Slackers!!!

Slackers!!! Not us Aussie and we do not call at companies premises and do p.a.t. tests on site. I would guess that your company took the saws into Toolfix themselves to have them repaired, serviced or p.a.t. tested. If you take a closer look at them you should find a number with the letter T in front engraved on the machine.

All repairs carried out on any power tools that are not cordless are required by law to be p.a.t. tested after they have been repaired and when the boys have repaired the tool they do the p.a.t. test and on the sticker write the date the test was carried out and put the date (6 months later) the tool should be p.a.t. tested again.

It’s the responsibility of the owners of the tools to ensure the tools are p.a.t. tested again when they are due and while I’m not up on the legal requirements in the workplace, I do believe nothing electrical should be used that has an out of date p.a.t. sticker on them.

Most companies have someone who comes around and does p.a.t. tests on everything that runs on mains power from the kettle in the staff room to any machine that workers will use to perform their job. That is not something we do as we are just in the business of repairing power tools and as stated already that once we take a tool apart and repair it we have to a p.a.t. test on it to declare it’s then safe to use.

While there are a number of local companies who will take power tools into Toolfix just to be p.a.t. tested they are not the sort of companies I would call on.
The customers I deal with are mostly not local and are power tool dealers, or hire shops or building supplier companies such as Jewson’s who either sell power tools, hire them out or offer their customers a power tool repair service.

The companies that sell tools need to sort out a repair if the tool goes wrong while still under warrantee and as we are warrantee agents for nearly all the power tool manufactures they will use us to carry out the repair.

A number of the tools I collect will be warrantee repairs but far more will be tradesmen tools that have been taken into one of the companies I deal with who act more as agents for us. We give a free estimate on the repairs and inform our customer (the company acting as an agent) the cost of the repair. They then let their customer know how much it will cost and if he gives the go ahead for the repair we charge our agent for the repair. They will then charge their customer and our price to our agents will have been reduced to allow them to add on a small cost to our repair so at least they get something out of it for the work they have had to do.

Our agents are the ones who have to deal with any customer who lets say is not happy with the repair we carried out, it does happen from time to time and when it does it often turns out it has nothing to do with the repair we did but another problem with the tool.

All repairs that we do that are not warrantee repairs we put our own three month warrantee on the repair we carried out, sadly some believe the whole tool is them under warrantee for that period when in fact its only the actual repair we carried out that is. Lets say we fitted a set of brushes (cost 5 or 6 pounds for the brushes) to a power tool and just before the three months is up the armature goes, its only the brushes we gave a three month warrantee too, but we do get the odd one or two who will demand we replace the armature that might cost anything up to and even over £100. As you would expect that is not something we would be prepared to do unless it was anyway our fault the armature went, but that would be unlikely as it would have been checked during the repair and it would be more likely the owner of the tool worked it far too hard and burnt the thing out.

If your saws had only been p.a.t. tested by us its unlikely you will find the job number engraved on the machine I talked about, if it was repaired by us it will be on there somewhere. The reason we engrave the job number on all machines we repair is simply because we could do a repair on a power tool and the customer might have another tool the same and bring that one in saying it still has a fault on it. By marking all power tools in the way we do we know if we have repaired that machine or not.

It also helps us to be able to look up in our records what was done to the machine when we did carry out a repair as the number engraved on the tool acts as a quick reference number we can then look up with ease. The cordless power tools will have a removable battery and we will engrave our number just inside the housing out of sight, on main tools we will look to put it where its not to noticeable. Not all are happy when a machine comes back with a number engraved on the body of the tool, but it is something we have to do to ensure we don’t get taken for a ride.

It was the thought of Aussie and Wolfie blubbing over soppy films that frightened me away!

Sorry Aussie it's not so much what you actually said as your involvement in that thread getting my imagination running wild! Blubbing over a soppy film just doesn't go with my image of crocodile fighters, and you know that it is not always necessary to reply to what was actually said in a post, far more interesting to make it up as I go along!