Boiler quote

Canucklehead

eeeeeee wrote: »

.... if they are stripping out anything made of copper ask to keep it ( or if its included in the quote) copper has gone up in value ()ALOT)

Scrap copper prices have dropped by almost half since July so not much in it these days after you take out the time/diesel to shift it to the merchants. Similar drop in brass etal.

Canucklehead

EliteHeat

eeeeeee wrote: »

well the truth is that they will send round a sub contractor.... who british gas will pay half that amount too.... the sub contractor will have between 2-4 men( often un skilled low paid) putting in radiators attaching the gas boiler to the wall doing your pipework / plumbing .... then on the final day 1 x gas engineer .. corgi reg will commission the boiler and check their work ..

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee - you seem to know a great deal about the subject and I certainly can't fault your accuracy. Are you in the trade at all?

Razor

It seems the only people more despised in the industry than British Gas are its subcontractors.

Some of us use BG to build our customer base which means doing the job to a standard regardless of price and to a far superior finish than most installs I have seen, particularly in London where the quality is generally atrocious.

You get an lot of BG engineers on these forums stating that subbies are crap and not to use them. None of them mention that direct labour get nearly a third extra time to do the same job.

If a subbie has one bad install then they are out, simple as that. We hold a difficult place in the industry, some indies to go from one poor job to the next and somehow get the work. Direct labour can just pass the jobs on to someone else, if it's a difficult installation or over 20 rads it's normally a subbie.

I have 6 installs lined up this month, 5 of them are contacts made through BG jobs. You don't get that many referrals by doing an unprofessional job.

Take a look HERE, a professional job I think you will agree and not a BG subbie in sight.

There are good and bad in all three camps, if you want to blame anyone for bad BG installations than blame the salesmen and surveyors that often leave the fitters with an impossible task or a miss sold product, (5 bed detached, two bathrooms, ensuite, 28i junior in loft).

I have stated in the past that I don't really do breakdowns. I can but much prefer installation work however I would happily match my installation skills against anyone on this forum.