coverheat - full central heating cover

howieb5

Avoid this company at all costs. Their without doubt the worst company I've ever experienced.

Like many others I too had to wait weeks before finally they sent someone to inspect the boiler, the engineer past it as safe to use and as an advisory, nothing more said the boiler was plugged in via a plug socket rather than hardwired but this was ok.

This week my boiler packed in so I contacted coverhell and again they "had lost" my safety record. "Gary" based in Shoreham spoke to me like it was my fault that this had occured and that I would have to pay for labour as I hadn't got a safety record. I told him it was his engineer who visited! no empathy at all from them and they make YOU jump through all the hoops to fix their faults. Customer service is none existant with this company.

I sent a photocopy of the saftey record and they then refused to cover me due to the plug socket "advisory" on the record. I was appalled. If it was that bad and a hazard then I should have failed, it states the appliance is safe to use and the contractor who visited has also confirmed that this is the case. Coverhell wanted to charge me £340 to resolve the fault! outragous, I contacted the contractor direct and he fixed it for me for £88.45.

I can't stress how this company is bad, at all levels. The call centre is appaling, they don't do anything other than be rude, obnoxious and unhelpfull as possible, make you do all the running round (why should I have to speak to their contractors :mad: ) and simply pass the message on.

The troll that eventually calls you have no people skills, this companies a mess, I dread to think what would have happened had it been the winter and it had packed up

I'm going back to Britsh Gas, all is forgiven!!

Gordon_T_2

Looks like they are a bunch of cowboys myself. Obviously try to stop your account with them and do the relevant inroads to Trading Standards, small claims etc. In my opinion Corgi wont do anything unless its a safety issue and even then the HSE takes up the case but give it a try. All things being equal I am in the same mind about B Gas.
How do I know this you ask? Well as a heating engineer myself and being registered with Trading Standards, I currently have about 1200 customers on my books for servicing and doing repairs etc, (NOT fitting) most of whom come from these types of companies (90% are from BGas!). Do yourselves a favour and contact your local Trading Standards office to find someone who is registered with them. I doubt you will find a poor one as all are heavily vetted etc.
I hear tales of woe everyday about this and that company doing poor work or giving poor service. Nearly all engineers will revert to the safety factor of any job if they feel it would constitute a danger to anyone. Try not to blame them. We are all human afterall and some are better than others at thier job. Its obviously the company who is at fault if you dont get the satisfactory service you require. All boiler manufacturers have some sort of technical backup team in place for breakdowns. Waiting any more than 4 days for a repair in my eyes would be classed as a joke.
Good Luck in your quests.................G.

london_boy_3

and the small take away. Classic buy cheap pay twice scenario.

Like all these appliance cover policies there is too much red tape with these guys. Apparentley you have to have a yearly service on the boiler or your policies void!!! Kept that quiet CH. Not the main feature of your introduction letter!!!

Buyers beware...the gas saftey certificate they issue is NOT a service.

24hrs to respond by phone to an emergency call. Only responded after 4th call and not great telephone manner. Waste of my money. Couldnt be bothered to complain. Find a decent plumber and use them.

Oh and the cover (that I had) does not seem to cover boiler ignition systems. That caveat almost beats the cover I took out on my shower which does not cover for limescale problems. :rotfl:

amtrakuk

I goto say BG fleeced me. When I had my ravenheat combi and it went wrong I got it fixed thanks to a friendly neighbour and shortly after it started to play up again, this time accompanied by kettling noises. I joined BG Homecare which all went well and the engineer came round 3 days later. After about half an hour of him poking and prodding he got it working. Said thanks and thought no more of it until I went for a shower that night. Finished my shower and came down to find the pilot light had gone out again and I couldn't relight it. I phoned up BG again who sent out and enginner saw what it was doing and said it needed a new heat exchanger, which wasnt covered under the contract. Out came the blurb about the cost of a new boiler. He did however say I could turn on the central heating before I wanted to use hot water. When the radiators were hot I could run hot water without the pilot light going out.

Anyhow decided to scrap gas as it was gonna be ££££. When I finished converting to electric I cancelled my Homecare policy thinking that was that. I even had british gas phone me up saying I owed nothing. About 3 weeks later I had a bill for £75! When I phoned and asked an exclamation I was told it was because I terminated my homecare agreement. I reluctantly paid it. :mad:

Another_Gas_Man

terryba wrote: »

You are correct CoverHeat subcontracts to local agents.

I used uswitch to get a Gas Central Heating Protection Plan at a cost of £150 per year in November 2007 - I am still trying to get CoverHeat to come out and give my Boiler & System its 1st service and check up! So far I have wasted 3 whole days waiting for an engineer to come and do this service. Each time I phone their call centre I am told they have no record of my appoinment, I have also emailed them twice with no response. Beware of this so called service.

I am one of those contractors (or was until today) and because our company work to suit the customer needs, it would appear that COVERHEAT work a totaly differant system. We call on the customer, assess the problem and phone COVERHEAT for permission to carry out work, permission obtained on phone we do job, customer happy, we send in bill for work and 3 months later COVERHEAT refuses to pay account because no written quote was recieved before job done so though luck contractor. I have 42 years in the industry and it would appear that this forum complains about engineers who do not know what they are doing, but when a contractor with years of knowledge comes along, with the main aim of customer satisfaction, they lose him because they refuse to pay the bill. Wierd or what.???

smh_poole

Oh dear oh dear - I have only just taken out a CoverHeat policy - 'Home Protection Plan' @ £39 p/qtr. There flashy website states, amoungst other things:

• No one will beat us on price or reliability
• Customer satisfaction is our main concern

I've had no personal experience of CoverHeat, apart from phoning to organise my first service/safety check which I must say was booked very proefessionally and efficiently.

