To Blakaeg
"Vintagerepairer,
I'm not sure what your point is. Of course it costs Dyson money to run the business, it costs EVERY single business money to run operations! I was pointing out that Dyson provide excellent customer service, nothing more, nothing less"
My point was -speaking only in the business sense and in terms also of profit measured in pounds, shillings, and pence- was that one sees on the internet all the time examples of where figures for all sorts of things are quoted but which do not take into account all factor of which the debate or discussion in question relates to.
Your mentioning of £24 said that you'd "heard" this to be the cost, and indeed it was also a figure which I'd read on here before, but as I said that time also, it may be correct that this is the cost to build the machine (I don't know if it is or isn't, as you said later on here, we don't know at all really but certainly it sounds feasable given the low labour costs where the cleaners are made) yet I doubt it takes account of the overheads.
Now, I agree that as far as customer service goes, Dyson are generally rated very highly, and in this day and age people seem to expect only the very best from a big company. I get this. But what many people don't seem to understand is the need for great customer service when the business is actually providing a service -such as your telephone or electricity provider- is pretty much essential, whereas once a product has been purchased, the money has been taken for it upfront at point of sale. As such, to offer poor service would not make any difference to the quantifiable income to that company in the same way it would if I changed my electricity account from one to the other.
What it might do of course is to deter the purchaser from buying that brand again next time, but there is never ever any guarentee that the same brand would have been purchased anyway, had good aftercare and customer service been in place. Added to which, with every day that passes we all become a day older, thus newer purchasers are coming into the market place all the time, and their purchsases of brands which the likes of you and I would never touch will compensate for the differences in sales.
So, my point here is, yes Dyson does offer great customer service, but as an avenue for making money, it is not the most important aspect of their business by a long stretch. I am sure you know Dyson recently scaled back their hours of business considerably when it came to customer service, making me wonder if they've realised what I've thought for many years - that if your cleaner breaks at 10pm on a Saturday night, it really could wait till Monday morning. Likewise taking into account also the cost of administering the cost of spares under warrenty, in many other businesses the cost of doing this would have to be carefully checked against making a more durable part to begin with.
