Home Group - Complaint

stelee844

Hopefully I'm writing this in the right place.
Currrently I rent a property through a company called Home Group,
However since moving in a little over a year ago we have had countless issues at the property.

Mould in the Bedroom, Bathroom and Hallway (Took 5 months to fix) Leaking sink in both the kitchen and bathroom (Took 4 months to fix) Leak from under the boiler (more coming on this a little later in the post) - This required us to empty a mop bucket full of water every day. (now fixed after 8 months)

Prior to moving into the one bedroom property, There were 12 people living in the property so it was in quite a poor state of did-repair, No checks were carried out by home group to ensure that the property was habitable. A lot of clothing and fabric furnishing were damaged due to the mould and we spent the first five months living in the living room due to the other rooms just being unbearable.

Multiple complaints have been made to home group regarding the above issues (which eventually resulted in the issues being fixed) however now I find myself needing to complain again and I am struggling to see the point because of their lack of interest.

In April 2017, An annual boiler safety check was carried out and it "passed" with flying colours. 2 days later the boiler presented a error code, This would take 20-30 resets before eventually providing heating/hot water for a around 5 minutes and then would once again require 20-30 resets to get the heating/hot water back again. This was reported and an engineer attented stating that because we can get a gas supply after the multiple resets they were not allowed to carry out repairs.
Since having our annual safety check we had noticed a faint smell of gas, Having never really had a gas boiler before we thought this was common when the boiler ignited and never really did anything about it however the smell of gas was getting considerably worse as the time went on, It was then that we had a knock on the door from "SGN" who had received reports of a strong smell of gas from passersby and promptly discovered we had a gas leak. SGN disconnected us from mains supply and we were now without any heating/hot water. Several calls to Home Group were made and 6 Engineers came and went (Another 4 engineers just didn't bother turning up to the appointment) and eventually the leak was fixed and a new ignition fitted. This resolved the issues over the summer months where the boiler wasn't really used only for the occasional shower however the last few weeks we've had a new error code appear E168.

This was reported to Home Group last Saturday after the 20-30 reset cycle started again and they assured us that somebody would attend within 6 hours. (Pretty prompt service we thought), Nobody turned up.
The following day we asked to make a complaint and requested the boiler be looked at - Nobody turned up.

Yesterday we reported this again and to our surprise there was a knock on the door. Could it be the boiler repair guy? Was he actually real? I opened the door and was greeted by "Dave" (Don't remember if that was actually his name), "You've reported a fault with your boiler?" - Could this be the end of our boiler debacle?. No obviously. He continued "Now unfortunately the Gas safe engineer has called in sick and I'm just a plumber so I cant get the boiler working". Obviously we were confused as to why he has even bothered attending so questioned why he had been sent, He advised us that the typical gas engineer has been off sick and to avoid penalties they just need to make sure somebody attends. - He openly admitted that he was due to attend the week before however had spoken to his head office to advise that he couldn't keep up with the appointments as he was working plumming jobs and gas related jobs and that he's not legally allowed to look at the boiler.

He apologised to us and said to that we should complain to the press and our local councillor and "hopefully" we would get something sorted. At the time our main concern was getting heating and hot water so we asked him what we should do. He advised us that because its now 5 o clock it will be just him working the "emergency repairs" and he's not qualified to do anything so it would be best to call in the morning. After the plumber had left we called home group to ask what the **** was going on. They assured us they do have gas safe engineers available and would expect to have someone come take a look by 9pm... Nobody turned up.

So now, its today and we have an engineer due before 10am (Very prompt for a call made at 8am) but its now 10:30...

In summary I'm really struggling of where to turn, Home Group constantly state that they have no record of our many complaints, They failed to care about the damage that was caused to our belonging and don't seem to be interested in the fact that we are constantly without heating and hot water. A residents meeting was held a month or two ago (We thought strength in numbers might work) and 50+ issues were raised over the 4 properties. Home Group failed to respond. Any suggestions (Sorry for the long ranting post)

DaftyDuck

Move.

Sorry if that doesn't seem constructive, but you can't hope to change the service when it's that bad over a number of properties. Vote with your feet.