Watchdog tonight 19/04/12

bondy01

Item on tonight about a major provider condemning boilers that are still working fine. I'd love to have a guess who it may be but I could be wrong. Could be worth a watch.

[Deleted User]

I ll be watching that, I know watchdog have got it in for good old British Gas so thats my guess

[Deleted User]

I enjoyed watching that Brit Gas rep squirming in front of Anne, and playing the safety angle as his only defence.Hope they were thinking of safety when they phoned the 91 year old fragile old lady who could hardly walk, to get the electric meter reading high up over the door.I m hoping hes back in that chair soon to answer that one,(ref to my thread 7/3/12. british gas, now phoning customers for meter readings")

ihateyes

bondy01 wrote: »

Item on tonight about a major provider condemning boilers that are still working fine. I'd love to have a guess who it may be but I could be wrong. Could be worth a watch.

considering at the end of last weeks program they said it was british gas seeing as the program description in the tv guides say its british gas, il take a good guess without seeing it, it was BRITISH GAS!

ihateyes

sacsquacco wrote: »

I enjoyed watching that Brit Gas rep squirming

that rep was the MD of services for BG..... i think it would take more than Ann for him to squirm as well.

Shoddy if true though.....

ollski

An organisation the size of bg and thats the worst they could find?, the only genuine complaint really being the gas valve which was incorrectly advised. All 3 models long in the tooth with reduced parts availability , I think the company came out of it pretty well, it smacked of desperate reporting with Anne not even being able to pin it on commissions.

prosaver

il have to watch it on iplayer

prosaver

they are scum....
watch it and see...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00r98js

subby45

british gas look after their world - every single home repair visit or service visit is treated as a sales call - engineers are "encouraged" to offer bast advice at each visit. In reality this means encourage the client to buy - from CO alarms through to system replacements, regardless of age, ability to pay (finance available) or actual necessity. EVERY service manager is targeted on their teams' sales for each week and considerable pressure is put on to engineers to meet these targets - if they don't these service managers tend to "help out" with a variety of techniques,often accompanying their under performing engineers and putting the hard word on to customers.
How do I know? I was unfortunate enough to do some sub-contract work for these rogues over a year ago as a sevice and repair engineer. I was constantly bombarded with calls from my SM as to why I wasn't bringing in enough leads to "grow the business" and he seemed genuinely peeved when I told him that I was there to carry out repairs and servicing and not to sell boilers to people who did not need them. They really are appalling and unscrupulous - quite happy to try to sell a new boiler to an 86 year old woman who was hardly likely to enjoy the benefits for much longer.
This report only scratched the surface - there are thousands of people every year who are led into having unnecessary and often costly work done by people they have been loyal to for years and who they trust.

ollski

Absolutely true but the majority of engineers have the intelligence to give the correct advice as and where needed, this is business in the scale of the big nationals and the independents, do you imagine a one man band works for charity?. Are 86 year olds not allowed to choose to replace their boiler or buy themselves anything new as 'they may be dead soon'?

Cardew

We had until recently a very helpful poster who works for the BG Servicing department. He stated that there is a financial incentive for fitters to give 'leads' to sales staff.

I have a 24 year old boiler that I had covered by BG until a few years ago until I got letters informing me that parts were getting unobtainable - followed by letters try to sell me a new boiler.

I left! - the boiler is still going strong and parts are available on-line.

P.S.
As for Watchdog, I was squirming at the rudeness of Ann Robinson - she would do well in the Star Chamber!