2020 was the year of COVID and lockdowns, come January 1st 2021 many of us hoped for a better and brighter year. While mass vaccinations, an easing of restrictions and being allowed to see family and friends in person has made all our lives better, over the last few months it feels like the country is taking a massive step backwards. We now have to contend with the soaring cost of living, fuel and energy shortages and rising levels of a new COVID variant. All these factors have put massive pressure on us as a business as well as the businesses of our valued customers.
“Our customers turn to us for when failure is not an option. Hence we cannot let a little thing like a world pandemic stop us from delivering to our customers when it matters most.”
Bob Cutler Founder of OAL.
In the last six months, the cost of running some parts of Oil Analysis Laboratories has almost doubled in price. We have seen mass shortages in some items essential to the everyday running of the business (such as some lab consumables) and have had to establish many new and more expensive supply lines for these items. Delivery costs have gone up while arrival times have gone down due to driver shortages. On numerous occasions, we’ve had to pay staff overtime to make sure all samples are processed quickly as sometimes we’ll receive several days of delayed post or courier parcels at the same time. We’ve also not been immune to the ‘pingdemic’ with our own staff having to isolate putting further pressure on the business as a whole.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Many of our competitor labs have suffered worse than we have; labs completely running out of sample bottles and having to cease work, companies making staff redundant and logistical problems such as moving location and broken testing equipment. All of these problems have had a negative effect on the services they offer, resulting in unhappy customers, many of whom have taken the steps to move their work to us, especially for a service that can’t afford to be repeatedly going wrong. Throughout the problems seen across the country over the last two years, at Oil Analysis Laboratories we have always had the best interests of our customers in mind and have gone above and beyond to continue offering our fantastic services uninterrupted throughout the pandemic and lockdowns. We never trap customers in exclusive contracts meaning they have to use us, which means we spend more time on delivering an excellent service to make you want to stay and less time on contract lawyers forcing you to stay. This excellent service is why our customers stay loyal to us and why we continue to attract new business at a time when our competitors are losing theirs.
Many companies claim to be doing their utmost for the population at the moment but the end result is frequently the passing on of rising costs to the end consumers, who are the normal people like you or me. Around difficult times, it is a common tactic of other laboratories to implement price rises (sometimes more than one), despite the fact that they are often offering an inferior and slower service. They rely upon their customers finding it too difficult and time-consuming to switch providers so feel they can charge what they like. One of our founding pledges at Oil Analysis Laboratories was to never raise our prices unnecessarily for the sake of lining our own pockets. We are a family-owned and run company that has the opportunity on a daily basis to interact with our customers and understand better than our large, corporate competitors what an impact unnecessary price rises have on their businesses. We have therefore made the decision to not enforce a price rise this Christmas and continue with our policy of not passing rising prices onto our end consumers, instead charging a fair price for an outstanding service.
Our motto ‘for when failure is not an option’ has never been truer than at this point in time; when the company was established, the aim was always to change the oil condition monitoring industry for the better by offering a superior, personalized service at a competitive price. Raising our prices for the sake of personal profit would be failing all our customers, our personal values and in turn, the wider population, who unknowingly, rely on our services to keep the machinery of the UK working not only at Christmas but all year round.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all the team here at OAL.
Katie @ Oil Analysis Laboratories.
