British Gas Homecare Agreement, Free Boiler?

saints1fan

Latest news

The BG engineer and the area manager called today. They arrived at 1.30 and left at about 5.00. The boiler is still not repaired and after speaking with the area manager, I am told that they do need to fit a new PCB and this is not in stock. It could take 10 days to get hold of one. I told him that this is no longer acceptable and as much as I really do appreciate his and his engineers efforts, we can no longer be without heat and hot water. I asked what he was willing to do and has has come up with 2 options;

we can buy a boiler and they will fit it for free, or they will give us a price to supply and fit a boiler without the labour charge. He is calling me later to provide a price for option 2.

What do you think?

saints1fan

The manager just called, they will supply and fit a worcester bosch 30cdi for £1100. What do you think?

Are we pushing our luck for anything more?

dld2s

you can get that boiler for around £740.00, so it's really up to yourself

http://www.lphs.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=385

Razor

Just checked www.keeptheheaton.com both PCBs in stock for next day delivery, even without trade discount main pcb comes to about £166 inc VAT etc. Sounds like you have a nearly new boiler, get them to change the pcb and argue the toss after. You can put any compensation and your monthly insurance money into a new boiler fund.

Partschangers is so the right word!

maypole

Canucklehead wrote: »

Hi...try the Guardian capital.letters@guardian.co.uk (Tony Levene) or m.brignall@guardian.co.uk (Miles Brignall) ...recent feature in the Guardian on boiler service cover requesting readers to get in touch...I posted about this last week on the Utilities forum.;)

HTH

Canucklehead

I would advise this too, even if you do decide to pay to have another boiler put in as it is urgent now, still write to the above with your story, I would be wanting some compensation after all of this. In this weather it is unacceptable to be waiting this long.

jcorbygas

My husband and I agree with previous posters - PCB is a stock item according to our suppliers with price as per Razor.
Get them to get pcb quicker and get it fitted and then try and get some recompense for the mess up (and incompetence) caused by them.

mike_the_bike_2

I'm not the one sitting in a cold house right now with a young family

BUT

You have paid with your premiums for this "insurance policy" all this time for piece of mind so that in the event you hit a minor or major problem with your boiler it will be quickly and efficiently fixed at no charge to you.

The first diagnosis was wrong and because it was an expensive and time consuming item to fit they tried to fob you off with all sorts of reasons why the policy was not covered until you had to refer them to their own terms and conditions

Ther second diagnosis says it is the PCB which they say they cannot get hold of for 10 days but yet as previous posters have stated is freely available for next day 24 hr delivery to your address from suppliers

They now say they will fit a new boiler for around 1100 pounds, a boiler which can be obtained by me for around 740 pounds so i'm guessing given British Gas buying power they pay around 600 pounds or less.

So inspite of taking your premiums, being unable to fix your boiler they now want to MAKE MORE MONEY out of your misfortune!

I'd get on the phone to the Area Manager, tell him to get his credit card out and give him the phone number of a couple of suppliers where he can order a PCB from for delivery to your address for tomorrow and let him know you expect him to turn up at your house with an engineer to personally supervise the repair!

Razor

As I am not a properly trained BG engineer can anyone explain how PCB failure can lead to no water coming out of the tap:eek:


If you do decide to get it fixed make sure they bring a spare APS, gas valve and burner just in case they haven't changed those yet:rotfl:

On a more serious note was the scale inhibitor an inline one, (fitted in the pipe) or electronic with wires that wrapped around it?

saints1fan

We can't wait and longer.

My wife and I have come to the end of our tether and we have decided that we are going to accept the offer from BG to fit a new boiler at somehwere near cost. We can't wait any longer and came to the conclusion that our existing boiler, being a cheap one, which is nearly 7 years old, is likely to die at some time in the next year or three and as such, if we can have a new worcester boiler for a grand, we shoudl go for it. We appreciate that we could have had the existing one fixed and then tried to go for soem compensation, but I don't have the time to spend an hour or two a day dealing with this problem and to have to chase compensation etc for the next few weeks or months would be a nightmare.

I managed to knock BG down to a round £1000 so we are going for it and should have a nice shiney boiler on Saturday, plus I understand that the boiler comes with a 2 year parts and labour guarantee so we can cancel our homecare saving £25 a month, which means the boiler only costs us about £500, after allowing for a couple of services.

Thanks again for all your advice. We not entirely happy, but can't let this take over our lives forever.

Razor

Make absolutely sure that you get a full powerflush done before the new boiler is fitted NOT a powercleanse! You should see the flushing machine on for around 4 hours. They can hardly say no to this because they have already told you that you needed one;)

Hope your new boiler lasts forever and ever :beer: