Scottish Power Boiler Cover Terrible Service

chris322

I would like to share my appalling service from an ongoing issue with my Homecare boiler package from Scottish Power.

Sold to me as a weight of my mind boiler cover, the past 18 days without heating and hot water have left me stressed and Angry.

· Logged issue on Tues 15th November

· Engineer on site Thurs 17th - he asked me what the error message on boiler was and if I knew what it meant :-(

· Advised part needed (gas value) would take 2 to 5 days. - advised by support team part was not ordered until Sat morning 2 days after visit.

· Unable to book next appoint till part arrives. Part arrive Tues 22nd, next free engineer Friday 25th.

· Engineer arrives, replaces part by advise, this was not the fault with boiler. PCB fault. - Error E133 reported on advised if issue with condensation pipe being blocked or faulty PCB board.

· New part ordered with 2 to 5 lead time.

· Weds 30th new part arrives, next free engineer appoint Sunday 3rd December.

· Issue further escalated - brought forward to Sat 2nd.

· As away weekend unable to attend and on customer site next week so unable to have someone in flat during day.

· Unable to book Friday as local engineer is off and all other engineers are busy even though escalated.

· Currently 16 days without hot water and heating.

No call backs from Scottish Power when advised.

3 times escalated to manager and advised I would receive a call in 24 hours, no callback.

They have limited skill resources and massive demand which they are unable to fulfill causing massive lead-times and delays.

The experience has left me drained and very cold.

Surely they cannot justify charging for this service.

Scottish_Power

Hi chris322,

Sorry to hear about the poor service you have recevied.

Can you please e-mail me with your details to [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL] and I will have this escalated for you.

Kind regards

Graeme @ ScottishPower

bengasman

CHRISS322,

Please keep us informed of what the "helpful" company rep arranges for you. I would love to find out how much of their "help" is under the condition that you stop posting the company's failures.

Totallypeedoff_2

The service offered by your contractors in my area (Bournemouth) are appalling.

An annual service call was booked for December 9th.

My wife & I stayed in all day - no engineer arrived, no phone calls were received. When I phoned (circa 5.00 PM) I was told that the engineer had taken a day off for personal reasons and that they had tried to contact me. That's absolute rubbish - we were here all day, have an answer phone and checked "1471" which clearly showed no calls received.

A new appointment was made for Monday 19th, between 08.00 & 13.00.

No engineer had arrived by 14.30 so I called Scottish Power - after holding on while the situation was looked into I was told the engineer had had to take an emergency call out and this had delayed him, but that he would call me.

No call was received & no visit made. Another day spent at home for nothing.

DON'T JOIN THIS SCHEME - IT'S ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS - THEY WASTE YOUR TIME, LIE ABOUT THE REASONS, DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THEIR CLIENTS.

Rupert_Bear

chris322 wrote: »

I would like to share my appalling service from an ongoing issue with my Homecare boiler package from Scottish Power.

Sold to me as a weight of my mind boiler cover, the past 18 days without heating and hot water have left me stressed and Angry.

· Logged issue on Tues 15th November

· Engineer on site Thurs 17th - he asked me what the error message on boiler was and if I knew what it meant :-(

· Advised part needed (gas value) would take 2 to 5 days. - advised by support team part was not ordered until Sat morning 2 days after visit.

· Unable to book next appoint till part arrives. Part arrive Tues 22nd, next free engineer Friday 25th.

· Engineer arrives, replaces part by advise, this was not the fault with boiler. PCB fault. - Error E133 reported on advised if issue with condensation pipe being blocked or faulty PCB board.

· New part ordered with 2 to 5 lead time.

· Weds 30th new part arrives, next free engineer appoint Sunday 3rd December.

· Issue further escalated - brought forward to Sat 2nd.

· As away weekend unable to attend and on customer site next week so unable to have someone in flat during day.

· Unable to book Friday as local engineer is off and all other engineers are busy even though escalated.

· Currently 16 days without hot water and heating.

No call backs from Scottish Power when advised.

3 times escalated to manager and advised I would receive a call in 24 hours, no callback.

They have limited skill resources and massive demand which they are unable to fulfill causing massive lead-times and delays.

The experience has left me drained and very cold.

Surely they cannot justify charging for this service.

Ditch them. We have Homecare with British Gas and excellent. Been with them for 5 years and never an issue.

C_Mababejive

The idea is that if you are a clueless "engineer"....you dont spend time on the problem ,you simply order a part for the day you are off then it becomes some other poor suckers' problem..

rjohn2000

Do not touch this company with a barge pole when it comes to Boiler Cover. I have had the same experience with my cover. The 3rd party engineers turn up, diagnose the wrong part (i don't think they carry any replacement parts) and then you have to wait a week before they can get a hold of the part. When the part does eventaully arrive, the cycle starts again because they misdiagnosed the fault. From the coversations with Scottish Power you would be led to believe that it is easier to find moon rock than to find a replacement part. Cant believe this is happening in this day and age. I'd understand if the boiler was old and the parts were becoming obsolete, however they don't even carry the most common parts for the most common boilers. Still without a working boiler 1 week later. Will be looking to end my relationship with this company asap.

