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EAGA, underhand way of getting work!!!!

Don't know if this is relevant to this forum, but we need some help.

My brother and a few friends are plumbers/CH installers. As with most plumbers they often go out and give quotes/estimates for work.
With the EAGA scheme, those on qualifying benefits can claim under the warmfront scheme for the work to be done, but many people do not know about it.

If a plumber is registered with Eaga, they can quote for the work, and reccommend that the customer claims a voucher to the value of £300 towards the cost of the kjob.

What happens is this. the customer calls EAGA
Eaga go through the eligibility criteria
they inform them due to their circumstances they are entitle to (a) the £300 voucher only, or (b) the whole job done for free under a gov't grant.

If it is option (a), they send out the voucher to the customer, who then gives it to the installer, they then send it to Eaga who return £250 to the installer (£50 is retained as an administration fee)

If it is option (b), they explain that the customer can have the work done for free, but, they use their own installers to do the work, with inferior products at inflated prices.

Example, my brother recently lost a job because of this, he quoted £2350 for a full C/H installation, 5 radiators, full repipe, Worcester boiler, inhibitor, flust etc.

Customer calls Eaga, they will do work for free, installing A rated boiler (Ideal boiler) and radiators, no repipe, flush and inhibitor, price they quoted was £2800 which is within the grant maximum.

So my brother lost a job to this, despite the fact he did all the leg work, he advertised, went to the house to do the estimate, has fuel/overhead costs, was going to install a better quality product, inc full repipe, yet Eaga give the work to their own people?

My brother called Eaga to see if it would be possible for him to do the job, they sent out a pack, reading through this we nearly fell of our seats. They wanted a £25000 deposit for work to be given to external contractors.

This is simply not fair, small/one man companies cannot suvive this. You only have to look at the complaints about EAGA's own installers (Iguana) to see the problems they have.

I don't blame the customer at all, I'd rather have the work done for fee than have to pay £2350, but surely the work can be done by the gas installer that quotes the work, and after an inspection, the installer should be able to claim the money from Eaga.

I'd like to know if anyone (plumbers etc) has experience this. The intention is to complain about this practice and try and stop it.
[SIZE=-1]To equate judgement and wisdom with occupation is at best . . . insulting.
[/SIZE]

Comments

  • I wish you the best of luck as it's not fair on people such as your brother and his colleagues, but like most government aid schemes, although "eaga" and the "Warm Front" were set up to try and help vulnerable people they actually only line the pockets of more civil servants and contractors who then do an inferior job knowing they don't have any responsibility to the end customer.
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