£14310 off mortgage 2010 lets make 2011 better

sarahevie

I'm not normally negative about freebies but the Warm Front scheme is an absolute joke - I have spent hours on the phone to their 'call centre' without hot water and heating and really wish we had never had the new boiler installed. Our old one although wasn't very efficient at least it worked :mad: Rant over

sarahevie

Still fed up with Warm Front.

Spent 1 hour on hold to them this morning then had to go and pick up DD1 from pre school.

The a further 2 hours on hold to them this afternoon. Finally get through and as my complaint is now being dealt with by my MP they couldn't tell me anything as they don't want to give conflicting information:mad::mad::mad:

sarahevie

My tenants have broken the curtain track in the rented house and as it is a large bay window is going to cost £145 to supply and fit a new one.

I'm getting a local handyman in to see if he can salvage the old one, we don't have large enough ladders or a working drill at the mo.The ladders we have (but can't transport no roof rack). The drill OH damaged by using the wrong drill bit to put up some pictures at our house doh!!

CathT

Oh no, Warm Front sound like a nightmare! Hope MP can resolve it soon, how come it's got that far?

Are these the new tenants? Hope they don't break anything else!

sarahevie

We had a new boiler installed under Warm Front last year, they did the cavity loft insulation at the time.

It was when it was available to those who received child tax credit (you now need to be in receipt of income based benefits like JSA,IS - basically unemployed)

Anyway we had a new boiler fitted, and it works great but after two hours cuts itself off so there's no hot water or heating. It was installed last March, so nearly a year of living with this.

The call centre was rubbish, sent engineers round who couldn't find a fault and frankly didn't seem to know what they were doing.

The installers have received £3500 of tax payers money under warm front to install these, and that was what I raised with the MP that they are being paid a fortune to provide substandard goods. What a waste of resources.

Plus it's been very stressful living without heating and hot water and two children. Especially when I have had health visitors on my back over DD2 and her lung condition and freezing temperatures at home etc

sarahevie

The customer manager closed the case twice when I went for the highest complaint possible, saying the boiler was no longer covered as 30 days had passed since installation.

The installers blamed Warm Front, Warm front blamed the installers and said they weren't liable. It just went round in circles phoning the call centre. At one point they said our system needed further work and we would have to apply for further funding grants which we don't qualify for as we are now both working, and they have made the criteria tighter. But that wasn't the point, the system should work not install a bad system then be charged more to put it right.

In the end I got a couple of independents out to diagnose the problem and they came to the same conclusion and I sent their reports to Warm Front. They said they couldn't listen to customers opinions it had to be their highly qualified 'engineers'

Citizens advice and trading standards said as we hadn't paid for the goods it would be hard to sue them for damages in court.

So I went to the MP and he has made them finally accept liability after sending a senior team, and they are hoping to sort it ASAP. There's loads of peope in the same boat though looking at the threads online the scheme is a sham.

sarahevie

Onwards and upwards.

More shenaningans. Tenants chasing me for 9 days to get a handyman out as they had pulled the curtain rail down in the lounge.

All it was they had broken about 10 curtain hooks that attach curtain to track so curtain wouldn't stay up. Cost me £22, £20 handyman call out charge £2 curtain hooks that I got from a lovely handyman stores on the corner of the road. :mad::mad::mad:

To think they were having a right go at me on Monday, telling me it should be sorted they cannot close their curtains blah blah and really curtain hooks are consumables and for £2 they should have replaced them themselves. Cannot wait til they leave on 30th of June my patience is running thin.

sarahevie

New tenants who are moving in 1st Sept are being a bit demanding.

They want a bills inclusive option (so I worked it out and put it down in writing.) Which they did. Then they said that they wanted me to match what a local agency put. So in order that they didn't drop out I knocked the price down.

Then realised my original price was the same as the letting agent, and now I have undercut them and I'm now worrying that I won't be charging enough to cover usage:mad::mad:

sarahevie

Think I may be on for around £1000 OP this month:j

Waiting for my tenants to pay rent on the 1st March and mortgage to clear 28th Feb.

As our earnings are considerably lower than when we bought this house I've been looking at maximum we can borrow to remortgage and it's not looking pretty.

CathT

Well done on the OP. Our affordability was tight with this remortgage. I'm on maternity and have 2 children we didn't have when we first bought this house! Hope you can borrow enough to get the deal you want/need.

All I could think whilst trying to sort out new mortgage was how liberating it would be to not have to worry about it once i'm mortgage free!