£500 boiler repair! Can I do anything?

robby-01

Your boiler was broke and now it isn't.
You asked the guy to fix it and he did.The price seems fair to me,others are taking a different view.It is all irrelevant the job is done.You made a mistake by not asking for an estimated cost .
How can you start questioning the bill now?
Pay up ,he's honoured his side of the contract ,time for you to honour yours.

paullj_2

robby-01 wrote:

Your boiler was broke and now it isn't.
You asked the guy to fix it and he did.The price seems fair to me,others are taking a different view.It is all irrelevant the job is done.You made a mistake by not asking for an estimated cost .
How can you start questioning the bill now?
Pay up ,he's honoured his side of the contract ,time for you to honour yours.

True in part but the question is - "Is it ethical to expect the customer to pay the bill for on site training ?" If we all took the 'suck it and see' approach to fixing problems it would come as no surprise to find costs escalating.

The 'engineer' has a duty to do his best for the customer and mis-diagnosis is hardly that.

Personally I would pay for the labour and the new fan but let them whistle for the Circuit Board. Oh and never use them again !!

robby-01

You are only assuming that the pcb was not faulty .The op asked for his boiler to be repaired and that is what he got.He should have voiced his concerns at the time.
I personally have had to diagnose many faults on boilers in commercial installations and never think twice about telephoning the manufacturers helplines for technical advice,It makes sense, it can save a lot of time and is surely no different from reading a fault finding guide in the instruction manual.
The op should pay up

ollyk

robby-01 wrote:

You are only assuming that the pcb was not faulty .The op asked for his boiler to be repaired and that is what he got.He should have voiced his concerns at the time.
I personally have had to diagnose many faults on boilers in commercial installations and never think twice about telephoning the manufacturers helplines for technical advice,It makes sense, it can save a lot of time and is surely no different from reading a fault finding guide in the instruction manual.
The op should pay up

The PCB was clearly not faulty for the reasons they stated! And ringing tech is actually very different from reading a manual. Sometimes that phone call can be nescesary to even the most seasoned engineer / technician, but all to often it is the far easier option.

robby-01

ollyk wrote:

The PCB was clearly not faulty for the reasons they stated! And ringing tech is actually very different from reading a manual. Sometimes that phone call can be nescesary to even the most seasoned engineer / technician, but all to often it is the far easier option.

So you can from the information given by the op diagnose that the pcb was not at fault.
You cant,both components could have been faulty.
So what if the engineer took the easier option of telephoning the manufacturer for advice how is that different than following a flow chart in a manual.What shame is there in that
The op should pay up.Otherwise he may quite rightly find himself in the small claims court.

ollyk

robby-01 wrote:

So you can from the information given by the op you can diagnose that the pcb was not at fault.
You cant,both components could have been faulty.
So what if the engineer took the easier option of telephoning the manufacturer for advice how is that different than following a flow chart in a manual.What shame is there in that
The op should pay up.Otherwise he may quite rightly find himself in the small claims court.

I am sorry but the engineer replaced the pcb, the new one didn't solve the problem. He then blamed failure of the old PCB on the new diagnoses that the fan was faulty (how has he suddenly come to this conclusion?) hence knocking out the old PCB. Why didn't the faulty fan also kill the new replacement PCB?

Please give me a logical *likely* list of events that would lead a fully competent and experienced engineer to repair this boiler in the method that has been described?

Also I didn't say ringing tech for advice was anything to be ashamed of, but I would suggest that what sounds like a fairly simple fault I would suspect anyone who actually knows how to use test equipment properly would have quickly found a duff motor and replaced this as the first course of action!

ilovemycats

A verrrry similar story here.

Our modern boiler stopped lighting. It's 18-months old and in a brand new house. I called out this local guy and he immiediately said it was the circuit board. So, board fitted and it still didn't work. This was on a Friday night then he arranged to come round on the Sunday. He never turned up!!! And his phone was switched off.

