New advisor payments !!

[JoY]

kwikfitfitter said:

I think the answer to that one Joy is not to phone but to email all communications and "request a read reciept" then you have proof in writing

Don't worry...... I learnt that lesson the hard way!

I also always email my FSM rather than phoning...and he has made the comment that sometimes it's quicker to ring!

[rossk]

Hi everyone,

Yes Joy I have been online today as I'm interested in the reaction to todays mailer.

I can see there is some concern over the damage to customers property issue. I can assure you that there is no change in your insurance cover, but there is an excess on the policy that Hillarys has historically paid. Going forward we expect the advisor to make a contribution to the payment to this excess when it is due to the advisor not taking care.

Clearly we need further clarify our intention. This will be actioned next week.

If anyone has any concerns that they would like to discuss with me then please give me a call. My number is 07770 646894. My phone is on now and will be until 6.30 tonight.

Regards.

Ross Kenney
Regional Sales manager

[russell]

i was hoping for more positive comments re the mailer and understand some concerns
but if we take a negative stance against these changes how can we expect to move forward £20 for a mismeasure tough measure it right next time and dont walk in in muddy shoes or stand on a sink common sense 'i to have once drilled through a poly roof panel only once that was enough i discounted £59 the cost of a panel customer was happy

has anyone piped up and said great a easy to read payment structure for dors AS WE ASKED or has anyone said good there looking at commision in the future

let me ask you in the 40 years trading can any of you tell me when a two way dialog happened before can anyone tell me when payments were last looked into

as for free paper im £68 pounds out of pocket brought 4 boxes so im not happy there

[pyramid]

What chance now for 3 for 99. What a choice - either less than £15 commission or risk a fine of £20. They are dead in the water.

[RED]

pyramid said:

What chance now for 3 for 99. What a choice - either less than £15 commission or risk a fine of £20. They are dead in the water.

And what if, god forbid you do 3 of them, not unknown for these types of unscrupulous customers to say thats not what i asked for, you might as well of bought them for the customer in the first place.
The thing is, after reading the letter, I am not sure whether this is a step in the right direction in some things. Obviously some tuning and clarification will be required on things like the above where one miss measure outweighs the commission in the first place. If an order is under a certain amount for instance, agents will weigh up the commission against a possible miss measure. Therefore I see a problem for Hillary's especially for under 200 pound orders and with fairly newish advisor's that make errors, and lets face it we all do, but if you are only doing it for say 3 months and make 10 miss measures that is 200 pounds. Although I do understand that we as advisor's should accept some of the losses I feel we have been opened up to abuse.
How many times have you rang in a problem and it has been changed to Agents error when it was not and now that we dont even have a paper copy to prove otherwise it is more difficult to prove.
I do feel though that problems await both on the miss measure fines and the insurance issue.
Whoever came up with all of this would make a great Chancellor of the exchequer. Give with one hand and take back with the other. Move over Gordon Brown there is a new kid in town.

I myself, reserve full judgment on this as I have not taken it all in yet, but do realise that some positive moves have been made.



Red

[phugly]

I have been working all day and am surprised at the number of postings since this letter arrived on our doorsteps. It seems to me that some people want the icing and the bun with more icing on top. Cant anyone see that this is a positive move on the part of the Company to address issues that we have raised. Granted, some of it could have been worded better and compromise is better than dictatorship. Ross has already been on to clarify the insurance question and apart from that I think the rest is in line with what we requested

[bentleys]

I have just received the communication from John Risman and seen peoples' comments.

When I joined Hillarys I was keen to reassure myself that the Public Liability insurance was in place through Hillarys which to some extent softened the 15 per cent commission - I knew that I would not have to pick up the cost of PL insurance.

My big concern today is that from 8 May I am effectively taking on unlimited liability in respect of going in to and working in peoples's homes - although Hillary's will initially pay if there is a customer claim, there is potentially full claw back through the commission payment system. Although I have had a few minor cases of accidental damage to customer's property - there is potential risk there for every fitting. I am particularly worried about conservatories because the potential liability could be enormous and wipe out much of my income or more if a customer claimed against me.

