Boiler repair ripoffs

C_Mababejive

#9 About 10 years ago i sat in a solicitors office for all of 10 minutes and the end result was that they wrote a letter on my behalf. Total bill,about £100 i think.

Even these days..get an estate agent to send a young kid round with a carp camera to take some carp pics. Put them on a website and hey presto...a couple of grand.

Get a black cab to run you a couple of miles down the road ? £30 please Squire.

#10.. I dont know if there is an over supply of gas people but there are plenty of rubbish ones who are dangerous and clueless. The possession of a bit of paper issued by the charlatans at GSR is no guarantee of skill,ability or knowledge.

giraffe69

(£79 for half an hour's work! I wish...nice money if you can get it)

Although it is blindingly obvious the charge of £79 does not all go to the engineer. Apart from items like his travel there is a network supporting the engineers/customers. It may still be expensive but at least make some valid comparisons instead of spouting complete nonsense.

ollski

[Deleted User] wrote:

Seems some people are happy to pay ridiculous prices for whatever. Just because a thing is what it is doesn't mean it is right. Like all fuel prices. Are they OK too? How high do prices have to go before the British think it is enough? Doesn't anybody read the news? These big companies are making a fortune out of us - BG one of them. People can't afford to heat their homes or pay for boiler repairs. My mother on her pension certainly cannot.

I don't neccessarily think the rising cost is wrong, it has certainly made the public much less complacent and much more aware of fuel efficiency. I might reconsider when we start hitting the sort of prices paid in the rest of Europe though. I think if you found the figures for the profit per customer from bg you may be surprised.

[Deleted User] wrote:

£20 an hour "lowly". that's at least half the working population who get less than that. I wish I could find somebody to fix the roof for that. A tradesman typically does charge for his traveling time, which I think is fair enough actually, it's just the cost of it I don't think is always justified. Has anybody worked out how much £40-£50 an hour is on a yearly basis? 3 days work would be fine for me at that rate. Graduates after paying all that money to study and 3 years or more study don't get anywhere near that rate, most of them.

I don't really understand why you feel you should be better than a 'tradesman' .That 50.00 for the hour spent on your job may also be covering an hour of travelling to get to and from you, a gallon of fuel, queuing time in a merchants, a proportion of the considerable cost of vehicle lease, personal liability insurance, vehicle tax/ insurance, workwear /tools, vehicle maintainance, equipment calibration, qualification updating and retraining, professional body membership, gas work notifications, paperwork, accountant, contribution to sick pay and annual leave....to name but a few.

[Deleted User] wrote:

I do not think £150 to £200 for a simple repair is fair. I do not think £79 just to spend half an hour checking a boiler is fair. (£79 for half an hour's work! I wish...nice money if you can get it) At that rate all would have to do is work 2 or 3 hours and I'd be over the moon. I am forced to pay it because heat and hot water is as necessary as food. and when we have a need suppliers will exploit it. That's what supply and demand is - exploitation of the weakest. I prefer a world of fairness.

The reason you do not think it's fair is because you do not understand the costs of running a business. Heat and hot water are a basic neccessity...a convenient form of provision is not. A kettle and electric heater or coal fire will adequately provide both eliminating any need for these pesky rip-off tradesmen. A boiler is your luxurious choice.

[Deleted User] wrote:

Anybody watched Rogue Trader? The idea that if you pay a lot you will get the best work doesn't stand up. Only experience will get you good work done.

I think I get better value from my car mechanic. In comparison to boiler parts, car parts are cheap. I use the same garages and get good work done at a fair price - especially if I buy my own parts (tradesman's nightmare I know!).

Then use your car mechanic to fix your boiler, otherwise there is no comparison to be made here.

[Deleted User] wrote:

The spare part prices are over the top. So someone somewhere is keeping them high. Price for price compared to other goods they are not worth the price we have to pay. I dismantled the diverter motor. Sorry, not worth the £70 I had to pay, either in construction or component terms. True price should be about £10 or £20.

There is no monopoly, central heating spare parts are a fiercely competetive market. If the true price is 10 or 20 then that would be the price. It's not.

[Deleted User] wrote:

And the main point of course is that our wages (most of us) and pensions are not enough to cover such costs. Anyone noticed that shops are closing down, sales are on early - why? Because these basic bills are so big nowadays we don't have enough surplus cash to go on shopping sprees.

I think at school children should get careers advice based on what their hourly rate might be when they start a job. You wouldn't do nursing or teaching or be a policeman. Everything right now in the UK is back to front and working against the generality of people. Prices and costs are right out of control. That's why we are in such a financial mess. I say "we" but we didn't cause it of course.

And finally, if I could just say to my boss when I have one, I'd like say £30 an hour please and he would say yes of course, Merry Christmas. Some people her must be high earners. That's good, if you can get it.

Almost agree we are in a total mess as the last 30 years has turned us into a service industry led consumerist society. We can no longer afford either luxury and don't have enough innovation or manufacturing to keep the wheels turning. Just because we have been a leading power doesn't mean we have an inalienable right to remain one.

[Deleted User]

a gallon of fuel, queuing time in a merchants, a proportion of the considerable cost of vehicle lease, personal liability insurance, vehicle tax/ insurance, workwear /tools, vehicle maintainance, equipment calibration, qualification updating and retraining, professional body membership, gas work notifications, paperwork, accountant, contribution to sick pay and annual leave.

Tell me about it! I often work as a "contractor" - you forgot to mention accommodation expenses if away from home. I once got £30 an hour. It's usually £25. No pension contribution. No travel costs. No security. Now if I got £50 I'd be well off by now. All workers have to pay for travel, car etc etc.

