Nene Jaguar Peterborough

[steveww]

First of all I have no connection with Nene Jaguar other than as a client.

Not sure if this type of post is allowed, if it is not then there should be some mechanism where we can review products and services.

I recently had a major service and 4 wheel alignment done at Nene Jaguar, an independent specialist. During the work they noticed a couple of items that also needed attention(a/c gas & steering rack bushes), they called me and we discussed the options and they gave me a price for the extra work. I gave them the OK to proceed. They called again to arrange for me to pick the car up when the work was complete.

When I arrived to pick up my XJS it was up on the 4 pillar lift so I could inspect their handy work. Clive the main man there was very chatty and helpful. While the bill was significant it was reasonable for the work carried out and certainly less expensive than a main dealer.

All in all I am very happy with the level of service and the quality of work carried out. I can recommend them and will certainly be using them next year for the minor service.

[PaulE]

Always good to hear about reliable garages. The Club has a file where such places are collected for general reference. They were talking about publishing a book but not sure if that happened. An on-line service would be best I feel when it would be easy to add new and to remove those who did not measure up long term.

Suggest you check whether Nene is on the list.

[steveww]

Some sort of review system similar to Amazon / Ebay would be a good idea. If kept online then it would be easy to keep up to date.

[ptjs1]

Remember that there's a Recommended Supplier Index accessible from the Member Zone of the main JEC site. All of the entries are based on recommendations from members. (Nene are in there, Steve).

Unfortunately, one can't see the content of the individual recommendations (which I think would be helpful).

Paul

[almcl]

Remember that there's a Recommended Supplier Index accessible from the Member Zone of the main JEC site.


Paul

while the list is a good idea, the search mechanism and implementation make it just about terminally useless.

If you live in Shropshire, for example, being unable to exclude suppliers in East Lincolnshire (180 miles away) from the search while being unable to include ones twenty miles away in Wales is but one example.

[webman]

Some facts:

Previous attempts to provide a list of Recommended Supplies proved unsuccessful, for a number of reasons including: poor response from members, inaccurate data and partiality.

The current system was proposed by David Ireland, and he has given much of his time to the project.

A great deal of thought went into his proposal to provide a fair system which was not too onerous to use.

It was intended to be in booklet form, where entries were grouped by ‘arbitrary’ regions, similar to the system used by the MGOC, upon which it was based.

It seemed to me that since the raw data had to be stored, in order to compile the booklet, that we could take advantage of a database approach, so that the data could be made available on-line, in a searchable form.

As we all know, any electronic system is only as good as the raw data and there’s the rub.

In order to be inclusive, it was decided to allow both on-line and paper submissions. It is a fact that our members are generally hopeless at following instructions and careless at entering data.

We asked for a Supplier’s address and Postcode amongst other data.
The responses had incorrect, or incomplete addresses and missing or incorrect Postcodes.

Even when addresses were given, ‘Counties’ were entered in a number of ways, which included contractions, aliases and spelling mistakes.

David and I spent some considerable time in validating addresses and standardising the way they were presented.

This was required to compile the booklet.

In thinking about an on-line system, it was obvious that it too, would have to be rather general, since we could not implement ‘bounds checks’ on the data submitted by paper.

In an ideal world we would have used a system based upon partial Postcode, as used by many on-line suppliers, but we had questionable data and it would have been expensive in Royalties to the Post Office.

Since the initial proposal was for a paper document, we did the best we could, relying on Counties for England, and Wales and Scotland where the population is sparser.

To do even this required a great deal of ‘spare time’.

Those of us who give our time to the Club, do so because we think we can make things better. We don’t expect to be knighted but we do ask you to consider some of the problems we might encounter in our endeavours.

PS Al, did you try searching on ‘Shropshire’, perhaps you didn’t have time to read the Editorial or other screen prompts, or perhaps…..

[almcl]

Webman

I think your penultimate paragraph is the crux of the matter: the world's largest Jaguar club with 20k members and a turnover measured in millions shouldn't be relying on the freely given spare time of one of its members for this ever more important aspect of 21st century communication.

We should have paid-for technical support and a work force of more than one.

[steveww]

Not wishing to take away from the great effort that has been put in during "spare time". However a directory is a good thing; it lets one know where to find services but it does not provide any idea as to the quality of the provided service.

By having up to date reviews from the consumers of those services other can see what they are letting themselves in for. Unfortunately there are always some "cowboys" around and a review system would help weed them out.

Still waiting for the weather so that I can drive my now freshly serviced XJS.

[webman]

You may be surprised Al, that I agree with the thrust of your argument.

Whilst it is true that income has fallen, largely due to declining membership (currently about 17,400) the main problem is that we have an ageing and ineffective Committee.

People with brighter minds than mine have offered reasoned criticism of the way in which the Club is run and that advice has largely been ignored.

For as long as this enterprise continues to be operated as a club and not as a true company, the future looks bleak.

It is sad that in the last two years we have lost more effective Directors than in the previous 25 years! Yes, they too were getting on, but that was not the whole reason why they left.

Of the current Committee, only one member has visited any of the 10 Bulletin Boards this year! If they are not listening to the membership, it would seem unlikely that they will give us what we need.

I believe that the current Chairman is doing a good job and some of the structural deficiencies have been addressed, but there is an old guard who don’t seem to be listening or moving the Club forward.

Lest it should be felt that I am bitching because my nose is ‘out of joint’ by the decision to re-develop the Club’s website, that is not the case. I have always respected the Committee’s right to do as they wish. Where I do have a problem is their inability to take note of members’ wishes and to learn from the mistakes that they, and I, have made over the past 14 years.

When faced with critical comment, they adopt a defensive posture, deny the truth and sometimes even misrepresent facts.

So, what can we do? Short of revolution probably little, but I would urge all of you who have an opinion on the Club’s future to voice those opinions to Sue Hedley.

ps my apologies for hijacking this thread and misreporting the membership total in the original post

[Graham1]

Hi

I am one of those Directors that does not spend time on the forums as my day is very full with my existing responsibilites. Thats why I am in the office on Good Friday! However having learnt of the comments I thought I ought to respond. Primarily as there are a couple of errors in webmans posting. Firrstly we have 17,400 members not 14,700 as posted. Secondly we are not losing money, indeed because of our business like attitude and management we continue to make money and have strong assets and reserves.

I accept it looks bad when webman says we dont visit. But we set up the forums knowing it was the way forward, we are lucky in having an excellent set of administrators, we are learning all the time but clearly we need to keep pace with the technology and our new website should greatly assist, particularly with ease of access etc. Some of our administrators have come up with ways of improving access and encouraging more posts and new members, we will be looking at these.

The club is not going down the drain as anyone at spares day on sunday would have seen with the strong support of members present. I am presently touring the country visiting our Regions and the attitude is excellent. If it would help by posting details of how we run the club I would be only too happy to oblige. Meanwhile anyone who wants more details or has ideas or concerns can contact me at graham.searle@jec.org.uk or Sue Hedley at sue.hedley@jec.org.uk.

Meanwhile enjoy your Easter and lets hope we have a summer to enjoy our cars.

Graham Searle
JEC General Manager

[dhdove]

Hi Graham

A very warm welcome to the XJS Bulletin Board, Congratulations on your first post
Thank you for that info. I'm sure some members will want to follow up on your invitation.

Since "hi-jacking" a thread is not good manners, I'll say no more here.

I'm sure this discussion will continue both on and off the BB's as the season progresses.

Best wishes
Tony