Firstly today, a couple of shameless plugs from us here at Service Dealer Towers.

As you hopefully are fully aware, next Thursday our annual Conference and all-important Dealer of the Year Awards take place in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Tremendous efforts have been made, and are on-going, behind the scenes by the incredible organising team at TAP to get everything in place. All of this hard work and dedication is geared toward making our dealer delegates' experience as valuable and enjoyable as humanly possible.

Looking at the day's agenda, many potential highlights immediately jump out at me. For example, I have a strong feeling that our keynote speaker of business guru Ellis Watson will be a fascinating listen and will go over really well with our audience of dealers. I had an opportunity to meet Ellis for the first time recently, and in our brief chat over Zoom he immediately struck me as an engaging, affable, funny chap, who clearly knew his subject inside out and upside down. He will draw parallels between his business life - which has taken him from md of Mirror Group Newspapers to CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Corporation - to the experiences of our delegates. I think he'll be both relatable and super enjoyable.

Also of great interest to me are the Customer Insight sessions that will see three top-level professionals in their respective fields speak both about their own roles, but crucially about how they all rely on local dealerships to keep them going. I suspect they will cover exactly what it is they want from their dealers, where this relationship has really benefited them in the past, and perhaps even highlight where mistakes can be made in the hope of avoiding such instances in the future. I know these talks will be genuinely enlightening.

And this is all before we get to the ever-popular breakout seminars, which this year are looking at two bang-up-to-date aspects of running a modern dealership - how to protect yourselves from cyber-crime and how the use of A.I could offer practical benefits to the business. These sessions are always great as they allow superb interaction between the expert presenters and the dealers in the room.

This will be followed in the evening with the revelations of who has won our prestigious Dealer of the Year Awards - plus, of course, the chance to have a well-deserved drink with friends, deep into the night. We are all looking forward to seeing as many of you there as possible next week.

Also today, you may have already seen that our Digital Special Report on last month's Equip trade show that took place in Louisville, Kentucky, is now live for you peruse and enjoy. Packed full of videos, it is designed to give UK dealers a real flavour of what a visit to the show could offer should you choose to do so in subsequent years. Do keep checking back to the Report over the next few weeks, as we are serialising an in-depth roundtable discussion between Duncan, Jo, Bob and Sara, that covers a range of topics, all of great interest to dealers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Warranty claims

Finally today, we are running a brief survey to gauge where our dealer readers' opinions currently stand regarding warranty claims. We've asked you about this subject at this time of year for the past couple of seasons, so it'll be interesting to see if the needle has shifted at all over the past 12 months (either for the better or worse).

As an observer, it feels to me that this is an emotive subject for our readers and is one that is never far from discussion when two or more dealers meet up. I recall that first time that we asked for your thoughts on the situation, it came about following a conversation I'd had at the Conference with a dealer. I remember they had voiced some serious concerns they held regarding certain supplying manufacturers and their rates of pay, plus the hoops they made dealers jump though for warranties.

The subject has raised its head again at various points during the industry news cycle of this year too, so hearing from as many of our dealer readers as possible today would be much appreciated.

To remind you, last year when we asked for your thoughts on the subject, most who responded voiced real frustrations. Some illustrative quotes included:

• "Warranty labour payment rates are never going to be enough unless the manufacturers pay our retail rate and pay a fair time for repairs."
• "We have noticed a drop in the ability of manufacturers to help with technical issues, coupled with an increase in reducing or refusing totally claims for repairs on their machines."
• "The payment rate is far too low and an insult; the systems and time taken to claim is awful; and the time they take to pay the claim is disgraceful."

Some strong words there. There were certain manufacturers who were singled out for praise, but on the whole the readers who responded were not happy.

So please, if you were able to take a couple of moments today to answer a few, brief questions and to leave your thoughts on the current warranty situation, either positive or negative, we would be most grateful. All feedback is entirely anonymous, so please feel able to speak freely.

As ever we'll publish the results and as many of your comments as we can in the next issue of Service Dealer magazine. Many thanks in advance for your help.

TAKE THE SURVEY