And it's getting worse. The PTB here are trying to impose some monstrous reporting, disclosure and record-keeping requirements on one of my clients (and the rest of their industry). My best guess so far as to the costs involved are a £50000 upfront cost and ongoing annual costs of £70000 just to generate a pile of unnecessary paperwork that will be filed straight in the bin by the supposedly interested parties. Those figures are for a business employing 25 people - I hate to think of the costs will look like for the larger players in the marketplace. At the end of the day everything will be passed on to the consumer who will have no option other than to suffer in silence. The most insane (and only a minor) part of it is that full disclosure of all revenue generated by a client must be fully disclosed to said client - Richard, would you care to modify your invoices so your customers can see what your markup is on the parts you sell?
It means the cost will be passed onto the suppliers (by driving down margins), who will become uncompetetive, go bust and the work exported to some other country that doesn't have them. But try explaining that to a beancounter, who thinks customers will just pay! I'm not into trade barriers etc, but I do think that if a country doesn't have rigidy enforced overheads like carbon tax, Health & Safety, and, in the case of a factory making camshafts in India, toilets (they use the field next door), then a tax should be imposed representing the difference so that the playing field is levelled (they would still be cheaper, due to labour costs etc, but at least home-grown businesses would have half a chance and be encouraged to invest in modern machinery or whatever to compete).
Well, if I had to, I'd do just what everyone else would do and creatively add every concievable cost to the purchase price! So the scheme, if it had any point in the first place, would be instantly meaningless (unless you had to break-down cost of sales for each part right down to fuel costs etc, and add special offers, early settlement discounts from suppliers, seasonal costs etc etc. Each part would have an A4 invoice all of it's own, and have to be calculated for each and every sale!) Again, try explaining that to the beancounters and other fools who live in their fluffy dream worlds[1].
As it happens, you'd be amazed at how much I don't make on stuff anyway - I'd be in 7th heaven if I could mark-up to even half of what the supermarkets do. (Not just me, the whole spares industry, particularly for Land Rovers in the UK which is particularly competetive market). The mark-up on some Genuine Parts is 5%.
Richard
[1] These are the idiot's like the bloke (a School Govenor), who was banging on on Radio 2 about the fitting of seat belts to buses used for school trips, and saying that he would never allow the school to use companies who had older busses with wooden floors. In the next breath he complained about the rising cost of hiring busses for school trips.....
...but then there is no dis-incentive to the PTB here to not impose all manner of ludicrous regulations. We are all about to be clobbered by the new waste disposal regulations BIG TIME, and no-one saw it coming, or it was all a Good Thing for the Environment.
There are 2 ways to completely bollox your business
1) appoint a ISO9000 BS5750 manager- instant jobsworth finding nitpicking pointless stuff to justify a ridiculous salary.
2) bring in a consultant - see above. Been there done that did my own department, on my own sacrificed virgin, told #2 I was totally happy with all my procedures and he would be better served 'ducking off' before I let the drivers play with him. Ignored #1 told director he obviously knew sod all about transport and should get back in his play pen .Sorted no the bother.
I did - that's why I got out of s/h parts. Concrete bunds and sumps/ filters for everything. even when in storage after cleaning. At Rists, every single manhole cover had to be identified as to whether they were foul or stormwater drains (on a 60 acre site), and the company was fined several thousand pounds because someone knocked their coffee over and it went down a storm drain and made it to the local trickle (stream). Production is now in Poland and Cz, where you can throw coffee (and empty vodka bottles) around with gay abandon. My old man ran a largish site in Weymouth, and waste disposal became a huge expense. You'd think that Scroggins Waste could be called in and they would be responsible for dealing safely with said waste upoin reciept of suitable amounts of dosh. Not a bit of it. You are resonsible for auditing the waste firm, and if they screw up it is your fault and you will be fined! All the local farmers have now been issued with their "burning notices". You cannot burn waste at all - even if it is carbon-neutral (so it's just a tax then, nothing to do with the environment). They can, however, burn hedge trimmings, but if they light the fire with yesterdays newspaper that is a *crimminal* offence! The really annoying bit is I'll bet the Police will attend (coz the local council leader plays golf with the Chief Constable rather than working) while being too busy to attend a burglary. Oh, and the the local councils total waste of natural resources (the so called "news" letter, delivered to every house, by law) says that on July 1st, every pub will be vistied to check no smoking is going on. But they can't find anyone to montior anti-social behaviour or clear rubbish from back- alleys. The fluffy kitten kissers strike again... The list of stupidity just goes on and on, and while the index-linked final salary pension morons get to push ever more meaningless bits of paper around in circles others are paying with their jobs, houses, families, and sometimes lives.
On or around Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:44:35 +0000, beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:
fecking moron. and how, exactly, does he know what the floor's made of?
Besides, the regulations for retro-fitting seat belts to older vehicles allow fitment to wooden floor vehicles, provided the mounting points are suitably reinforced. I think they're also required to pass an inspection once fitted. Certainly true of minibuses.
I can think of some "professions" that should be forced to itemise their charges more fully. Solicitors, accountants and most consultants for starters. I have a simple approach that says if they can't be arsed to openly and honestly explain how they calculated their extortionate fees I can't be bothered to write a cheque to pay them!
ISTR that solicitors have a charging category called something like "care and attention" [1]. It basically means thinking about your case rather than writing letters etc, which would be fine (after all, they need to think at some point), but it means they can charge you for time they spend in the car "thinking about your case", sitting on the bog "thinking about your case", shaving "thinking about your case", and so on.
You'd have to have some nerve to ask for a breakdown of where exactly the
500 hours @ £100/hour were spent, and did he wipe properly afterwards?
[1] Someone will be along with the correct phrase in a moment, I am sure.
On or around Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:37:45 -0000, "Rich B" enlightened us thusly:
I've heard it expressed that you're not so much paying for the time as for the expert knowlegde. Which is fair up to a point, provided they do indeed supply expert, and accurate, knowledge.
"Austin Shackles" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
or more regularly telling secretary to do the work - from a form letter.
Derek
statistically an infinate number of monkeys with typewriters have more chance of writing laws correctly than a finite number of politicians, plus they work for peanuts thats why we are in this mess. VOTE MONKEY
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