In the meantime I'd figured that the boiler was under guarantee. So on the Monday morning I phoned up the boiler people. Then I quickly put the old PCB back onto the boiler. They arrived and within about 30-seconds said it sounded like a blocked condensation trap. They cut and cleaned out the pipes. Hey presto, 20-minutes later, working boiler.

In the bottom of my wardrobe I have a brand new and boxed PCB, and this original fly by night jack of all trades engineer hasn't been seen since. That was 3-weeks ago.

I just know that a bill will eventually turn up. And I've read the service manual for our boiler, where it says that the first thing that has to be done is that the boiler has to be serviced prior to replacing this and that.

This other engineer really was going to start replacing bit by bit, without doing the basic service checks in the first place. It would have never had worked even if he'd replaced the whole boiler as the trap pipes were blocked!!!!!!!!!!!

So. I await an invoice. To which my intention is to tell him to take me to court if he wants his money. We had no heating for a week during the cold snap in January. And if he was competent he could have solved it in a few minutes. All he was was a Corgi engineer on paper able to write out test certificates and do the most basic checks (which he didn't do!)

Like hell I'm paying him something that wasn't required.

It's like taking your car which won't start to the garage, and they replace the cylinder head, change the gaskets, change the alternator, the electrics. You name it, they change it.

When the problem was a faulty fuel sender and there was no petrol in it!!

robby-01

ollyk wrote:

I am sorry but the engineer replaced the pcb, the new one didn't solve the problem. He then blamed failure of the old PCB on the new diagnoses that the fan was faulty (how has he suddenly come to this conclusion?) hence knocking out the old PCB. Why didn't the faulty fan also kill the new replacement PCB?

Please give me a logical *likely* list of events that would lead a fully competent and experienced engineer to repair this boiler in the method that has been described?

Also I didn't say ringing tech for advice was anything to be ashamed of, but I would suggest that what sounds like a fairly simple fault I would suspect anyone who actually knows how to use test equipment properly would have quickly found a duff motor and replaced this as the first course of action!

I am not saying the engineers diagnosis was right or wrong how could i from a remote location.
You tell me why you are so sure his diagnosis is wrong and then present the op with the proof he will need to get a reduction in his bill.
After all that is what he wants.If he agrees with you he can go back to the engineer and say some bloke on the internet reckons the pcb board that you changed was not faulty and you have ripped me off.So I am not paying for it.
What do you reckon the engineer will say next?
I bet it ends in off.
Whatever you think may have happened here is totally irrelevant,the only advice the op should be given is to pay up,walk away and next time ask for an idea of the likely cost of the job.
The only person who can say if the op has been ripped off is the guy who did the work.

ilovemycats

The bit that stands out here is that they have to service the boiler first, and check it's in and out pipes, supply etc. It's written in black and white in every manual, and applies to lots of other systems other than gas boilers.

If your man didn't fully service your boiler immiediately before starting to fit parts and do the most basic checks, then he is incompetent and inexperienced.

Fact: The most basic checks have to be tested first.

For cars it's; Spark, fuel mixture, compression.

I'm a female yet I can still follow basic rules. Men just think that because you're female that you're stupid. My car doesn't always start as the solenoid sticks, to which I pop the bonnet and hit the starter motor with a little hammer. I've had busy body men tell me my timing is out. HTF they come to that conclusion I don't know.

No competent experienced engineer would every tell anyone something that ends in off!

Get a female engineer. They are out there.

robby-01

ilovemycats wrote:

It's like taking your car which won't start to the garage, and they replace the cylinder head, change the gaskets, change the alternator, the electrics. You name it, they change it.

When the problem was a faulty fuel sender and there was no petrol in it!!

Yeah but no one with half a brain lets a mechanic loose on a car without first agreeing what needs to be done.
In your case you have smelled a rat and caught one.Fair play I would have done the same.
The fundamental difference between your experience and the op's is that the first guy who came to your boiler did not sort out the problem,the guy who came to the the original posters did.
It is only now that he has the bill that he is complaining.
If your first guy sends you a bill just laugh at him.You didnt ask him to supply you with a new pcb you asked him to repair your boiler.