brother taken for a ride by british gas ?

nickj_2

in the cold snap my brothers gas boiler packed up . he phoned some local plumbers who were unable to come immediately so he went with british gas as he has young kids and they could do it within the week
my mother has just informed me how much he paid
i must just warn you that if you suffer from a heart condition or high blood pressure not to read any further - the shock may kill you

£9500 no i haven't put an extra zero on by mistake
he had a back boiler and flame effect fire replaced , the new boiler was sited in the loft so admitedly there would be some extra pipework to put in and some to take out and electical work involved - none of the rads were replaced for this price , the job only took 2 -4 days , he lives in a 3 bed semi - surely this must be a mistake

igjac

My only experience of British Gas ... they quoted £3400 for replacing our boiler.

In the end we went for a local firm (recomended by the our local council ) who put in a better boiler, and did a little extra work for us for ... £1800

hmmm

IG

McKneff

nickj wrote: »

in the cold snap my brothers gas boiler packed up . he phoned some local plumbers who were unable to come immediately so he went with british gas as he has young kids and they could do it within the week
my mother has just informed me how much he paid
i must just warn you that if you suffer from a heart condition or high blood pressure not to read any further - the shock may kill you

£9500 no i haven't put an extra zero on by mistake
he had a back boiler and flame effect fire replaced , the new boiler was sited in the loft so admitedly there would be some extra pipework to put in and some to take out and electical work involved - none of the rads were replaced for this price , the job only took 2 -4 days , he lives in a 3 bed semi - surely this must be a mistake

Didnt he get a quote before the work was carried out. I would find it very strange if he didnt. And he would have had to sign an order authorising them to go ahead

EliteHeat

Why would he expect an immediate fix for a problem like this? most people expect to wait a bit for major works such as boiler replacements to proceed in a calm, orderly fashion - properly planned and costed - not just thrown in because it's cold outside.

So what if there were young children in the house? adequate temporary electric heating could have been provided instantly for less than £100.

If the immersion heater was broken or missing, this could have been fixed for about £100, providing sufficient hot water.

Sorry, but your brother has thrown away ££££s for no good reason at all and BG would have been perfectly aware of his eagerness to pay massively over the odds because of his perception of the urgency of the situation.

One final thing, why was the old boiler not just repaired? most of them can be.

ormus

we should have a competetiton to see who has paid most for a boiler from BG.
your brother is the winner so far.

Clive_Woody

ormus wrote: »

we should have a competetiton to see who has paid most for a boiler from BG.
your brother is the winner so far.

Not a prize I can see too many people wanting to win....


For the price of a new small car you get a boiler from BG.

amtrakuk

I had a similar experience with british gas. The boiler being covered under british gas home care I assumed I could rest easy knowing any problem would be covered and necessary repairs made. A couple of years ago I drew hot water and the pilot light went out and I couldn't light it. I tried for about an hour unsuccessfully so called british gas. They said they could attend in 3 days - first disgruntlement. After 3 days the engineer attended and lit the pilot light, had a look round the boiler and left. That afternoon I had a shower and surprise sunrise the pilot light went out again. Another 3 days and the engineer came out again. This time a bit more thorough with his investigation and came to conclusion the heat exchanger had failed! I assumed he would repair it but was told it wasn't covered under the contract, I asked what options I had and was advised to upgrade the boiler as this one had come to the end of its life after 8 years!

To any readers, check what parts are and aren't covered under a service contract!

I asked how much it would cost to replace the boiler. The engineer made a phone call and came back with the eye popping quote of £3,500! I phoned around and the cheapest boiler exchange was just over £1,000, the boiler itself costing £500

I researched on the web and found a cheap £500 combi boiler of the same BTU rating would last about 4 or 5 years. You get what you spend, alot of posts advised on spending at least £1,000 on a boiler for it to last about 10 years, worcester-bosch seems to be a popular brand.

I did some calculations and over a 10 year lifespan + a maintenance contract would ad £30 a month to my £70 gas bill. I knew i could heat, cook and price hot water for less than an additional £100 to my electric bill, so I went down the electric route.

Today my electric bill is £80 a month. Yes it cost me about £300 to get the electrics setup and an additional £400 for convector heaters, cooker and on demand waster heater, but its working for me. I decided on cheap £30 Dimplex wall mountable convector heaters from Argos based on the fact of being just over £30 each if one fails it wont cost the earth to replace as well as the simple design, the thermostat being the only moving part, it should last for many years with no need to pay for a £15 a month maintenance contract.

Over the last 2 years I have heard a lot of arguments saying electricity is more expensive which is true but 60% of the electricity I use is for heating which is only used for 4-5 months a year then its switched off. The hot water is on-demand using a Redring Powerstream so it only uses electricity when it is called for. Cooking I use an induction hob and microwave mainly, only using the oven for roasts a couple of times a month.

smashed

Sorry, but that appears madness to me

You were quoted just over £1000 for a boiler exchange, with £500 for the boiler. (not sure if that is £1500 total or £1000 total). Ok, lets assume you bought the £1000 boiler, and that it cost you £2000 total for 10 years worth.
£2000 for 10 years = £200 for 1 year, or £16.67 per month. Can you seriously tell me that your elec bill has not gone up by much more than £17a month?
I only pay about £30 a month for electricity in my home.

amtrakuk

smashed wrote: »

Sorry, but that appears madness to me

You were quoted just over £1000 for a boiler exchange, with £500 for the boiler. (not sure if that is £1500 total or £1000 total). Ok, lets assume you bought the £1000 boiler, and that it cost you £2000 total for 10 years worth.
£2000 for 10 years = £200 for 1 year, or £16.67 per month. Can you seriously tell me that your elec bill has not gone up by much more than £17a month?
I only pay about £30 a month for electricity in my home.