I don't see that going out there without insurance is a viable option and I am investigating PL insurance but I fear the cost will be prohibitive in relation to my current Hillary's income (both in terms of premiums and in any excess payable).

I think that for me to be given less than one week's notice of such an important change to my contract is unreasonable and I have not yet decided how to proceed - but I do know that entering customer's properties from 8 May to sell or fit is not possible without some sort of cover.

Has anyone spoken to their FSM about this?

[hereticus]

Bentleys.....seen your comments but guess that you have not read all of today's postings. Suggest you read my message posted at 3.04pm and Ross Kenneys message posted at 5.34pm.

The public liability issue is a red herring, a non-issue, and will be clarified this week

[owl]

pyramid said:

What chance now for 3 for 99. What a choice - either less than £15 commission or risk a fine of £20. They are dead in the water.

YOU ARE BANG ON MATE.

[tojaws]

Re: £20.00 fine for mis-measures

Once again it looks as if Hillarys have not thought things through to a conclusion with the £20.00 fine.
Two scenarios jump out immediately as your dammed if you do and your dammed if you don’t.

If an agent does nothing he will incur a £20.00 fine when another agent sorts out the mis-measure

If an agent supplies a new blind to the correct measurement he is fined £20.00 PLUS the petrol (at £1.00 per litre) for the journey PLUS the time to re-visit the customer to refit the new blind.

One also wonders how many agents will travel TWICE to a distant area (once to measure and then again to fit) all for £10.00 per journey.

Also how many agents will stop taking orders below £140.00 – which gives the £20.00 commission?

[BLAZER]

Getting paid for doing service calls and multiple dors are definitely a step in the right direction. Getting payed for doing extra work is fair and reasonable. However.......

If this new payment package was totally fair and reasonable then hillarys can't expect us to rectify their first mistake free of charge but then fine us for our first mistake! Also increasing the fine payable to £20 can wipe out the commission significantly on some orders. I've thankfully had few advisor dor's, however everyone makes mistakes. Do we really want to risk running around trying to do 1 hour slots in 45 minuets (filling all the extra 3 for 99 leads that head office have generated) and then finding out its all been for nothing? Where's fair in that?

The bombshell about repairs to customer property is a farce. The fact is hillary's would not be able to operate without blanket indemnity insurance for it's advisor's. So don't worry about being covered because you are. No this is about penny pinching. They want the potential to claim back costs. If the damage is your fault then hillarys may sue you. Where do you draw the line? Scratches? misplaced drill holes? broken objects? plaster repairs? spilled coffee? the list is endless. Where's the clarity hillarys? Who is the judge and jury? You are. This has been totally ill thought out and in practice is simply not workable. What they need to do urgently is retract from this immediately and let common sense prevail.

[bentleys]

Heraticus,
Spoke with Ross Kenney just now and understand that PL is not being withdrawn - however I do need urgent clarification on the proposed system of an adviser potentially being liable for part or all of the excess in the event of a claim. As I said to him I will need to assess the impact of more potential cost on my business and whether my business can stand that cost.

[hereticus]

One of the issues raised today, following the new payment structure announcements, is the increased charges for mismeasures / advisor errors, and Red in particular has raised some interesting points.

This is one of the aspects in which I see that some fine tuning may need to follow so would like to offer my own observations.

I do not have a problem with making bad advisors take more care and if hitting them in the pocket is the way to achieve it then that's fine by me. The problem to my mind is that policy on agent errors is black or white, it is a zero tolerance policy with no differentiation. Surely the point is improve overall performance by reducing agent errors and to penalise advisors who are consistently careless in their approach, not the occasional human error by an otherwise conscientious advisor.

Some statistics shown at the last round of team meetings showed DOR's at around 6% and agent errors at around 1.5% (I can't recall the excat figures but by all means correct me if I am wrong). I fit around 2000 blinds per annum and make errors on perhaps four or five, not 25/30 as would be indicated by the average, so this must be a case of 80% of the errors being made by 20% of the advisors. Fine - make them improve or make them cover the cost of their mistakes ! But I would go further and make them pay more according to their level of ineptitude, rather than penalising everybody to the same extent.

