British bl***y industry - where we are going wrong

Yesterday I tried to buy some spirit level vials to go in a template project to assist with fitting kit car headlamps. Irrelevant really but that's what they are going to be for.

Recently I've been trying to buy more ethically: you know the sort of thing - local stuff, no out of season imported perishables, no cheap Chinese cr@p (for both political and environmental reasons), the same for USA goods (same reasons as the Chinese) - you get the idea. Not going over the top (have a GTA after all, but trying to change some of the things I do.

So I approached a UK company PR Engineering after having found their web site. Some snooty female who answered the phone first wanted to know if I was from a company and then when I told her that I was not, declared that they had a minimum order value of £50 and that this order wasn't worth the trouble. For heaven's sake all they had to do was put the things into a jiffy bag and post it.

Another company on the web Level Developments states on their site that they have a £50 minimum for phone sales and a £25 for web sales - but there's no means to buy on the web through their site. Haven't spoken to them yet.

What do I do now? Ebay has cheap Chinese cr@p scaffolders levels that I can buy for less than a tenner delivered and then butcher for the vials. So much for my good intentions.

So you fine pair of UK companies - you can't be bothered to sell me what I want because I'm not worth the trouble. You might have lost a much larger order because of this - unlikely but you'll never know. I don't know how well you are doing but you deserve to go to the wall.

And PR Engineering - fire that supercilious bimbo who answers the phone and makes your sales decisions for you. She didn't even ask how many vials I wanted to estimate the value.

To the leaders of industry: every customer matters. "Look after the pennies, ..." as they say.

Going to lie down now.

what exactly are you after? just the bit with the bubble?
http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2.../ShowImage.jpg

If you rang them up asking for a new bubble for your spirit level no wonder they told you to do one!

The bubble on my sprit level wore out.

Seriously though it is hardly suprising british industry struggles when you have companies like that, but they must have been doing something right to have survived this long..

In answer to the thread title, In my experience we don't want to do the work unless it's

a) Easy
b) Hugely Profitable
c) Because it's a freebie for a mate

In no particular order. When I worked in engineering I loved the work but most of the guys I worked with were a waste of space. They'd all down tools EVERY morning and cluster around a radio to listen to the pop quiz.

Nobody in management ever gave a **** either.

Originally Posted by Pud237

If you rang them up asking for a new bubble for your spirit level no wonder they told you to do one!

I had to laugh about that comment, but then I have been drinking all afternoon. Quite true about British industry though, I didn't think we had any.

Only thing i can say about British industry it was jointly raped by Thatcher and the unions in the 70s 80s and now you have the result of Thatchers greed and Scargill and co,s glory hunting stupidity.

I don't think you'll find many
companies in any country that'll
sell to the general public.

They just aren't set up for it.

How would you pay them?

Originally Posted by Nev

I don't think you'll find many
companies in any country that'll
sell to the general public.

They just aren't set up for it.

How would you pay them?

Credit card, debit card, cheque, bank transfer, coins of the realm

I hardly think any manufacturing company
is going to throw away their hard earned
cash to pay a creditcard company the
kind of money they rape vendors for.

Cash? This isn't a cornershop is it?

Cheque, maybe.

Look if you haven't got things set up
to look after the general public it really
is not going to generate any profit to deal
with someone wanting to buy one off
of you product.

Would you expect to ring up Alfa
directly and get them to ship and
bill a spare to your home address?

Originally Posted by Nev

Would you expect to ring up Alfa
directly and get them to ship and
bill a spare to your home address?

Yes i would, any company refusing to sell to the general public is not worth dealing with IMO of course

As I said, most companies won't
deal directly with the public so
I think you'd go without a lot more
products than you realize if you wanted
to boycott those companies.

They were quite happy to deal with me as an individual provided I wanted to give them lots of money. I asked about a distributor but they don't have one.

The payment thing is a problem, I admit. Overheads to the card companies are big and I assume that cheques are equally tedious to process. Not sure about the solution here as I'm not in business.

I would be happy to just buy the bubbles but they are so difficult to see on their own so was hoping they could be supplied in a little tube of coloured liquid.

Go to the pound shop mate, as I did: Bright yellow plastic framed, at a pound a pop. Sorted. British innovative direct action!

Originally Posted by Nev

I don't think you'll find many
companies in any country that'll
sell to the general public.

They just aren't set up for it.

How would you pay them?

I think you are missing the point. The issue is the attitude and the incompetence.

Allowing your receptionist to make business decisions rarely works well in industry. Advertising a web-service and then not offering it can also deter wannabe customers.....

Payment to companies via e-banking services are all easily available and incurs no extra overheads other than someone giving the account/sort code and waiting for the money to arrive.

Too many "business people" revert to the "dealing with joe public is more trouble than it's worth" too readily. It's all income, and sometimes "joe public" remembers you and comes back with the big order.

Our business does pretty well making sure our products/services are easily accessible to anyone from joe public to BP!

Contact these guys, they distrubute P.R.Engineering products.

W4 Ltd
01243 553 355