on customer service and survival of the small store owner

On customer service and survival of the small store owner

I don't know how it is in the States or Australia, but I suspect it's not much different then here in Europe.
My husband and I run a small store in electrical household supplies. Business is going quite good for us, one of the reasons being that we are the only store of it's kind in a wide area. That's our luck, we have our customers and by providing good customer service we try to keep them.
Here in Belgium we have a saying: "customer is King" and we used to joke on that saying "but I am emperor"... the truth is that the King days of customers are long over...

The last year or so we found we are having more and more arguments with customers, about the service, about prices, about ordering spare parts,...
Everything is getting more expensive and not only for the customer. for ex: a spare part costs half the price of a new device, In this end price is the tax and transportation cost calculated (if the part has to come from China you can imagine it's expensive) and our suppliers won't order just one part, they wait until they can put several on one transport, so this results in long waiting times for the customers.
secondly, the warranty. Warranty is given by the supplier or factory where it was made, not by the store owners (2 years warranty is the legal standard). When a device breaks down, it's up to the supplier to fix it or replace it... again, they fall back on laws that state that the value of an item is decreased by x% per year (depending on the device), which means that after two years your device is worth 1/3 or less then what you paid for it... mostly the suppliers give a cheque of this amount, which mostly doesn't satisfy the customer because they can't buy a new device from that!
They hardly fix things anymore, it's to expensive.

3 years ago, when something broke, we could easily replace it and get an arrangement with the supplier... everybody happy. Even the supplier didn't make a big deal out of it, they make enough money and for them it's a small cost to advertise the good service of their brand.
That's all over though...

All this results in angry customers in my store. They demand a service that we can't provide. They expect us to fix the problem while we can't. One of the things I hear the most is "you sold me the item, now you get it fixed for me, it's under warranty"... they don't get that warranty is a service provided by the suppliers or by the factories. Or "get me the spare part asap"... like I will drive my car to China for them and get it myself.
In the past I have done a lot for my customers, spend hours on the phone to fix their problem and got little result because other companies in the 'sales chain' don't want to loose money (neither do I btw). Some customers understand, the majority does not.
As a store owner these days, you can't start fixing devices yourself or hire a technician to do so, you can't start ordering in China yourself and you certainly can't start giving clients new items when theirs broke (unless it was sold broken ofcourse), If we did that we could close our store within months... it's to expensive, no one can survive that.

These days, an electrical house hold device, be it a coffee maker or a dishwasher... they don't last 15 years like they used to. Everything is made cheaper in Asian or East European countries and sold expensive... only to last a few years. Most good factories in France or Germany are closed.

Remember the good old big TVs' that would last 20 years? Well I guarantee you that the new LCD, led or 3d TVs' won't last a day over 4 years (and that's probably optimistic).
Remember your grandma's refrigerator that probably still works after 25 years? Tales of the past, one hot summer and your fridge gives up on you.

You can spend as much as you like on a certain device, just remember that it's not quality that your paying for these days, no matter the brand, they are not manufactured where you think they are made, what you pay a higher price for is 'comfort', 'design' and 'entertainment'... together with tax, transportation and the employee's paycheck.
Remember that next time you buy something... and remember that the person who sells you the item does not have the power to change that!

It's aren't good times for customers.... but neither for small store owners...

Yeah, things are going downhill with it come to home appliances. The devices do not last anymore, and are difficult to repair and fix. Sadly, we live in a throw away world.
Beware those little $300 notebooks, I have seen three in my shop in a week with a bad hard drive, a $59-$130 item, with labor it comes almost to the original price of the PC. Electric can openers last about a year, toasters somewhat longer, and microwaves longer still. We bought an electric crock pot awhile ago and used it 4 times before it quit, and one of those automatic bread makers lasted for 2 breads, then burned out the heating elements.

reply to post by autowrench


yeah... I'm using my 3rd coffee maker this year...at least I got some discount because of the waranty on them...

at least I'm not yelling to myself about it as most of my customers do, lol

I hear what you're saying but it's all in how you explain it to the customer.

You gotta Kill 'em with kindness and hang in there, stay positive!

reply to post by Signals


were trying
It's weird, the younger people don't seem to have as much problems with it then the older generations, guess they remember best how things where years ago...

I remember when things lasted for 15 years. I still have the tv we got as a wedding gift 16 years ago.
My home's appliances are now just starting to go. They too are 16 years old. I wish products were marketed with lifespans so we could decide better. I don't mind spending if the product is worth it.

My feelings are that the older customers are bitter about the lack of quality in today's products and feel that there is no recourse for the high ticket items breaking down. My inlaws bought a plasma tv, they loved it until the picture went on it. They, being older, wanted to use a local repair guy instead of buying a new one. The guy orders a new board for it, but it didn't fix the problem. The guy was decent enough to be straight with them and suggest just buying another. They were disappointed, but now know that the days of simple repairs on everything are over. They appreciated the repair guy's help, and also felt bad that this is what his shop is up against. How does he compete with a disposable nation? You can't.

Does anyone remember when appliances had schematics for repair work?

Originally posted by shadow watcher

Does anyone remember when appliances had schematics for repair work?

They still exist. Sometimes I need them to order a part that I don't know the name of, takes forever to get them from the manufacturer!

The way it works these days, in simple words:
One company in , lets say China, makes engines for washing machines and sells them to several brands. So now you have 3 different brands using the same engine. Brand A manufactures 1000 machines with this engine and they all sell out so they need more... but, the company in China doesn't have the engines anymore so they sell a different one. Brand A now has one type of washing machine, with the same type nr, but with different engines in them..... From here it gets hard for technicians to tell which engine is the right one, that's why they give the machine an 'e-nr' and by this nr the manufacturer can look up what parts where used for that specific machine.
Of course, that is information they don't like to hand out to us, the store owners.... and that's imo why they don't give away the schematics