Central Heating / Range Cooker Disaster

j88olt

This horror story unfolded after buying an oil-fired range for central heating and cooking in December 2012. It has been a nightmare purchase and Vintage Ranges who built and supplied it has been a truly horrible company to deal with. The range was eventually delivered 7 months late after chasing the owner, John Cleary, around the UK. He now trades out of a unit based in Brundish, Suffolk.

My experience has been pretty awful. First the range had inherent manufacturing faults: One lid doesn't fit property, the door hinges are bent, one door catch was broken off, patches of rust on the base... Then two days after installation of the range by an OFTEC oil engineer the left hand hot plate was searing hot at the back when only the central heating burner was on. When the cooker boiler was turn on and turn up gradually, excessive heat transferred across the hot plates so fast that the surrounding top plate exploded in 3 different places - one measuring 10 x 2.5cm.

A couple of days later, again with only the central heating burner on (position 2) black fumes were belching out of the fan flue and the house was full of black, potentially dangerous fumes. Vintage Ranges was informed and Cleary asked to inspect the damage but instead disassembled the boiler, leaving it in pieces which meant that OFTEC was unable to investigate the root cause. The blast tube was two thirds melted and other adjacent components melted.

It cost me £2000 to get the house cleaned from top to bottom.

Thankfully no-one was killed or harmed as the house was empty at the time.

Because John Cleary, the manufacturer, disassembled the boiler before OFTEC could examine it he cleverly avoided investigation of the appliance by them. Alarmingly OFTEC allow him to commission ranges when he is not OFTEC registered to do so!!!

Health and Safety / Trading Standards were informed in early January and have not even requested to inspect it!!

Three months on and I still don't have a working range as protracted discussions with John Cleary have led nowhere. He has refused to replace, refund or repair the range, only offering to undertake replacement of parts and full refurbishment at my cost.

It was very interesting to read a comment of his in a post on the ukplumbersforum that read:
"Best advice for anyone with problems with a Heritage is to demand of them that they remove it immediately and replace it with a Vintage Range and to pay for the distress and replacement costs. I designed and founded Heritage in 1999, I chose an 'Undesirable' business partner, a strange one! Took him to task and then created Vintage."

It's a shame John Cleary doesn't practice what he preaches!

I am posting this information as a warning to anyone thinking of getting a Vintage Range and I would be interested to hear from anyone with problems associated with John Cleary / Vintage Ranges.

To see the damage and distress this range has caused take a look at my Youtube video by searching for 'Range Cooker Disaster'