That said, I foolishly signed up for the contract without researching much first, simply worked out what cover I wanted and went for the cheapest.

Having read this thread I shall be cancelling my policy, which I have until Monday to do, in writing (According to the T&C I recieved), although you can actually do this by email, fax or in writing.

Has anyone got any recommendation for boiler cover? Policies from other providers looked so restrictive, but I guess if what I read here is correct, CoverHeat activley look for excuses not to pay up for, or agree to carry out required repairs.

Thanks all for your posts - Looks like you may well have saved me a whole world of stress and bother! :T

amtrakuk

I sued to be with British Gas homecare and got charged £75 to cancel! Their T&Cs say you maybe charged a cancelation fee of upto £125 - how they get to that figure I dont know.

All electric now so no £20 a month on maintenance

cdd101

Only consider coverheat if you want to be completely frustrated by an incompetent company! I choose coverheat as it was £50 cheaper than British Gas. I took a day off work for the initial inspection of my boiler. They were meant to arrive between 8 and 1. I phoned at 1.15 and was told to leave my mob number they would get back to me. I phoned again at 2.30 I was told that they had no record of this and they could not assess my boiler that day. I was told that they are not able to do the inspection at weekends or after 1800 when I finish work and that I would have to take another day of work. When I stated I did not feel this was good enough they were no help. I cancelled my policy and after 3weeks, over 10 phone calls, emails and letters I received a letter to say that they had cancelled my policy but they refuse to give a refund. Still continuing to fight for a refund.

Killmydebt_2

Hi All,

Just read all these posts and glad to see I'm not alone! My situation with this excuse for a company is over now but someone may benefit from what I found out. I won't go into all the details of failed visits and cancelled appointments as I'll be repeating a lot of what is already here.

The one I will go into is the last failed visit I had; we booked it via email and Coverheat confirmed an afternoon appointment, so my (self-employed) wife took the afternoon off for the engineer to come (first inspection visit - only 3 months late!). She had already wasted one afternoon for an engineer no-show.

This time the engineer phoned my workplace in the morning and left a message to ask if he could come in the morning instead. I didn't get the message until nearly lunchtime and relayed it to my wife who phoned him straight away. He said he couldn't come in the afternoon now. When my wife complained that he was booked for the pm and she had taken the pm off, he said his job sheet specified am or pm and if there was a problem she should call Coverheat. She did and was promised the usual call back from a manager, which never came. After two weeks of trying to get a call back we received a £30 bill for an aborted visit.

Once I had peeled myself off the ceiling and my head temperature had got back below 100 degreesC I emailed Coverheat, my wife phoned them and I sent them recorded delivery letters, every time detailing what had happened and why this bill should be cancelled. I also complained to the Financial Ombudsman, who eventually wrote back to say they couldn't do anything because it was a service contract, not an insurance policy. Meanwhile Coverheat had carried on sending demands for payment.

I wanted to cancel so I scoured the terms and conditions and it was indeed in there that if you wanted to cancel after the first 30 days you still had to pay for the policy (that, as said before is a service contract - not a policy). A hard pill to swallow but I was prepared to do it just to end the saga..... but I still wasn't paying the £30 missed call out bill. Coverheat said I had to to get the policy cancelled.

I went and got 1/2 hour free legal advice and was told that I was technically required to pay for the 'policy' but the £30 bill was a breach of contract and I shouldn't pay.

The very nice Solicitor told me to write to them and enclose a cheque for whatever I wanted to pay and that the letter should be headed 'Without Prejudice' - which meant I was not accepting any responsibility, nor assigning any. She also said that in the letter it should say that I am offering the cheque for this amount 'In Full and Final Settlement' of the matter, and to write 'In Full and Final Settlement' on the back of the cheque.... and to photocopy it.

She said if they cashed the cheque they would have no more come back and even if they did want to pursue it the cost to them to take me to court (£85 I think) would be more than the bill so they would be unlikely to do that. If they decided to send debt collectors round I was to show them the copy of the letter and cheque and a copy of the statement that shows it had been cashed - no debt to be collected!

As it was they cashed the cheque and I never heard any more. I did give them a stinking review on Moneysupermarket and would encourage everyone else here who hasn't already done that to go and do it. The reviews are often the first place people look before buying a service (shame I didn't). What is interesting is that for a while (I haven't looked recently) every time Coverheat got a bad review on Moneysupermarket, within a couple of days a new glowing one would appear, meaning their overall star rating never went down................Hmmmmmmm.

Okay I've finished the rant now and feel much better. Thanks for reading.

limpingchicken

I've joined this thread today to add my voice to the many who see Coverheat as rogue traders. I have experienced all the things other contributors have experienced - and have had no heat or hot water via the central heating system since mid-July. I am out of pocket because I have had to call in another company, and unable to gain any explanation (or sensible response) from the customer service team at Coverheat as to why they could not get an engineer to look at the problem. Written complaints have been acknowledged but not reacted to. I took out the maintenance contract in December 2007 using the quarterly payment system. I still have one quarter to pay for, which I am thinking about withholding against the expenses I have incurred.

I wanted to bring to the community's attention that the Director and Secretary, William Pegg, appears to have resigned from the company effective 16th September 2008. I have found this on the Companies House website today. The registered office for the company has also changed. It might be a coincidence but there is another company still listed at the old Coverheat registered address that arranges golfing special events and holidays!

I have also telephoned an engineer who has been to service the system in my house previously on behalf of Coverheat. Without giving me any detail, that company tells me they have not worked on behalf of Coverheat for a few months now. I wonder then if many engineers have not been receiving payment for the work they have completed. Of course, this is my assumption and not stated as fact.

Like many contributors to this thread, I will be voicing my concerns nationally and to registration bodies.