They also serve
CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN
Ours is not just McLuhan's age of electric communications, whose content we feel power- less to influence; it is also Adrian's age of electric gadgetry, whose breakdown we are powerless to put right. Washing machines depend on electric motors, irons depend on electric heaters, cars depend on electric sparks, TV sets are absolutely basic and depend on electrons. Appropriately, for a re-tribalised society inhabiting a cosmic village, we turn when things go wrong to the witch-doctor with the insulated screwdriver—the service man.
Some of my best friends are service men. I wish I could say the same about some of the organisations employing them. Scarcely a week goes by without a SPECTATOR reader writing to me on servicing problems—as if I didn't have enough of my own—and no dinner party con- versation is nowadays complete without a horror story on the subject. One cynically experienced couple I know have already bought themselves two electric kettles and two electric irons, and are now saving up for more costly twins. It occurs to me that servicing psychosis rather than conspicuous consumption may be the real reason for the growth of the two-car family.
I am not casting myself, in anticipation of Tuesday, as St George, with all manufacturers and retailers as dragons and all customers as helpless maidens in their scaly clutches. Most firms dealing with service complaints are pretty cooperative, and most get a goodly share of unjustified claimants as well as a smaller quota of plain cranks or people who are just trying it on. All the same, I think there are three areas where consumers can reasonably demand improvements: the first is in the treatment of stuff that is faulty when you get it, the second is in the terms of guarantees, and the third is in the perennial problem of delays.
Duds are by no means rare. For example, a test survey by the Radio and Television Re- tailers Association a year or so ago found that one third of ry sets had something wrong with them, apart from damaged cabinets, when they reached the shop. However vigilant the retailer, some of these faulty goods are going to be passed on to us; and there seems no good reason why the wretched customer, having paid his money, should immediately be deprived of the use of his purchase because it is away for repairs. So demand number one is : replacement of duds, at once and, of course, free of charge.
On guarantees, it goes without saying (though our legislators are taking a devil of a time saying it) that these should never try to take away the customer's legal rights; none of that business about 'all conditions, guarantees or warranties . . . whether express or implied, statutory or otherwise, are excluded.' But what it is scarcely less necessary to say is that the manufacturer should meet all costs of repairs under guarantee—his own compo- nents, other manufacturers' components and, most important, labour. The manufacturer who excludes bought-out parts and labour costs from his guarantee is simply dealing with the gnat while leaving us to cope with the camel.
But the worst problem is delay. What on earth happens to all those electric blankets which lie in the manufacturer's warehouse for weeks while their owners shiver? I visualise a mountainous pile of them with Hans Ander- sen's princess on top insulated at last from the pea at the bottom. Fantasy apart, this question takes us to the economic heart of servicing difficulties which is simply this: to avoid delays and customers infuriated because of them, the manufacturer must keep enough parts in stock and see that there are enough service men in the right places to do the work. And this, like other improvements, may, cost him money. Speaking personally—but I imagine, from correspondence and conversation, for most dis- criminating shoppers as well—I'm quite pre- pared to pay_ this money, in the initial price or in .straight repair costs or in the form of a maintenance contract, provided the service I get is quick and efficient.
I cherish the memory of one exemplary villager, unshaven, taciturn, but superbly con- fident, whom I met when driving south through Persia along the Afghan border. The last town of any size was a hundred miles behind, and the next at least 200 ahead, when we came to ,a dead stop. My fellow-traveller knew just enough about cars to tell that the trouble was electrical and just enough Urdu to inform Ali Baba. Open Sesame! He lifted the bonnet, began to tinker, tweaked this wire and that, climbed underneath, and by the time we'd downed a cup or two of warm, brackish tea, the engine was purring smoothly (as it continued to do all the way to Karachi) and we were worse off by only a few dozen rials. Now that was service—an efficient job done expeditiously and economically by the smallest possible unit. I wish I'd brought him home with me.
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