My suggestions towards any review or fine tuning of this policy would be :

- a moratorium for new advisors during an agreed probationary period. We all make mistakes when getting to grips with something new.

- mismeasure fine not to exceed the value of commission on the relevant order.

- system lock-in to ensure that nothing can be coded as a mismeasure without the FSM authorisation code, and FSM has to discuss with advisor before issuing the code. This is meant to be the current system but the service centre have ways around it - we have all seen DOR invoices incorrectly coded as agent error when it wasn't, and when no FSM code has been allocated.

- how about a sliding scale of charges. If the objective is to reduce the number of agent errors, and the current average is around 1.5%, then why not charge for mismeasures in proportion to number of blinds sold and fitted. If, for example, my percentage is less than 0.5% then surely I can be forgiven the odd human error. If I get 1% wrong then quite right that I should contribute to the cost. If I get 2% wrong then I am worse than average and should be penalised accordingly, and if I get 5% wrong then I am the the idiot who is dragging the rest of us down.

- alternatively, if a sliding scale is too radical a concept or too difficult to implement, then why not make recompense as one aspect of a sales incentive scheme so that, for example, we might all get charged the same amount for each error but, at the end of each quarter, the number of errors is checked as a percentage of the number of blinds fitted and better than average performance is rewarded in some way.

Just a few thoughts, trying to be constructive ! Any other suggestions on how to achieve the objective without punishing the innocent ?

[farmer]

jayandemm said:

I have just put forward the suggestion to HILLARYS, that they continue to pay the public liability insurance for all the advisors as they do now..... but that the cost of it is shared between all the 800 plus advisors. This has got to be cheaper than us all taking out our own insurance.


ADVICE to ALL

DO NOT ENTER ANYONE'S HOUSE EITHER TO SELL OR FIT WITHOUT BEING INSURED.

THIS INSURANCE ISSUE MUST BE SORTED OUT NOW.


Imagine all the scenarios where you could get stung for hundreds or thousands of pounds. From knocking a priceless antique off the window sill, to drilling a hole in the wrong place.[/quote


Here here.

ROSS GET BACK TO ME ON THIS BEFORE I START FITTING ON TUESDAY MORNING.... I want to know exactly where i stand.

You know as well as i do that people try it on to shaft you. What do we have to do now, take before and after photos to cover our backs......

Only this week got customer where we have fitted a £54 vertical, accussing my fitter of chipping her sink.... Where would i stand on this issue..

i might as well take all responsibilty for everything ON MY OWN 14.68% comission ever increasing costs, come on, I know there are no guarantees, but its all one way bloody traffic here.

Take Joys advice everyone, dont go in another house until you know where you stand.

LOUISA get back to me, we have a 4 grand conservatory pending here. I am not touching it until I know EXACTLY where i stand.

I was trying to be positive last night, but as usual back to square one.

[farmer]

hereticus said:

Bear asks "tell me how it addresses the Stolen Commission lark!??"

Bear...it doesn't, but I don't think it was intended to.

We sought greater clarity of the payment structure, plus recompense for multiple DOR visits and Service Calls, plus an end to clawbacks, and it seems that to some degree we have been successful.

There is a trade off in that mismeasure / agent error penalties will be increased but it doesn't take a maths genius to realise that this whole new structure will result in a nett cost to Hillarys and is therefore an investment in advisor satisfaction.

What this document does is to clarify our rewards and penalties structure going forward into the future. It does not address any outstanding problems relating to previous practice. I acknowledge that those problems are still hanging out there and need to be addressed but I don't think they were ever intended to be part of this pay structure review.

Lets see this communication for what it is, and other unrelated issues as something seperate - important, yes - urgent, possibly - deeply resented, definitely - but nevertheless still seperate issues.

ok hereticus, now explain the public liabilty issue