Segen Closes It's Doors

[confounded]

We have an order bounced for the second day from Segen, it went to picking on Thursday and the will be still picking on over the weekend.

We can take one day slip and had a day in the office today when we should have been on an install but 2 days is going to cause real problems.

All I can say is I am glad we have turned away the work we have. We have probably turned away more customer (ones we have quoted previously and not new enquiries) than we are likely to do in the first qrt next year. Trying to be optimistic could well be the first half...

One customer we advised to go with someone if they could guarantee an install, they have Sanyo's booked in for the 4th Dec....

 

[powervan]

yeh yeh i had sanyo 235se10 booked in for MONDAY all payed up before 9 am delivery! scaffold up today!email tonite (cant supply kit) well thanks thats just cost me £500 in scaff!! got 2 kits (ment to be deliverd this week?) 2 next week? who knows til u open the box wot u got!! i wished i had pulled out of all work now!hassle and stress for WHAT employing a scaffolder to practice his scaffolding skills!

 

[Ramjam]

Sorry to be a skeptic but all they do is shift boxes, it's not rocket science, it's basic wholesaling which compared to established wholesalers they do terribly. If they have 3 times as many orders as normal then there are 24 hours in a day and 8 hours in a shift so surely everything should still leave on time.

The moment this happened it was clear that the wholesalers would need to pull 3 times the stock through so why so long before they sorted it out? We had planning all day of the announcement, increased hours, introduced a bonus scheme, bought a new van, ordered more tools and hired extra temporary staff. Through the week we finalised plans, trained the new staff, wrote to all of the customers and devised office systems to do with ordering, deliveries, paperwork and scheduling of work according to available stock.

Of all of the wholsalers, segen have the most IT, allocation of stock against future deliveries etc. We ordered 43 inverters from Segen through Ewan at Swithenbanks and they haven't come despite being allocated and paid for. We get the odd pallet of panels but generally Segen have been rubbish. We're getting panels and inverters through Alternergy at a more steady rate and all of the meters, isolators and cables have come through CEF who have done a brilliant job and been a pleasure to deal with.

When Segen finally sell out to a real electrical wholesaler then things will get much better, they might even then drop the 08 telephone number and employ enough staff to manage customer accounts properly, they might even take orders over the phone for those of us who don't have internet access from the roof.

Not impressed with Segen, could do much better !!!!

 

[Noshocks]

I hope to be all clear by the end of next week, I cancelled all decembers installs at the outset and ordered all kit the day before announcment for seven November jobs, just waiting for eight Sanyo 235's for now my own house which are being delivered on the 25th, last job, just hope they turn up.

 

[Graeme Harrold]

From my point of view, Segen are doing OK. My kit is being sent out when ready, and Ive just had 2 dispatch notices in the past 10 minutes.........

 

[powervan]

ps my sanyo kit wasnt with segen!

 

[SRE]

Ramjam if the increase had just been threefold then I'd agree with you but Segen took a whole month's orders in one day on the Friday that EST leaked the document and they had already moved to 24 hour working shifts about a month prior to that because of the volume they were working with. I'm not sure how anyone could have dealt with a 20 fold increase (not 3 fold increase) when they are already working at capacity.

Altenergy are a complete joke, I've paid upfront for 3 loads of panels for each of them failed deliveries and at least 5 days for a refund to come back to me. That was months before any of this kicked off. I'm waiting for roof kit from them that was ordered a week before the cuts were announced - they are a complete and utter shambles and I know others on the Forum have had the same service.

With Segen's IT I've been able to keep track of what's happening and I'm amazed given the volume of orders they have taken, that the worst their system has done is gone slow.

 

[Ramjam]

The ladies in the office here are working hard every day with a variety of suppliers to juggle all of our jobs against the available stock and to keep our teams busy and the cash flowing. I have been told that my simplistic views are not correct and that it requires tact to secure supplies for which I'm grateful that they have as I certainly don't.

I know this for certain.....it all comes down to the quality of the relationship that you have with a supplier, we have some very good suppliers who are working very hard to secure the products that we require and I'm very grateful for that.

Cashflow has never been more critical, Sage tells me how much of my cashflow has been swallowed in VAT which we'll get back around the 12th December. We're paying upfront for vast amounts of kit, some from Germany with a 7-10 day lead time. Our customers have been superstars, paying on-time and some even early which makes a world of difference. We wrote to all of our customers and asked them to make any transfers that they need to to get the cash into a main high street bank that participates in faster payments so that on the day of commissioning the money can be received and spent again.

Despite our frustrations I suspect that when this is all over we will be able to see that pretty much everyone has made an epic effort to serve their customers following this government induced panic. My apologies to Segen if I've got them wrong!