TheReluctantProtester

Having read chris322's post, this moan seems tame in comparison...

I am a Homecare customer as I thought it would be an investment.

My boiler service was due to take place on the 13th December 2011 and a very knowledgeable engineer came out. Sadly he was unable to undertake the service of the boiler as, despite me previously informing Scottish Power as to the make and model of the unit, it needed specialist parts and would be a two man job. The engineer explained everything to me and I felt satisfied. After all, I had never had any problems with the boiler and naively thought that parts would come quickly.

I called Scottish Power in the second week of January to inquire as to the status of this 12 month service. They said the part still was not in but they would call when the parts arrived.

Scottish Power called last week asking me to choose an appointment day. I chose Monday 30th January as it gave me a week to cancel meetings from work.

The engineer called at 8am to say he would be arriving between 9am and 10am! Yay! At 9.10am, the engineer arrived... on his own! When I queried this, the engineer assured me that the job could be completed by one man on his own but would be quicker with two.

The engineer proceeded to tell me how great my boiler was until it came to maintenance or breakdown and I explained that in nearly four years, I had never had a problem.

At around 10.30am, I nipped upstairs (to take the engineer a coffee) and he was fiddling with the timer switch. He then said "oh, your switch doesn't seem to work." I explained that I have only ever had my heat on a timer so it was working two hours before. He said not to worry and he would sort it then check my radiators and thermostat. I thought "great!"

I then had to take a phone call from my line manager. When I went back to the engineer, he said the problem was sorted and that he had to get to his next appointment. I asked if he needed to check the radiators, to which he replied "no need, it is all working."

After I let the engineer out, I realised that the boiler wasn't making any noise so had a look. All the screens were displaying correctly but no hot water or heating were working on the timer or constant setting!

As the engineer was driving, I text asking if he had left something off. He told me to flick the switch to constant hot water. I did... nothing happened. I text back saying this. He replied "I will order a part."

At this stage, I thought how did he assess what was wrong unless he left my house knowing it was not working.

I called Scottish Power. Their customer service people said they could understand my suspicions. They transferred me to Homecare who agreed and said they'd look into it.

Two hours later the engineer text saying he'd ordered the parts and would be a few days before it arrived.

Scottish Power then phoned saying the engineer suspected there would be a problem when he left!

Anyway, Scottish Power did call today to say the part would be in on Friday and the same engineer would be back during the day to rectify it.

There are many problems to this a) my boyfriend has had to move out as he has Type 2 diabetes and the cold affected him too much last night b) I cannot really afford to take another day off work and c) what if the part is wrong because the engineer wasn't there to assess why it wasn't working??

I finally got Scottish Power to request a late afternoon appointment on Friday but could tell the customer service lady felt I was a nuisance because she thought I'd do anything to get my heating back!

What if my boiler had broken of it's own accord? Would I have had to wait over a week for someone to come out and look then order a part and wait again?? As far as I know, I have a common boiler from houses of this age (10 years)

Am I being unreasonable to be disappointed in the Homecare service, for a working boiler, at the coldest time of the year when there has been no apology from Scottish Power??

inkypinky999

this is scandalous.....can't we report Scottish power home insurance to ombudsman...if all customers who have had issues report certainly something will happen....

it is getting sad and sad here

C_Mababejive

Truth is that there is only so low you can go.

If you want highly skilled,high quality motivated and happy gas engineers then you need to recruit people of reasonable intelligence with a good base skillset and mindset. Supply high quality training and equip and support them so that they can provide good quality efficient customer service. Unfortunately that costs money and so you then have to charge a decent rate to customers for service contracts.


If customers want to pay a cheapo rate and still get excellent service,believe me,,it aint going to happen,


The truth is that many of these companies now have a low skilled pool of "fitters" ..not real engineers..who fly round with their pants on fire trying to deal with a big work load. If it aint a quick fix,they have a good guess,order a part and preferably arrange it for when they are not in,thus usurping ownership of the job and moving on.

You guys in the industry..tell me im lying !!

frozenpensioner

I've just come in on this so excuse me if I've lost the thread somewhere. I have had no heating or hot water since 30.01.12 - ok I know its only 4 days but I'm a pensioner (with a variety of illnesses), having to live in one room of my house because its the only way to stay warm - its -10 outside! Every time a certain Engineer touches my boiler something else goes wrong. He was supposed to give me hot water on 30th, but instead, after putting a new cartridge into the actuator, the following morning the hydronics pump melted, all the water poured out and the wires have burned. Because the engineers are 75miles away I believe they are just making excuses and saying the parts are not in when they are because they don't want to drive all this way just for me. Scottish Power need to get more engineers to cover the whole country so they can cope with emergency breakdowns. Please cross everything that the boiler is finally fixed tomorrow and my heating back on and that it does NOT blow up as soon as the engineer has left the building.