All Service Centre articles – Page 8
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News
Service Centre with Jac Roper
== Communications R not us ==Even though most of the old public service institutions now have competition, it would seem that the old take-it-or-leave-it attitude is still harboured in some sectors. Denis Lawrence and fellow director Elaine Zamroz, rang with the story of their saga with BT. They run Lawzam ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
== Just following orders ==The trouble with red tape is that those adminstering it are just following orders. And the trouble with the orders is that they always seem open to interpretation because they are written in government-speak. Furthermore there are more than 400 local authorities doing the interpreting.I was ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
== Long may they serve ==This helpline gets a lot of calls about staff - pulling sickies, pinching stock and generally swinging the lead. So it was a welcome change to get an email from Glenn Norris, general sales manager for forecourt consumables supplier RS Sales & Distribution,praising staff.The company ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
== Water, water everywhere ==In the last issue I reported that a retailer who had applied for supplies from Shell was told that the oil company would not be willing to supply a site that happened to be located in what is deemed ’zone one’ of an environmental source protection ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - Ground zero, where you don’t want to be
This story has worrying implications, possibly, for quite a few retailers. So do you know what ’zone’ your forecourt is in, water-wise?This quandary came to light when Keith Terry, who used to work for Jet, decided to come out of retirement and set up a new business partnership and buy ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - Tony Barlow beats the Saxon invasion
Last April I put my money on Tony Barlow, who runs The Mount Service Station in Shrewsbury, to win his battle with Saxon Paper and I’m pleased to say I won the bet (although as it was a bet with myself, I’ll now have to pay up). Tony though, will ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - Supply and demand
Even in a less-than-perfect world, retailers and suppliers are meant to be on the same side. But when things go badly wrong, how can you salvage what’s left?Ajay Gokani, who runs Empire Garages in Enfield, Middlesex bought a security system from Peter Forde at CCTV-Systems Specialists last November."It was recommended ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - Give us a break
Neil McCarthy, who runs MPM Services in Suffolk, rang to ask if he had heard right. Was holiday entitlement for workers going up from 20 days a year to 28? And is it a done deal?Well, he’s almost right. It is actually going up by four days this year (on ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - When petrol dries up
In the past few days I’ve spoken to two people engaged in retailing with businesses which had each clocked up 40 years as petrol forecourts.One, a youngish chap, had recently pulled out of petrol retailing completely to concentrate on convenience, investing a bomb, joining a symbol group and turning his ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper - No whitewash here
Jonathan James spent £100K in January on four jet washes and two plastic tunnels supplied by WashTec.He spent the money in the first place because a hand-wash place was thriving around the corner and he needed to bring his own offering up to speed.He had previously had six machines ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
== The old and the young ==Age discrimination of course works at both ends of the scale. Terry Paget, who runs Oasis Service Station in Broughton, North Devon, wondered how he should now word his ads for new staff. He wasn’t worried about old staff, but the young ones. Over ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
Why should you have to chase your supplier for commission owed? It can’t be because they are strapped for cash. Surely not in the case of ATM provider TRM, a global corporation able to afford Pricewaterhouse Coopers as accountants.Why then did Adrian Bowen have to lobby the company for 11 ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
The latest from Nisa-Today’s and Costcutter is that, following board meetings on August 10, all directors unanimously agreed, subject to due diligence, to proposals to combine the two organisations, thus creating a new company.You will know, if you have been anywhere near either of these convenience symbol groups, that there ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
Roger Westrope rang after he read our last issue. Roger, who runs North Street Garage at Haverhill in Suffolk, rightly guessed that the anonymous computer company that had caused an anonymous retailer such grief was YP Electronics. However, things are getting better, he promises."We are a guinea pig site," says ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
Some of you - those sterling few who never procrastinate and applied for their ’grandfather’ licensing rights early to beat the rush are now finding they are being billed for their renewal fees early too. Councils are making up their own policy on this one because central government didn’t spell ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
Last June I reported about the case between Sheffield Racial Equality Council (REC), acting on behalf of a black Caribbean customer and Ayub Karmada, who runs Beeston Service Station in Nottingham.Ayub first heard from Race Relations in January 2005 after a member of his staff had asked a customer to ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
How many people are so absent-minded that they ’forget’ to pay for their petrol? In at least 99 out of 100 cases they are just plain stealing if they drive off your premises without at least a discussion about ’forgotten cards’. It’s a very sore point with a man called ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
SAXON INVASIONThis is a story that I hope every one of you will show your staff. Tony Barlow, who runs The Mount Service Station, in Shrewsbury, writes: "I went to the garage one evening and noticed a big box of till rolls from a firm I had never dealt with ...
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Service Centre with Jac Roper
PENALTY CULTUREWhy follow fair practice when you can let things ride for a bit and then chase up your victims demanding penalties? And the two prime examples springing to mind at the moment are not some backstreet shysters, but government - both local and central.Steve Dyer, who runs Thornfalcon Garage ...
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Service Centre: Contract? It’s in the post
CONTRACT? IT’S IN THE POST How many retailers, I wonder, have never received a copy of their British Gas contract? Ash Patel, who runs a couple of sites in Sheffield, rang late last year after he had received a bill showing that his tariff had gone up by nearly 50%. ...