Disgraceful service from Npower Homteam Boiler Care

rthirlby

Getting somewhere now, Npower have offered a £50 cheque for compensation which I have accepted. The amount is not important to me, its the acceptance of the failures on their behalf and the inconvenience they have caused me which is important.

Still the engineer is coming tomorrow morning at 8am ish to fit the new wiring and I will get a call on monday to see if it has worked.

Fingers crossed.

Widelats

I wish you best of luck with it.

meggsy

Unfortunately OP you are dealing with two dreadful companies -
Hometeam is Homeserve isn't it ?

I would be furious - you have done nothing wrong - good luck

gas4you

What make and model is this very rare boiler?

And where do you live?

Pincher

rthirlby wrote: »

Well that was rude !
Didnt you read my post, there are no manufacturer engineers for my make of boiler

Hence your next boiler should be from a manufacturer with a better support infrastructure, so you can get somebody direct, without these useless service contracts.

Rude? I'm on your side.

Interesting approach:

"I can't fix your problem, so I'm going to call the manufacturer to send out one of theirs. Costs me a lot more than sending my own engineers, but I'm being really customer service oriented. Oh dear, they have NO ENGINEER in your area. That's right, they are such a small manufacturer that they have no national service strategy to cover the whole country. Tough luck, I really tried. I really WOULD HAVE spent the money calling out an expensive specialist for you, scouts honour."

I look forward to:

"I got the spare part in my hands, but the dog chewed it up."

rthirlby

It's a Halstead Ace High also sold as a wickes brand boiler and I am in the west midlands.

I never said it was rare... I just relayed what the engineers said to me.

Pincher

http://www.halsteadglendimplex.com/contact.aspx

So, tempted to call Halstead to find out how many service agents cover West Midlands?

Obviously, the next thing is to record the conversation you have with NPower in which they say:

"I meant NPower doesn't have an engineer trained on Halsteads in your area."

which then gives you the reason to demand your money back.
They have no competent engineer to perform the job they contracted to do. They are taking money under false pretences.

"Hold on, let me check. Oh yes, we have an engineer with Halstead training, he can be with you on Tuesday." And of course, the engineer who actually turns up is just another random victim selected for your bollocking.

You have to recognise that the engineer is a victim,
the manager who has to tell lies continuously because he has no competent engineer to send out is suffering. The minimum wage call centre person is a powerless keyboard monkey who has no reality other than what the computer screen says to him. At the other end of this matrix of mutual abuse is you, PAYING to keep this Satanic Mill turning. Bring down the system, liberate them by not renewing your service contract ever again.

gas4you

Halstead used to rely on local service agents contracted to them for warranty repairs etc.

It was my terminology calling it rare by what Npower had said I do not belive what Npower have said. Halstead will have agents covering the West Midlands.

They now have their own fleet of engineers, but they are now Dimplex or Glen Dimplex and not Halstead.

What is the fault that you first called them in for?

C_Mababejive

It isnt a really common boiler but i did have a speed read of the manual and it looks pretty basic to me so cant understand why the big issue..
halsteadglendimplex.co.uk/...rE1))/.../AceAceHigh%20Manual.pdf

The real problem here,liek so many service operations in this field, is a lack of good,high quality,well trained engineers who know what they are doing and have a solid grounding in basic electronic/electrical/mechanical principles.

You cannot learn these from laptop faultfinding diagrams.
It is instinctive and bred from good quality training,investment and experience.

The trouble is that everyone wants everything cheaper so we have too few engineers poorly trained,incapable,dashing round like lunatics and meanwhile,slick marketing gurus present them as all knowing and the epitome of engineering excellence and customer care.

People choose Npower homecare because they are cheap and yet they (rightfully?) expect the best of service.

AndrewNFrench

Homeserve recently sent an engineer out to us to diagnose our boiler fault.
He told us the gas valve had gone and this event blew the PCB. £800 odd to repair. Luckily, our insurance should cover the parts. So the engineer said...
Call next day from Homeserve, the parts are rare (Potterton Suprima 40. common boiler) and it will be £2000 for a new boiler. They said the boiler was "beyond economic repair" and even if the parts were replaced, there was no guarantee it would work.

Not satisfied, we got a second opinion from a local one-man show. Diagnosis - dodgy solenoid on the gas valve. A couple of days later we had the new part installed and the boiler is now running brilliantly. Total - £360.

A far cry from the £2000 solution Homeserve were trying to push us. The PCB is functioning absolutely fine and it enraged us to find somebody had tried to fleece us.


OP - complete sympathies from this end. Sorry to hear you're having such a ride with this and I hope you manage to find resolution quickly. For what its worth, somebody mentioned just setting some pennies aside to cover servicing and repairs annually. I couldnt agree more - can't fault local service. People working for themselves have reputations to uphold and rely on quality of service to stay afloat.

Best of luck