Topps charging for TAF's - TilersForums.com

[theyomper]

Well talking to the manager of my local Topps Tiles today he told me that following a meeting at head office the following would be introduced.

Their summary was that if other companies charge for services and deliveries then they should also charge.

To that effect as from the 25th July, Topps will now charge the customer £19.99, for them to arrange a TAF to call and quantify the job.

This poses a few questions and concerns for all of us involved in the TAF scheme.

1. Do you think the customer would be put off by the charge?
2. Would it lose you work in an already difficult market?
3. Would you, as a TAF, invoice Topps for your time and fuel for making the arrangements?
4. What other concerns would you have?

Your thoughts please

 

[doug boardley]

I'm not a TAF Yomps, but it seems a case of squeezing as much money out of a customer as possible by Topps. I personally think it's a bad bit of business on their behalf and that the TAF's will suffer for it

 

[CJ]

£19.99 For Topps to ask one of their fitters to arrange to go around and look at a job.........don't think many will bother myself. I'm gonna have a word with my local :incazzato::incazzato:

 

[CJ CERAMICS]

not a TAF myself but with the way things are i cant see many people paying just to have someone come and tell them how much they are going to charge to install the tiles.......seems like bad business sense but it will be the fitters who lose out.

 

[chris.tiling]

Heard about it today as well. Am a TAF but have had only 6 or 7 jobs in the past 9 months, so dont think I will lose TAF jobs from it. Think they are trying to squeeze more money from the customer when they make a packet on a TAF job anyway. All in all it seems to be a very bad idea. Punters wont pay if they have any sense - agree with previous comments that we will lose out.

Would like to then invoice them for my time / mileage, but know I will be told where to go so wont bother

Do you get many TAF jobs Yomps?

 

[kilty55]

a ludicrous idea,hopefully topps will suffer in sales from this and revert to the original setup so the taf out there dont lose much work.

 

[lcjohno]

i'm not a TAF but it seems a very bad idea. You need to think if you were the cutomer, i know i wouldn't pay anyone just for a quote. Very bad idea IMO!

 

[nickj]

i'm not a TAF but it seems a very bad idea. You need to think if you were the cutomer, i know i wouldn't pay anyone just for a quote. Very bad idea IMO!

I agree, there's too many people who will give them a quote for free so why would you pay for it?

 

[brian c]

not a good idea,dont think many people will go for it,its just like me charging for a quotation which people would just laugh at.

 

[Matt]

What if the customer decided not to go with that particualr fitter? Would the customer have to pay Topps another £19.99 to arrange a different fitter?

 

[brian c]

What if the customer decided not to go with that particualr fitter? Would the customer have to pay Topps another £19.99 to arrange a different fitter?

probably knowing them.Do you think it would work at TG?

 

[Sean Kelly]

1. Do you think the customer would be put off by the charge?
2. Would it lose you work in an already difficult market?
3. Would you, as a TAF, invoice Topps for your time and fuel for making the arrangements?
4. What other concerns would you have?

1. I think that the majority of customers would definitely be put off by the £19.99 charge. However, there are a percentage of customers that will probably think that this is a ‘special’ service from Topps and that maybe they will be treated differently from non paying customers. Maybe the charge will be deducted from their final bill if they went ahead with the job?
2. Being a TAF does have benefits. Not only does my business card go to a TAFS customer, but it also gets handed out to nearly every customer that wants a quote from a tiler. So the answer (in my case) is no.
3. I would not invoice Topps for getting me a TAFFS lead. 90% of my quote leads come from Topps.
4. As long as my business card gets handed out I do not have any concerns with Topps decision to go down this route. I do not know the stats on how many TAFS jobs there are each week for Topps as a whole, but I do know that the Managers do get grilled every week about the low number of TAFS jobs. I have to smile at the customers receipt....the materials are listed out (at full retail price). Then there is a line saying something like ‘Topps Approved Fitting Service £0.00’.
Cheers
Sean

 

[Matt]

probably knowing them.Do you think it would work at TG?

Nope. I guarantee it wouldn't work at TG. Why would a customer pay £19.99 when they can quite easily get recommendations for free. I suppose the 1 year guarantee may make some pay the £19.99

 

[theyomper]

Some good points raised thanks to all. I will speak to my local manager about some of them.............maybe he can give feed back to his bosses.

One thing I have noticed is that when I buy goods for my own customers they always put it through the TAF scheme, I suppose to make up the numbers.

 

[LM Ceramics]

i stopped using topps when the taf scheme was introduced plus i wasnt so keen on my local store my cards rarely got dished out i think the taf scheme is a waste of time and is there just to rip customers off and as for introducing a charge for an estimate people will be daft if they are to pay it. as you can tell im not the biggest fan of topps unfortunatley the tafs will suffer because of this