Sales Prevention
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Mon 22 Oct 2012 20:30
|
Monday 22 October 2012
Fitting a new Waeco fridge has not been as swift as
we had been led to believe.
Having arrived in Las Palmas early on Thursday 11
October our hoped for meeting with Juan Carlos in the afternoon did not happen
as he ended up being tied up in a meeting. We then learnt that Spain would
be shut for a national holiday on Friday so the first useful discussion about
our options didn't take place until Monday 15th. We then
decided which compressor and evaporator we should fit only to discover that
the words 'we have everything in stock' didn't quite mean that in the case of
the compressor. We changed to another spec of compressor that they
did have in stock and learnt that, no, actually, they didn't have that
one either so an order was placed on Waeco in Madrid.
Only three days later, on Thursday, Rolnautic
received their delivery from Waeco with only one item missing. No prizes
for guessing which item was missing - our compressor - which had
fallen off the pallet when loading the lorry in Madrid! There were
no more in stock in Madrid nor at Waeco's head office in
Germany. Juan Carlos discovered all this early in the morning and found a
suitable compressor from another fridge manufacturer in Barcelona, Frigoboat,
and placed an order before I had even learnt of the problem. This should
arrive, by ship, in 5 days on Tuesday 23rd. One sale lost to
Waeco.
Juan Carlos told me the good news today that
the delivery from Frigoboat had arrived early and we went to their stores and
found the box with the right description. Yippee. But, inside the
box was an entirely different compressor - a smaller, air cooled one. Air
cooled fridges in the tropics are about as useful as chocolate kettles so we
were not pleased. Juan Carlos immediately contacted Frigoboat and got them
to open all their stock of compressors to see if the one we ordered
was lurking elsewhere. 'Ours' was eventually found and should be
despatched tomorrow. This can't happen too soon since the original
fridge broke down on 14 September.
So, one fridge was smashed before it could be
delivered and with the second the correct package was
delivered containing the wrong item! Time clicks on and by the
time this next one arrives we will have been in Gran Canaria for two
weeks and made no progress.
On a more positive note we have been able, in the
meantme, to source a lot of other items on our 'Atlantic crossing' list
which are usually difficult to find.
|