Hi there,

The cheapest quote was £1,500 for supply and replace of my boiler with a cheap boiler. A lot of posts suggested a more expensive boiler around the £1,000 mark which I guess the british gas quote utilised.

Allot of people don't realise the hidden costs of using Gas.

You seemed to be missing out the cost of the Gas used and maintenance costs of the boiler in your calculations. Remembering I have no Gas in the house nor a maintenance contact to pay anymore.

OK. Lets take an average of £2,000 to remove the old boiler, fit, plumb and commission a new boiler.

On the figures above it'll cost £17 a month depreciation. You need to add £15 a month for the maintenance, totaling £32 a month for the projected 10 year lifetime of the boiler. In addition to the £32 a month, my gas bill at the time was £70 a month. The total monthly cost of the Gas boiler (depreciation + maintenance + Gas) totaled £102 a month. My electric bill at that time was £40 a month. My electric direct debit has increased by £40 a month to £80 a month.

During the warmer weather my main usage of electricity is hot water for showers, hand washing etc. I don't cook roast dinners every night so would be using a couple of rings on the hob for about 12-30 mins.

During the summer months I use an average of 10 units (10Kw) a day. During the winter months when I turn the convector heaters on I use an average of 40 units (40Kw) a day.

As my average cost per unit is 13p, my winter usage works out about £166 a month, my summer bill is about £41 a month.

Averaging it out over the year I use about £80 a month, based on 5 months winter usage (£166 x 5 = £830) + (£41 x 7 months = £287) = £1117 a year.

If I still had gas and electric my monthly bills would have been £40 for electric + £102 for (Gas + maintenance contract + depreciation) totaling £142 a month or £1700 a year.

** I've used the above figures on the average - T1 (17.98p) plus T2 (8.01p) divided by 2 to give an average of 12.995p or 13p a unit (inc VAT). The figures are more than in reality as I only pay 17.98p for the first 900 Kw per year (75 Kw/Units a month).

** Figures from my last provider (Eon) calculated I use 9,500 units a year. That works out at 791 units a month. Out of that the first 75 units a month are charges at the T1 rate of 17.98 pence (17.98 pence x 75 units) = £13.48. The remanding units are charged at T2 rate, 8.01 pence a unit (8.01 pence x 716 units) = £57.35. Add the two together comes to £70.83 a month.

Sorry to ramble on!

dander

I don't think I could run my house more cheaply on electricity. Last December my ancient and inefficient back boiler was condemned and switched off. I need to get some building work done on my house before I replace it, so I have been running on electricity only since December 2008. I have managed to keep the electricity usage low enough so that in total I am still paying the same overall utility bills as I was before - however my house was COLD last winter - keeping the bills down to that level meant keeping blankets in the living room, and often wearing a hat indoors. That was based on matching the running costs of a back boiler which is probably a minimum of 25 years old, so I hate to think how low I would have to take the temperatre to match the running costs of a modern efficient boiler.

Even with installation and depreciation costs factored in, there's no way I'd move to electric heating permanently - and if we are factoring things like depreciation in, wouldn't you also have to factor in the fact that not having a proper gas-fired central heating system would reduce the value of a house?

amtrakuk

I understand your concern, when I had to use electricity as an emergency heating source when my boiler was initially condemned. I found with Eon, despite requesting to overpay my account I was told their computer system couldn't cope with the request and was advised the account will be reviewed next quarter. It sure was! On the quarterly account review their system blew a gasket and wanted to put my electric DD up to £180 a month while keeping my gas still at £70 although I was affectively not using it! I would have to wait yet another quarter before my gas bill would drop.

I think these peaks are down to the lack of flexibility a lot of energy providers systems. I assume the model they use is one that has been running for decades, before people had the ability to chop and change providers. Modeled on long term trends customers develop over many years.

I do have to chuckle to myself when moving to different providers as they always offer a ridiculously low initial direct debit almost like dangling a carrot. When I moved from Eon to EDF my DD was set at £40 a month. I knew this was way to low as naturally my energy usage will at least double over winter. If I wasn't aware of this, I would again end up with a ridiculous rise in my DD during the colder weather and again their systems blowing a gasket.

Oddly enough I had a discussion about the depreciation in the house price which only has electric heating and is a valid point. I understand the HIP marks down a house with electric heating but as Im happy where I am and don't intend moving for the foreseeable future. We agreed if you are planning on moving, Yes a gas fired central heating system is desirable when selling your house.

The difference in house prices in my local area is typically £5k between properties with Gas and Electric heating. The cost of installing a gas heating system would therefore being recouped if selling.