PDA

View Full Version : Refrigerant Sales to non certified customers



hookster
23-08-2012, 04:47 PM
:rolleyes: F-Gas Laws!!!
I have had a customer contact me to say thank you for the quotation but they have purchased the refrigerant themselves from an online supplier. This is all in the UK both customer and supplier.

Now as a professional company we beat the F-gas drum! Get certified technicians to retain our certification and pay for licensing fees. Plus leak check, follow up record losses to comply with the standards to minimise leakage rates etc.

Yet there are businesses who can operate at a total disregard for any statutory regulations. Without naming and shaming on here but the Merseyside company puts our industry back into the fly by night, cowboy tarnishing.

Capitalism needs to be embraced and nobody beholds someone trying to earn a honest living but I rate this alongside stealing lead off church roofs and just because you sold it to a recycling yard you cant actually be calling it "recycling"!

The cost of the service we provide includes for all legislation, training, equipment, process etc and then the profit margin (Nobody works for Free!) Yes as a customer you want to pay the lowest possible prices but when you look at the life cycle cost what are you actually paying?

F-gas legislation is poorly managed and inforced and the only real way we can achieve real high quality standards in our industry, is if we self police the industry and refrigerant manufacturers raise their trading standards and who they will deal with.

The control of refrigerants is not just about the technician at the end of the hose!

Tesla
24-08-2012, 12:57 AM
Hi hookster
Good point raised here. Many of us are sick of getting ripped off by retailers. What has happened in the past five years is many of us are choosing to shop online. It is so much cheaper when we don't have to pay for a portion of shop rent. Personally I think retail will be dead in ten years.
Refrigerant should be restricted though - it is in Ausie, you need a license to trade refrigerant as a supplier. A way around it is to buy online from overseas, I can buy upto AUD$950 online from overseas and not pay any tax. The other option is to support the duopoly of supermarket type stores. One way to cover this loss of revenue is to raise our labour prices.