Like any trade association we will try to bring member benefits as time goes on but, to be totally truthful, this is not the easiest of things to do when an association is as young as the WTA is presently. However, with that said, there are several things in the pipeline that we hope to bring to members over the coming months.

In the meantime we have been more concerned with bringing our members problems to the attention of those that can do something about them. This, fighting for and representing the members, is more what a true trade association is about in our opinion and not coming up with fancy schemes. We are here to represent our industry and we would like to make it absolutely clear that, that is what the WTA is about.

With that said, there are several benefits to be had through UK Whitegoods from which the WTA grew including:

• Access to technical forums offering technical help and support from other trade members
• Access to the subscriber forum
• The ability to appear on the repairs@ system
• Ability to use the UK Whitegoods new appliance insurance
• Ability to use the UK Whitegoods monthly insurance
• Access to ISE and the associated resources
• Business advice and help from UK Whitegoods
• Marketing advice and help
• Referrals for corporate work including advice in that area
• Reduced price fault code manual
• Ability to use logo and livery
• Access to branded work wear
• The latest industry news and gossip
• Notification of contract changes in corporate work and agencies

As you can see there are a few benefits to be had and if not all, many will likely be of use to many repairers with quite a few offering the ability to actually gain revenue through their use. 

The Point Is...

Are you in control of the industry, do you have a say, a voice? Most of us don't and that is what we aim to give to the repairers, a voice.

It is our intention to represent the trade not because we think that we can make money from the repairers but because we are repairers ourselves and we care deeply about the industry and the issues surrounding us, the repairers, in the modern environment.

Individually we are of little or no consequence to anyone really, but collectively there are a great many repairers out there doing fantastic work, saving many machines from simply being carted off to landfill and even in many cases actively recycling and re-using appliances.

We just think it's about time we told people what we do and how good a job that we do.

We are also looking to advance the views of the repairers, especially on the aspects of freedom of technical information and to make our lives a little bit more comfortable in terms of legislation as much of it would appear not to favour us, such as the current Gas Safety Legislation from the Health & Safety Executive.

Membership Cost 

The cost is currently a very reasonable £70 (excl. VAT) per year for independent repairers!

You may well wonder why this is so low and the truth is that there are a great many that will help in the organisation for free, giving their own time totally free of charge, to try to accomplish the things that we require. They do this as it helps their own businesses as well as others.

We also gain a lot from the relationship with UK Whitegoods whereby a lot of the administration work is done for us, in effect, for free.

All this means that the cost of membership is extremely low as we have reduced the overheads to an absolute minimum and the organisation is therefore extremely flexible and efficient.