Beware FOEHN & HIRSCH is ebuyer own brand

Churchdownlad

I think it is misleading and it is specifically designed to be misleading. Surely the simple solution is simply to have an asterisk against the name and a small note saying that the company is an own label brand and that the products are sourced from a variety of suppliers.

If ebuyer were an ethical company they would do this voluntarily, in the absence of such morality it seems an easy thing to introduce a trading standard on.

I agree that it is a common practice, perhaps the most obvious example being DSG (Dixons/Currys etc) Matsui brand.

In fairness the brand is priced very competitively, and it is probably obvious to many that it is an own label there will be many who are confused. Don't take Moneysaving expert comments as a random sample. I am sure that the average consumer is much less aware than those who have taken the trouble to search this thread.

The question arises whether even given the competitive price the TVs etc are worth it, and this is difficult to get a feel for. As several have commented, Ebuyers customer feedback comments are completely biased when it comes to its own brand products (and again this would be more obvious to the not so savvy were the company forced to disclose that it was its own brand.) These TVs are likely to be made either in Turkey (my Vestel which makes around 10% of the LCDs sold in the Europe) or Chinese. One clearly isnt getting the brand name assurance and customer support one would expect from a leading brand such as Samsung/Panasonic/Sony etc. For some reason the major consumer choice magazines and websites rarely seem to assess this type of product so it's really difficult to get unbiased information.

Ultimately one is forced to decide whether the say 20% discount from an equivalent mid rang branded equivalent is worth the quality control, customer support, firmware upgrade and long term reliability issues that we all know tend to be associated with unbranded products

A final point, own brands play a different role than they do for say M&S or Tesco. Those companies are effectively providing a quality assurance by attaching their name to goods they supply. The reason that Ebuyer doesnt label its goods is only partly because that would sound a horrendously downmarket label, but also because it hasnt put so much effort into assessing the quality of these goods, so it really doesnt want to put its own balance sheet or reputation on the line if one line turns into a quality control disaster.

blackworx

I love that there's four pages of argument over the long-established concept of a private brand.

en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki/Private_label

sorry - not allowed real links

sullly

PopeSock wrote: »

Or Dixons having their own 'Matsui' brand.. which probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It sounds Japanese, right? Except that Matsui is also the last name of the Japanese general/war criminal deemed responsible for the Nanking Massacre.

the old 14" matsui tv's were made in the same plant in scotland as philips , orion , and jvc tv's , all on the same line and set up by the same people ,

so don't see a problem with ebuyer having their own brand , unless it turns out to be sub standard .

andybuchan

Although they seem to be doing rather well for themselves I wonder if perhaps their business practices are perhaps a little dubious. Besides pretending to be some they are not with the fancy continental name brand they are also making spurious offers on sites such as Offerboffin - whereby they put a very low price on the offer site for a few days i.e. a iMU iDOP Vibrating Speaker normally retailing at £35 they offer at £10. They then withdraw this offer but fail to change the price at Offerboffin. The result being that they get lots of search engine hits because of the false pricing. I've only done a quick search but found three different occurrences in their products.

Has anyone had the same problem - perhaps something for the ASA or Trading standards if others experiencing the same thing?

Yogibear

I`ve read all the posts since 2009,at the "end of the day" you make your own mind up easy some folk moan for the sake of moaning,me I just moan all the time according to my beloved !!:rotfl::rotfl:

grizzly1911

dph1986 wrote: »

I personally don't think it matters what the name of any brand is, as long as the company behind it delivers quality and long lasting products.

As for Samsung being British, well that's a load of tosh! It was founded in the late 60's in Suwon, South Korea and has it's headquarters in Samsung Town!

Know it is an old thread but for clarity I believe they had some form of assembly operation in Telford.

TheBeezleDude

Hi there Peeps!

I just set up an account here specifically to leave a reply in this thread. It is true that Foehn & Hirsch are owned and operated by eBuyer, and it is true that the F&H website is broken/unfisished, even to the point where any emails sent via the website simply bounce back and never deliver which is very bad in my view. However, I bought a Foehn & Hirsch 19" LCD TV to use as a PC monitor and media player via it's playback of XVID/DIVX AVI files through USB and I was very happy with it. The TV worked like a dream, did exectly what it was supposed to do, had reasonable sound/picture quality and not a dead pixel in sight! I even lost the remote to the TV in the first few weeks (don't ask) and after contacting eBuyer I was sent a replacement free of charge which arrived two days later! So, as far as the brand goes, they have a lot of obvious improvements to make, but as far as the products go, they're good value for money! The only real issue I've ever had with eBuyer, after MANY years as a regular customer, was on the purchase of two 32GB eBuyer Extra Value USB memory sticks, when they arrived they turned out to be counterfeit and simply re-badged 8GB sticks. But, once it was brought to eBuyers attention they immediately replaced the offending items with top brand, working alternatives and allowed me to keep the two counterfeit ones which I simply reformatted down to the size they should have been. So even though I had issues with my order, it was a positive outcome all-round and they pulled that particular item from sale and found a different supplier

*UPDATE*

And for those of you wondering, eBuyer also, in addition to Foehn & Hirsch, also own/operate Wren Kitchens and they used to run WTFMagazine.co.uk too but it now just redirects to the Wren Kitchens website.

MothballsWallet

split_second wrote: »

from around 2001-2003 sort of era?

harvard international (the company that started the brand names alba and goodmans) bought the hinari name in 2001 and resurrected it for a time, they have always had close links with argos, and a few years ago sold the rights to the alba and bush brand names to them

Sorry for digging this old post up, but only just noticed it - when I worked at Tandy (the international name of Radio Shack) in the early 1990's, they stocked a lot of Bush TVs, videos, etc.