If the true price is 10 or 20 then that would be the price.

You must be joking! Only if there was real competition like in the car part industry. Price fixing and cartels are common all over the world. You think the trainers you buy are the true price? Or denim jeans? Lots of reports on sweat shop production...But we don't need those things so I don't care about the prices too much.

About price: if I buy 10 of those bits of plastic and tiny motors (converter motor) they might cost me £700. I can get a whole boiler for about that! I think that provides a certain perspective...

Price = what you can get or what the market will bear. People are not buying jeans, shoes etc, even Currys consumables because they don't have to and are spending all their money on just paying for overpriced essential goods.

Some people seem to cling to an unsupportable belief in "market forces". Market forces have just about bankrupted countries recently or hasn't anybody noticed? And we are all paying for the greed and mistakes of our "industry leaders" while those same leaders are still there making a fortune at our expense. Market forces are good for things like Mars Bars and Shoes, things we can do without or make do with. But some essentials should be run for the benefit of the people - like fuel and food and rents and housing costs. Like it used to be. We would then have National Energy, National Trains, and everything owned and run by British people for British people. Instead of everything just mentioned now being owned by Germans, French, Chinese and anybody but British. If we accept that the current cost of repairing heating and hot water is the "true cost" then poorer people would get a cheaper price - there would be a variable, regulated price. That stops people from getting greedy and exploitative. That's mixed capitalism. Off subject. That's enough from me. At least it got a debate about prices and wages. We should all be paid a decent living wage rather than a survival wage (for many people) and then some of us wouldn't panic when they get heating bills...

ollski

[Deleted User] wrote:

Tell me about it! I often work as a "contractor" - you forgot to mention accommodation expenses if away from home. I once got £30 an hour. It's usually £25. No pension contribution. No travel costs. No security. Now if I got £50 I'd be well off by now. All workers have to pay for travel, car etc etc.

You must be joking! Only if there was real competition like in the car part industry. Price fixing and cartels are common all over the world. You think the trainers you buy are the true price? Or denim jeans? Lots of reports on sweat shop production...But we don't need those things so I don't care about the prices too much.

About price: if I buy 10 of those bits of plastic and tiny motors (converter motor) they might cost me £700. I can get a whole boiler for about that! I think that provides a certain perspective...

To be fair all workers do pay for car, transport etc but usually out of their net salary, you are asking specifically why your repair cost is justified where the transport is part of the job cost.
You are clearly missing a trick. If the price of the part is 10.00 then simply make 50 an hour and sell them for 11.00. Hey presto......now you're on 50.00 per hour too. Simply get a degree to justify your income and you can sleep soundly in your bed.

[Deleted User]

You are clearly missing a trick. If the price of the part is 10.00 then simply make 50 an hour and sell them for 11.00. Hey presto......now you're on 50.00 per hour too. Simply get a degree to justify your income and you can sleep soundly in your bed.

Haha. Yes. Could be a good idea.

I just found this from Which? report 2011:

Four out of 10 boiler engineers failed to do their job properly in a Which? undercover test - with two recommending hundreds of pounds of unnecessary work.
When we asked 10 boiler engineers - independents and big brands - to service a boiler with a minor fault, we uncovered shoddy workmanship and two engineers ready to undertake hundreds of pounds worth of unnecessary work. We also found that one engineer sub-contracted by national brand Homeserve failed to fully service the boiler.
British Gas fully serviced the boiler - eventually. It took the company three appointments to do the service, firstly because of a booking error and then because the engineer who turned up refused to touch the boiler since it had a minor fault.

http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/heating-water-and-electricity/reviews-ns/boiler-services-and-boiler-repairs/

A good worker of any category is like gold. There are lots of good ones out there. What we need is John Major's Charter Mark scheme brought back. It was his one good idea. I have to say the blokes who did my mother's installation seem to have done a very good job right down to the labelling of every pipe with the electrical ground seal. I wish I'd taken a few numbers (from Warmsure). I'm now looking inot dual-fuel stoves. Not cheaper but more reliable it seems. And more fun.

[Deleted User]

I started a wiki page (my real job) and if anyone wants to maintain it or create their own page on the same topic let me know and I'll create access for you.

http://mediawiki.healthwealthandmusic.co.uk/index.php?title=Combi_Boilers_and_Central_Heating

fishybusiness

The best advice your Wiki gives is....

Don't touch the gas system - leave that to a qualified engineer

How much are they an hour?

How do consumers know where to draw the line between a 'gas' system and a 'water' system?

[Deleted User]

http://www.whatprice.co.uk/ for some prices. Useful for other things too.

Some publicly available Which reports - http://www.which.co.uk/home-and-garden/heating-water-and-electricity/

Pincher

It's a case of the blind cheating the blind.

I was chatting to a facilities manager a few years ago,
and they have to specify the work to the minutest detail,
listing regulations, put out to tender, then inspect the work stage by stage. £80 to change a light bulb suddenly makes sense.

Your average householder barely knows what a TRV is.

Let's face it, Margaret Thatcher told a bunch of village idiots they can buy houses, and so they did. She didn't tell them houses need continuous upkeep, and the morons just look surprised when the boiler breaks.

There was a case some years ago, where a London Borough rented a house from a private landlord, to house a family of Romanian Gypsies. They didn't know how to use the central heating, so they started a camp fire in the living room! Are they really that far away from a typical house owner?

People look down on council estate louts who drive around without insurance, and then they buy houses with mortgages they can barely afford, and find lowest quote cowboys to fix stuff.

Drug dealers thrive because there are customers who ask for it.
Cowboys exist because there are fools who hand over money without knowing what it's for.