Comet leave family without heat or hot water for 10 days.

dmg24

disgustedwithcomet wrote: »

Do you work for Comet DMG?

Getting my own engineer out first to isolate the hob & reinstall the supply, later to reinstall the hob if its that that's defective - and providing comet will replace it once he's uninstalled it will cost in excess of the amount offered. The local engineers (I have called 2) will do an emergency call today (note the word emergency - which is why the cost rockets) but will take 5/6 days to call back when/if it is the hob that is defective & if a new one is delivered.

There is an element of expediency here, but I'm really not convinced that top companies should be able to shift their mistakes onto clients, particulalrly if it puts the client further out of pocket.

Why is it that when someone offers an alternative opinion the OP assumes they work for the company?

My first priority would be keeping myself and my family healthy. I would sort out the finances afterwards.

shegirl

dmg24 wrote: »

Why is it that when someone offers an alternative opinion the OP assumes they work for the company?

My first priority would be keeping myself and my family healthy. I would sort out the finances afterwards.

Would that also involve doing something straight away rather than waiting after days of smelling gas to call the wrong people?;)


To answer the question,given a choice between paying out or not having any heating and not being able to bath or shower for 10 days (or any amount of days to be honest) then of course I would!!!

peachyprice

aheaton46 wrote: »

To all those people suggesting you get a gas engineer out - would you be happy to leave yourself out of pocket trying to rectify a fault caused by someone else, with no guarantee you'd get your money back?

If it meant I would have heat, and hot water, yes!

Infact this is exactly what I did when there was a gas leak in my kitchen and Transco (as it was then:D) cut off my supply. I got a local gas engineer to cap off the entire pipe to the kitchen and bought an electric hob. It was a quick job and didn't cost very much at all.

parkmalco

home insurance surely would have covered this,then the insurance co would claim moneys back from comet.

dmg24

parkmalco wrote: »

home insurance surely would have covered this,then the insurance co would claim moneys back from comet.

You would only be covered if you have home emergency type cover. I don't, but then my Dad is a gas engineer ...

Jeff_Bridges_hair

aheaton46 wrote: »

They didn't exactly have a lot of choice. If National Grid come out and tell you they are going to cut your gas off, what do you do? Force them out of your house?

National Grid took action to make things safe. It might have been over the top, but there's not many people going to argue with them. Besides, at that point the OP didn't know it was then going to take Comet ages to get someone out.

I never said anything about telling National grid to do anything else. What i did say and what others have said is that they couldve got some one else out to only isolate where they thought the problem was so that they could at least wash and have heating.

it doesnt take a rocket scientist to work this out.

rustyboy21

Transco/national grid, whatever you want to call them are renowned for doing this.

They do have gas detectors on their vans and you would have thought that they would have disconnected the cooker from it's bayonet fitting and then checked the socket area of the gas pipe to the cooker.

The question I would ask would be did comet put a new connector on the end of the pipe, when installing? Or did they just connect the hose/bayonet fitting into the existing coupling? If they didnt then it would point towards the hob being at fault. This could have then been disconnected and you could have had your eating on still.

It just seems strange to me that transco/NG didn't check it first, although as already stated above, thay do have a habit of doing this, which is a bit naughty.

Comet, though have also been naughty, not prioritising your callout.

If it was me though, I would have paid for someone to come out and argued the point at a later date, even if it meant I got vouchers to use off other products

Altarf

When Comet fitted the new gas hob, did they not ensure there was an isolation valve or fit one if there was not one?

disgustedwithcomet

Update. Many thanks for all the support & advice. Following on from my post at 1.30 yesterday an installation team were shortly thereafter in touch with me & visited yesterday tea time. As I understand it there were problems with the original installation rather than the hob itself. They spent a couple of hours here tracing & remedying the problem, checked it all out etc & left around 8.30 with everything back in working order and gas back on.

As mentioned earlier I had emailed Hugh Harvey (& others in the management team) & this intervention seems to have been as a result of that rather than action taken by the local comet management - so can I just say to those who suggested that, good call. Can I also reiterate my thanks for your support - and perhaps I should also offer my thankks to the Senior management at Comet for their intervention?