Yearly Archives: 2010

Presenter For The Day – My Foray Into Being on Screen

June 2, 2010 | eSpares Updates | No comments

As you may have noticed if you’ve read previous posts, I have assumed a role as one of the presenters of our How-To videos. Now, this isn’t a natural progression for me, it had not been part of my plan to go all Dave Benson Phillips. In fact, just two months ago, I’d have described myself as a camera-shy fellow who’d never dream of doing anything like that. However, after some gentle, coaxing assurances from co-workers, I decided to give it a crack. Why not I thought, hopefully these videos will give people more confidence to fit spare parts themselves – they seem to have responded positively to Helen, Matt and the gang’s work.

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Presenter For The Day – My Foray in to Being on Screen

June 2, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

As you may have noticed if you’ve read previous posts, I have assumed a role as one of the presenters of our How-To videos. Now this isn’t a natural progression for me, it had not been part of my plan to go all Dave Benson Phillips. In fact, just two months ago, I’d have described myself as a camera shy fellow who’d never dream of doing anything like that. However after some gentle, coaxing assurances from co-workers I decided to give it a crack. Why not I thought, hopefully these videos will give people more confidence to fit spare parts themselves – they seem to have responded positively to Helen, Matt and the gang’s work.

With this in mind I headed to my first shoot, ‘How to reverse a fridge door’ – but it did nothing to calm my nerves and I was all ums and ahs and what-am-I-doings for the first few takes. Soon after though, under the tutelage of Helen, queen of the Fix It Yourself video, and cool hand Gabe, super director, I was feeling relaxed and getting in to the groove. In fact, I was really enjoying myself. The words started flowing easier and we got in to the nitty gritty of hinges, doors and the rest.

I’ve since fronted a few more videos, and hope that I can continue doing so. Mostly though, I hope they’ll help people to fix it themselves.

How To Reverse a Fridge Door – New Video

May 24, 2010 | Uncategorized | 17 comments

Picture this, everything in your kitchen is perfect except your fridge door opens in a way that blocks the flow of your kitchen. If only your refrigerator door opened from the other side, so that it was immediately next to the wall when opened, your kitchen would be perfect. In this new video Rory will show you how to change the hinges on your fridge so that the door will open from the opposite side.

Washing Machine Drum

How To Replace a Wheel on a Henry or Hetty Vacuum – New Video

May 21, 2010 | Vacuum Cleaner Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

Henry and Hetty vacuum cleaners are part of the Numatic appliance range. We have one in our office and I got to use it when Mike accidentally broke a glass by his desk. True story. What impressed me about our Henry is that despite appearing to be a rather simplistic looking vacuum cleaner it’s got great cleaning power and is very sturdy. They are clearly made to last the long haul.

So if a bit on your Numatic vacuum breaks I would recommend trying to fix it, rather than buying a new cleaner. In this new advice video Rory will show you how to replace a back wheel on a Hetty vacuum cleaner.

If after watching this video you decide that you need some Henry vacuum spares please make sure to check out the eSpares website.

Yellow Kitchen with Cookerhood

Smelly Cooker Hood

May 20, 2010 | Kitchen Appliances Repair, Help & Advice | No comments

The cooker hood is responsible for extracting the air around hob, funnelling grease from collecting elsewhere in the kitchen and helping to keep cooking smells to a minimum. It’s a little known fact, but your extractor fan needs regular maintenance in order for it to perform fully. All the filters on a cooker hood should be replaced at least once every year to keep your kitchen from becoming smelly. If you’ve got a metal filter on your extractor fan this should either be cleaned of grease build up or replaced. In this new video Rory will show you how to clean the grease from a metal cooker hood filter.Read more

Notice Anything New?

May 13, 2010 | eSpares Updates | 1 comment

If you’ve recently visited our website you may have noticed an update from this:

To this:

If you haven’t spotted it already, we’ve cleaned up the top navigation bar of our website. Through customer testing we realised that our top menu was too busy and the black blocky design took the eye away from the rest of the page. We hope that our new navigation bar is kinder to the eye and makes the search box more apparent.

Stay tuned…We’ve got more finely tuned changes up our sleeve.

The Digital Switchover Is Here

Top Money Saving Reviews From The Last Week

May 12, 2010 | eSpares Updates | No comments

I love customer reviews. Being a bit thrifty myself, it makes me feel particularly good when a customer says that we helped save them money. Here are my two favourite money saving reviews from the last week:

  • “This is the second time I’ve used espares. V impressed, Product exactly as described, easily ordered and speedily delivered. Last time I became a domestic hero by mending our oven with an espares part saving us about £100 for calling out electrician!” Fridge Door Shelf, Anonymous from London.
  • “eSpares is awesome! I was quoted £58 from a repair man to fix the door catch. I just put in the make and model of my ancient drier (15 years old!!!) and I found this part. It arrived in just 3 days and it is the exact replacement- All for £6.00! In the old days before the economy went bad, I would have at best hired a man to do it, or at worst just bought a new machine. For just a few pounds, I was able to do it myself! If you do buy this part, you will need one of those strange little star head screwdrivers or maybe do it with a tiny straight one. You will have to prise the 2 sections of the door apart gently to enable you to get to the screws. But do it! eSpares will save you MONEY!!!” Tumble Dryer Door Catch, Singmoregirl from Northants.

Senior Software Developer / Superstar

May 5, 2010 | Uncategorized | No comments

We’re in need of someone. Someone good. To be precise, we need a Senior Software Developer to improve our already kick-ass ecommerce site.

We’re eSpares; the UK’s leading spare parts business. No, you’re right, that doesn’t sound very interesting. That’s why the website has to be so damn good. We sell over half a million products, and have over a million customers worldwide, which obviously presents some challenges. And our site helps our customers to fix their own appliances too. We’ve got videos, help diagrams, and part finders which mean that the site has to do some funky stuff. We’ve won awards for our use of social commerce and our innovation in social media marketing. Our tech team was recognised last year by Retail Week as rising stars in the industry. We also have about the best view across London imaginable from our Chelsea office.

You

You’re going to need to be good (I think we mentioned that). You must be adept in:

  • C#, ASP.NET, .NET Framework 3.5 and 4
  • jQuery
  • SQL Server
  • XHTML 1.1, CSS 2 and 3

And if you’re a real superstar, you’ll also have worked with the following concepts:

  • Object Relational Mapping (NHibernate, Entity Framework)
  • UI / UX concepts
  • Unit testing / Test driven development
  • Requirements gathering, problem solving and analysis
  • Documentation

But more than just someone with a proven set of skills, we need someone who wants to make a real difference, be a leader and win awards for a fast-growing ecommerce company.

The Job

If you’re the right person, you’ll get an impressive salary and benefits package. You’ll be working on our core framework and suite of applications, used throughout the company, from our warehouse and call centre, to product management and accounts. You’ll interface with 3rd parties and internal departments, and you’ll work with some highly-skilled and fun people. We’re sure you’ll find it to be varied and interesting, challenging and rewarding: we sure do.

To apply please visit the Personforce Talent Discovery Network.