21st August 2007

The Service Business.

It's often been said that productivity in New Zealand is very poor and when profits get squeezed, businesses and companies are quick to blame any other external influence rather than take a look at what they and their staff are doing and perhaps doing it better.

I bought a tractor a couple of years ago from a firm in Amberley. It was a Japanese Yanmar which had been stripped down, overhauled in Vietnam and imported into NZ with zero hours on the clock. It was obviously the first time this firm had done this as they had no idea of the price when I approached them to buy it. It was duly delivered and as we only have a 3 acre block, the amount of kilometres it travelled was not great. The front wheels nearly fell off in the first fortnight, but a good rack up with the wheel brace fixed that.

After 50 hours I thought it time to give it an overhaul. A phone call to the business found that they didn't even stock a replacement oil filter for it which I thought was rather odd as driving past I'd noticed that they had another Yanmar the same model for sale. No offer to obtain one and the other parts I needed, so on to the internet I got and tracked down a firm in Christchurch which had oil, filters etc. All in all I spent around $180 which Amberley missed out on.

Checking the oil level in the front axle, I found it dry and after re-filling it, found it to be leaking like a sieve because all the bolts had worked themselves loose. On closer examination, it appeared that the whole assembly on both sides had not been tightened properly causing the rubberized gaskets to disolve. I made new gaskets out of gasket paper and reassembled everything taking photographs. As the firm was obviously still importing these tractors I thought I would at least document the problem so they could take it up with the Vietnam contractors and warn other owners.

Over 4 months later, not a dickie bird of a response from the Amberley firm to my letter. I made the point that I was not making any claims on the firm or trying to lay blame. All I was interested in was drawing their attention to the safety issues.

This firm is one which I would not do business with again as they obviously don't have a clue how to nurture customers. They will probably be the first to blame the economy or the high NZ dollar for a downturn in business. Unfortunately there are too many others out there just like them.

TC