Ian Shaw: It is Brigantia’s aim to make sure our members give customers a better service

Brigantia’s Iain Shaw discusses the findings of a recent PC repair survey by Which? magazine.

The September edition of Which? magazine saw its 2012 report on laptop repairs published and it is a wake-up call for everyone in the independent channel involved in this very important market sector.

In the report, the Which? expert introduced simple faults onto 24 laptops and took them into Carphone Warehouse, Comet, Currys, PC World and six independent Brigantia members.

Carphone Warehouse (Geek Squad) just came out best but none of the chains successfully repaired all the laptops. The six independent Brigantia members visited all attempted repairs and all charged, but only half were successful. That said, the Brigantia members were the only repairers visited that fixed all the laptops with reboot problems and failed only on the virus fix. Brigantia will be working through the new National Laptop Repair programme to make sure that members do better next year and will making certain that more members are deploying the best available virus fixes from Brigantia vendor alliance partners such as AVG and Microsoft.

My colleague Paul Ashley summed it up very well in the Which? article when he said that Brigantia was disappointed that three of our members apparently failed to fix the virus infected laptops and said that any member that repeatedly demonstrated incompetence would be asked to leave. This is why Brigantia has a Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Brigantia will be rolling out an educational program for Brigantia members signed up under the Brigantia National Laptop Repair scheme over the coming months through the new Brigantia portal, which features Brigantia TV as well as a new forum and blogging system.

Through the Brigantia National Laptop Repair scheme it is our aim to make sure that members give customers a better service with more consistent pricing and appropriate warnings about backing up data. Whether we ever achieve the accolade of Which? recommended is something to be striven for over the coming years. Anyone interested in learning more about Brigantia should visit the websites at www.brigantia.com or www.nationallaptoprepair.co.uk.

Next month I will be telling members about my recent trip to New York where I met with ASCII Group member Paul Clancy. ASCII Group is the United Stated equivalent of Brigantia and works closely with us with its members looking after Brigantia members customers Stateside and Brigantia reciprocating in the UK and Ireland.

PROFILE:
Iain Shaw is the founder and a director of Brigantia, the UK and Ireland’s largest subscription membership community of independent computer solution providers.
www.brigantia.com

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