Price of refrigerant brings out the Snakes!

Interesting day yesterday as a large customer of mine cancelled their order for refrigerant from us and then proceeded to tell us they had purchased R404a themselves at £28/kg!

This price is cheaper than we can purchase the refrigerant from our wholesalers, then add the unseen costs to us that we all have to abide too to be able to sell and use refrigerants.
Training, certification for engineers, certification for company and tooling. Yet we will get cut out of legitimate supply loop by some unscrupulous 'dealer'.

The audacity of our client is to then ask us to use the refrigerant for their service requirements! :mad:

The knock on affect of these ridiculous refrigerant prices is rearing its ugly head and now clients going shopping for the cheapest prices. I can only assume that these low refrigerant prices are driving a grey import market.

I would insist on an audit trail for that refrigerant prior to using it as you could be involved in illegal trade if you touch it.

Legally they should not be able to purchase without being registered, i would refuse to use the gas as it was obtained illegally.

Was only a matter of time before this started to happen , the price increases are nothing but profiteering and price gouging , the idea of these laws were an orderly winding down of high gwp gases but as usual those who can abuse this for profit have done so and caused a right mess. By the way looking at the website of one of these wholesalers offering cheap gas to anyone it seems there are several walkarounds on the regulations / disclaimer forms etc.

Excuse me for dredging up an old thread similar to the one I posted in earlier, but;

Have the supermarkets not tried this already? Aren't they doing a Woolies / Coles & buying their own fridge companies?
We had this sort of thing happening a few years ago with the Carbon tax, until the next government threw that out. At least it meant anyone that couldn't stockpile refrigerant was suddenly keen to fix any leaks! ;)

I've no intention of coming back, however I am curious to know how the industry is going there?

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Asda all but own City FM. Now having a prescience in your neck of the woods.
Tesco's tend to use 2 or 3 big companies for fridge and have all other work in house.
Morrisons, similar to Tesco's.
Aldi and Lidl tend to use similar 2 or 3 regionally big companies.

So most big supermarket chain still keep putting up contracts for tender every 2 or 3
years, the only consistent one is Asda with City FM.

They tend to be fully inclusive / fully costed contracts with super dooper clauses in
them to penalise the contractor if they miss KPI targets but costs like parts and refrigerants
get absorbed in the whole contract so 6 months into a new contract the contractor
is losing money because they went in too low and the only savings that can be made
come at the expense of quality and staff.

Then they loose the contract to the next biggest company who loose money after
the first six months. Contracts go around and around and the equipment becomes
increasingly more overworked and obsolete until they supermarket refit it with
a new designed store and equipment.

The cycle then starts all over again in a never ending spiral of neglect and poor maintenance.

Would I work in the supermarket business again.............................
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Make your own mind up :D
Rob

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Yes it's scary,but I have no issue with customers buying the gas as long as it's above board,but and a big but my labour rate changes dramatically walking away is something I can do quite easy, as my old boss said years ago they want to watch the match let them buy a program seriously it's time for for a rethink everything is accessable over the net so go with it,but certain we hold the upper hand and we can still profit by it go with flow? supermarkets are not my clients I am theirs so I can shift if they punish my industry then it's quite simple no more of my money goes to them,alas we all buy by price so it's time to adapt.