...fingers crossed!

Cheers all,

JtA

lwilson_2 · 26 June 2009 at 4:30PM

I'm not sure that this lot are worth the hassle.
Appointments were only available several days on from purchase.
Their engineer failed to turn up for the first appointment.
Second appointment he diagnosed the problem but did not have the parts
Third appointment he 'fixed it' but told me not to switch on for 5 hours (it's a freezer).
When I turned on it was exhibiting the same fault as it started with.
Still waiting for their engineer to ring me to arrange a further call. I will have been 3 weeks without a freezer and taken 4 days off work. The manufacturers would have been more expensive but I suspect more responsive and effective.
Their call centre is very much 'computer says no' . The operators are not empowered to do anything other than call the engineer and get his answer service, as I had already done.
It seems impossible to speak to a team leader or supervisor.
Great idea poorly executed. The system is process not customer focused.
Telephone calls are expensive and there's a lot of 'please hold the line'.

kwatt · 27 June 2009 at 1:56PM

Repaircare is probably not what you think it is.

It is, basically, a referral service that takes a hunk of your money up front then sub-contracts the work to a local repairer in the area for a much reduced sum of money from what you paid. In other words, they take a slice and pass the call as a warranty or insurance call to the repairer.

So, all the info has to be relayed around the houses and that takes time.

Repaircare started as they do a lot of service work for Currys since Currys were struggling to get service in some cases and went on to take on some manufacturers. They actually evolved from a company called Connect Distribution, a parts wholesaler.

There's a few of these sorts of services now primarily to sell their services on the internet it appears. They take a chunk of money to pass a call onto a local repairer that you could find yourself and, importantly, pay less for.

You would have probably gotten a better response and service just using a local repairer.

We have a free referral system to both public and independent trade that is policed available, HERE. It's basically run by the trade and most of the companies on there are very good, the bad ones don't last long.

HTH

K.

Jockthearab · 27 June 2009 at 5:51PM

S'pose I should've updated my experience

...It was a local company who attended. I was pleasantly surprised at getting a morning visit (how often have you been disappointed with a no show or being the last job of the day). The engineer was really good explaining what was wrong & showing me what he was doing. I suspected from my very limited knowledge & googling of the symptoms that it was the motor that was bust, but it was 'the brushes' that were gone. I now know that these are relatively inexpensive, but at the time ( & with a pestering Mrs JtA) this was the best solution for me-a fixed price job (if it was the motor I would've been quids in!) & a 3 month guarantee. Overall, I am happy with the experience. Mrs JtA is happy with a working washing machine again, can't put a price on that can we?:D

Oh and I now have the contact details of my local company (who I'd never heard of) should I have any future problems!

JtA

lwilson_2 · 8 July 2009 at 10:24AM

An update...

It's now just under 4 weeks since I engaged (and paid) Repaircare to fix my fridge/freezer.

The engineer had to return for a 3rd visit (now 4 days off work due to an initial 'no show').

He said that I had a big leak in the system and that the fridge/freezer was toast.

I know nothing about refrigeration but I questioned the logic of a big leak causing the unit to fail so quickly after his previous (unsuccessful) repair when he didn't detect a leak. Also why was the fridge section working OK?

Anyway, he reluctantly tested the system pressure and it was as he left it fully pressurised i.e. there was no leak.

He thought that it was now the compressor and he would contact Repaircare for authorisation to order a new one.

I received an email from Repaircare saying 'I cannot see that there will be a problem at this end and this engineer will order the compressor for you and once received will contact to make another appointment for you.'

10 days on I had heard nothing so I contacted the call centre to be told that it had been referred to the Technical Section, but 'he' had been off for a week or so. I should be patient and they will get back to me when they have discussed it with the engineer.

Four weeks since I started and my fridge/reezer is no further on towards repair.

I'm adjusting my advice from 'not worth bothering' to 'Avoid'.

Laurie

lwilson_2 · 22 July 2009 at 5:12PM

Just to give the final installment on this saga....

After chasing by phone and email I was eventually telephoned and advised that the part (the compressor) was no longer available for my model. They refunded my £125 less £40 for call out charges. (Which meant I had paid them £40 NOTto fix my fridge/freezer!)

I telephoned Miele the following day and they were pretty annoyed at the information given to me as the part was readily available for immediate dispatch. They even gave me the part number and contact details.

I emailed the customer services supervisor who had taken ownership of my case. She replied promising to look into it. That was 10 days ago.

Suspicion is that the part was substantially more than the payment they had taken from me and they just decided not to tell the truth.

Their 'fixed price repair' promise hasn't worked for me.

I have given up on them.

Laurie

Hamstar · 24 July 2009 at 4:45PM

I totally agree, Repaircare is an absolute joke. In theory it is a nice idea to be able to guarantee a price and book the repair online. In practice, Repaircare will cancel a booked appointment without informing you, and a 48 hr response time simply does not take place. I'm only using them this time because I have identified 3 major failures in my appliance, and for the fixed charge, I reckon cannot be beaten by any other Mr fixit. However someone has yet to turn up and I look forward with interest to the squirming and avoidance that will not doubt occur if I ever have a home visit. Best advice - use the local man following good recommendation.

Andy_ArT_Trigg · 11 August 2009 at 4:51PM

I am following this thread and others with interest as I am carrying repaircare's ads on my site and have received several complaints in my comments (a few from some who have contributed to this thread)

The difference between calling out a local engineer and repaircare is that the repaircare agent who will possibly be someone's local repairer is contracted to do the repair at a lower labour charge than what they would charge a customer direct. Also, whereas they would charge the full retail price for spare parts, I'm led to believe the spare costs are calculated at trade price.

Therefore, in theory, many jobs should be able to be completed cheaper than if you called the guy out yourself. However, there is a double edged sword to this in that as the engineer is not making any profit on spares (which independents need) and as he is being paid only a fixed labour charge which is a fair bit less than what they would normally charge there could be a fatal flaw in the business model. It could be that many agents just can't stomach the possibility of doing large and difficult jobs for the relative small amount of reimbursement. If a substantial amount of the repairs they do under this scheme are nice and easy they might be ok with the odd big bearing job etc. but poor quality agents could be messing people around when they get jobs they don't like.

It could be that they've always had these problems but as repaircare (until recently) only did repairs for other companies and not the general public they could maybe get shut of problem jobs much easier and get things written off? It could be that they didn't realise you can't do the same when the general public is paying and when the general public have to fork out for the replacement, and this could be the weakness in the service.

The customer service seems to be struggling to cope. I suspect they have expanded too quickly and promoted the service too strongly and just cannot cope. Other companies have done this famously in the past and survived (was it talk talk or some ISP?) but I have worries that the fixed price repairs business model just cannot work because there are too many products to repair and too many complicated or big jobs.

If anyone could make fixed price repairs work it would be repaircare though because they are part of the largest spare parts company in the UK and can get all spares very cheaply. It remains to be seen if they can pull it off or not. Meantime I have to worry if these complaints are the tip of an iceburg or just inevitable initial teething problems and affecting only a minority of customers. :-(

Need my Neff washing machine repaired...

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free