domestic appliance repair costs...

andyox

We've just moved house and the built in gas oven (~6yrs old) seems to have a very noisy fan...

Does the manufacturer's service agent fee of £85 + parts seem OK? It seems difficult to find a local shop 'appliance' electrician (hopefully GORGI registered?) so may I have no option.

Andy

kwatt

If that's all the labour inclusive then it's not too bad really.

CORGI registered engineers are very, very thin on the ground as we have to jump through all the same hoops as anyone else doing a CORGI course for not a lot of return on the investment, which makes it pretty expensive.

We've been trying to convince CORGI & the HSE to adopt a "limited scope" course that would encourage more engineers (we hope) to take it on and reduce the costs but so far, no luck.

K.

ormus

do you really need a corgi man to fix an electrical part on an oven?
if so, then would a corgi man be allowed to fix my bathroom light?

kwatt

Hi Ormus,

That's a huge grey area I'm afraid, not made any clearer by CORGI or HSE guidlines.

The bottom line is that, according to CORGI & the HSE, that the last person that was working on the cooker (or any gas appliance) is responsible for it being repaired/installed correctly regardless of the failure thereafter. In practice what that means is that should a non-CORGI chap fix the element for example, he can then be held responsible if the cooker starts leaking CO2 even although he had nothing to do with that area. The rules state that the appliance must be left in a "safe" condition but that is not very clearly defined.

If for any reason, other than disconnection via a bayonett, the gas supply is disrupted then a drop test must be performed and that can only be certificated by a CORGI registered person. Trouble is, you don't know that until you get there.

And, when you do that, you are supposed to, by the letter of the law, take responsibility for every gas appliance ion the home although there are ways around that. I don't mean by cheating but what is a common practice is that, should a leak be detected on another gas appliance, appliance repairers will generally shut down the supply and call TRANSCO as they have not the expertise on other gas appliances, like boilers etc.

So far as we appliance repairers are concerned our responsibility ends where the cooker or hob connects to the supply. Our only interest is in the appliance itself, no more, so long as the installation is okay for ventilation etc.

Plus, as soon as you touch gas appliance, your public liability insurance costs soar.

These are the basic reasons why so many repairers don't touch gas appliances at all.

And the totally insane bit of this is, the general public can do whatever they like to thier appliance with no comeback which, as I've witnessed many times, can be far more dangerous and even in some cases, deadly.

K.

andyox

Thanks all, we had a corgi gas engineer come and look at the gas oven. £65 call out. He said that the repair - part and labour would be about £180 +vat, and so we would be best looking for a new oven. He also fixed a minor gas leak at the cooker supply connection. Interesting to read above about the last servicing eng. being responsible! A decent new double built-in gas oven is about £400-500, so I suppose we would get a new oven, but it's going to cost more!

(I've also just posted in 'money saving' - about whether gas is cheaper to run than electric).

Andy