Cliff expostulated:

| On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:39 -0500, "Morris Dovey"
| wrote:
|
|| Maytag
|
| My impression of themis one of overpriced stuff that's
| no better than anyone else's.

Their top end (like their competitors' top end) products /are/ highly
priced. In at least Maytag's case the top end products are, in fact,
as good as they can make 'em. The R&D guys actually talk to the
production assemblers, pay attention to what they say, and make
product changes on the basis of their suggestions. More usually
(elsewhere) an assembly person has to tell a foreman who might or
might not tell a supervisor - and so on up the ladder until there's an
information "bridge" back down the chain to the R&D guys.

The Maytag link to the customer call center is disconcertingly direct.
When I first arrived I had a "recycled" R&D phone number and got calls
from CS call center operators demanding that problems be fixed *RIGHT
NOW!* That I wasn't the person they thought they were calling didn't
seem to make any difference - nor did the fact that I wasn't even a
Maytag employee. One gal told me that didn't matter and that I'd
better get up off my butt and *FIND OUT* who should be fixing this
problem and make 'em aware of it and have them get back to her
posthaste.

Maytag could never get away with showing a commercial of that scene
(can't admit right out loud in front of God and everybody that
someone's had a problem with /our/ product!); but after I came out of
shock I decided it was actually pretty impressive. Again, it's
noteworthy that in all of these "hot" calls the communication was
between "indians".

Convinced me that Maytag's problems are top-down rather than
bottom-up.

I'm not in a position to comment on "overpriced" - but I think that
when someone buys a washing machine (or whatever), not all of what's
being purchased arrives on the delivery truck.

Hmm. Reminds me of some current threads about CNC equipment and
perceived value (or lack thereof) of customer support organizations.

| Perhaps unerelated ... Sears seems to like to
| sell models that they (Sears) are the sole supplier
| of spare parts for .... so take a standard model,
| rebadge it & alter a few key failure prone or
| consumable items ...

That would match up pretty well with some of the (very biased)
comments I heard voiced around Newton. :-)

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html