Consuming Interest

Spare Parts

By LESLIE ADRIAN

I MAKE no apology for return- ing to the subject of the failure of electrical-appliance mann" facturers to follow IV sales with good servicing °I their products. I have, in fact had too many reports from disgruntled (and, only °cc!

.i°

sionally, gruntled) readers and friends avoid going on about it. Even the Molony Report, in Its unnecessarily restrained way, goes so far as„t,„° say in its chapter on electrical appliances: order to fix the standard of quality to be rnalli tamed and to pin-point the weaknesses ronsh productive of trouble, there should he,

some manufacturers, a deeper interest in co '''

sumer complaint and a determination to draw all ,possible benefit from the knowledge afforded in

In. many of the cases reported to me, and in my own experience as well, it seems that it is often not so much a matter of complaints being treated with disdain as of their being dealt with .incompetently and only after long delays, con- siderable correspondence and unnecessary ex- Pease to the consumer. The case of the spare Part of a Kenwood liquidiser owned by a neigh- bour of mine, about which I reported here -recently, is a good example. My neighbour has been kind enough to give me a log of her deal- tngs with Kenwood, which began on June 12 -and went on, in their annoying and frustrating -Way, right up to August 3. She has also shown Inc the correspondence that her husband has had Stith Kenwood, and I myself have heard from The,general sales manager.

It would be a's boring for you as it has been for my neighbour to go right through she log. but let's consider the main point at issue.

If You w ant to replace a part of an item of Kenwood equipment, one of the obvious ways .°r doing it is to telephone the number listed in the telephone directory. This turns out to be a London number, COLindale 1281. My neigh- bour rang it, was told that it was impossible to Obtain spare parts in London and was advised ' to write to the factory in Havant, Hampshire.

TI IC sales manager, in his letter to me,

'insists that . we have coverage with our own

mobile service engineers. However, apart from this, it is our policy to supply authorised dealers throughout the country and spare attachments and parts for attachments are, of course, avail- able from these dealers.'

'Of course' is the phrase I especially like. It happens that in the telephone directory, on the same page on which Kellwood is listed, there is an advertisement for Robinson's, of Fulham Road, SW3, and Richmond, Surrey, an author- ised Kenwood dealer. I rang one of Robinson's three numbers, said 1 needed a replacement for part of a Kenwood liquidiser and asked where I could get it. I was told that it was very unlikely that would get it in London and was advised (guess what?) to write to the factory at Havant.

So: the general sales manager at Havant says that there is a mobile service and that authorised dealers carry spares. Mr. G. S. Solt, whose letter the Spectator published in its correspondence columns on August 3, confirms that Kenwood have, in fact, a very efficient service depart- ment, though it took him several weeks' skir- mishing with the company to stumble on what he calls 'this well-kept secret.' And the secret is being kept. it seems, from Kenwood in London and from Robinson's, an authorised dealer.

1 am now addressing myself, on the excellent advice of Mr. Solt, to the managing 'director of Kenwood (and to anyone else in the electrical- appliance business to whom these words might apply): you either do or do not provide good service: your London office and your dealers either do or do not know about it; your cus- tomers are given the right information or they are not. Is this not a simple problem 'of organi-

sation and communications? Wouldn't you like to sort it out for your own satisfaction as well as ours?

Like a lot of other people, I suspect, I'm under the impression that many of the manu- facturers of cigarette lighters make more money out of repairing their lighters than they do out of selling them. This may well not be true, but it's the way it feels.

I've been using a Zippo cigarette lighter for the past five years or so. It's an American lighter which has been available in the United States for thirty y ears, but not, until now, in this country.

The advantages it has over any other lighter I've come across are that it is very simply and efficiently made and there's not much that can go wrong. It does occasionally go wrong, of course, as everything mechanical is bound to do at some point, but the fact is that no one has ever paid a cent for the repair of a Zippo. As the advertisements say, 'No matter how old it is, if a Zippo ever fails to work, we'll fix it free.' If you think I've been persuaded by ad- vertising, you're partly right (I've been using the lighter for some years, too), but you'll agree that it's a nice way to be persuaded.

These lighters are now available in many branches of the two tobacconist chains, Finlay's and Lewis's, and at some department stores. Prices range from 35s. to 51 gns. The free repair service applies to the whole range. At the moment any lighters that need repairing are sent to the United States. A forty-eight-hour repair service will be set up here presently.