We tend to do these contracts on occasion to support some of our national commercial customers – however – we ALWAYS ensure that there is a local aftersales service support in place, and we only supply well known brands.
Why?
Because, in answer to the blog post title – primarily you need local when things go wrong.
Recently, we had a call from a customer booked on a ferry to France on the Monday – in this case, as with any diligent caravan owner, they had gone to check their towing electrics and found an issue on the Friday.
The original supplier / installer could not help until the following Wednesday as they were based in the East of England and had no ‘plan B’ – thankfully we could step in and sort the issue on the Friday as we were local.
I think it’s important to stress that competition in the market place is vital, and we welcome a challenge. Of course, no-one fits products with a view to them going wrong – but on occasions inevitably this situation does occur. We would strongly advise customers to ask installation companies who are only in one part of the country for a short period of time on contract work – how they support their product in the future with regards to aftermarket care and service? What is the turnaround on that support?