Running off the leash

Since being made to re-apply for their job of running the register (the 'R' in their name) of gas installers - and losing it (to CRAPITA, who so far have managed not to f**k it up) - CORGI have obviously had to reappraise their business model: instead of pulling in a steady income of registration fees from a captive market of folks like me, they now have to actually go out and earn a living.

Before they lost the registration job they were already selling van and liability insurance and running Competent Persons schemes in electrics as well as plumbing and ventilation, and sold sundries like Landlord's Gas Safety record pads. This is potentially good stuff: the folks at CORGI ought to have a better idea what their former members require in the way of, say, insurance than even the 'specialist' insurance companies who deal with a range of trades, and be able to arrange more appropriate cover at better prices. And sure enough they gave me the best deal on Professional Indemnity/Public Liability insurance when I had to renew it last year.

They also run a direct marketing operation corgi-direct.com which regularly sends me emails which always sound as if they're rather pathetically desperately trying to drum-up business, offering stuff I never want to buy at the prices they're asking. Today's was a classic: not only entirely tangential but illiterate to boot:

It's a disappointing waste of effort: taking a look at their website while writing this post I saw that they actually have some useful-looking stuff at not totally OTT prices, but they don't present it very well. In particular they have publications and stationery which you really need to see something of to tell if they're worthwhile, but the site gives only minimal descriptions and pictures of the covers of the books and images of forms at too low resolution to see what you're getting.

Now, for no apparent reason, they've started badge-engineering not-particularly-exciting items like central heating thermostats sold through Toolstation.

Why? This - and the other CORGI badged items - aren't particularly exotic, or cheap, or anything. And I can't imagine many of my customers wanting a CORGI logo on the thermostat in their living room so I'll buy plain ones by preference.

But the icing on the, er, bottom of the barrel has to be this:

 For years every time any of us installed a boiler we have had to notify it to the local council under Building Regulations. We could do this directly via Councils' Building Control offices but it's an expensive bureaucratic palaver, and CORGI, when they ran the installers' register, had a scheme (now run by their successor Gas Safe Register) that lets us notify installations to them, online or by phone for a few quid, and they notify the LA. So, over the years CORGI have acquired a database of names and addresses of people and the makes and models of boilers they've had installed and when they were done, and now they're using this to tout for the business of our erstwhile customers to sell them service contracts!

When CORGI lost their job to CAPITA the deal was that the latter would have the job for 10 years at the most, after which it would be up for grabs again. I daresay when that time comes around CORGI may be making another bid for it. It would of course be a cruel irony if their behaviour in the interim were a factor militating against their chances of success.