Boiler Service

parcival

We have our Vaillant boiler serviced every year by the plumber who installed it. Takes about an hour and costs £50.....

sevenhills

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Awarding a contract to the lowest bidder to carry out work you haven't a clue about and which is safety-critical is more comical than anything I could come up with.

Dont many do that every year with their car?


Because we have regulation, I know that people servicing gas boilers must be 'Gas Safe Registered', unlike garages where it could be a totally unskilled person replacing a persons brakes.


Glad you find these things funny.

Aylesbury_Duck

sevenhills wrote: »

Dont many do that every year with their car?

Because we have regulation, I know that people servicing gas boilers must be 'Gas Safe Registered', unlike garages where it could be a totally unskilled person replacing a persons brakes.

Glad you find these things funny.

I know many people do that with their car - the motoring forum is full of people after advice because they were more concerned with price than with value and guess what - something's gone wrong and they can't get a resolution with the garage.

Regulation is good, but when you're beating people down on price by putting them into a reverse auction, are you sure that the fitter that gets the job will carry it out exactly as specified and has allocated a sensible time to the job, rather than cutting corners to rush onto the next job with next to no margin?

bris

Well tbh a gas safe registered person will work to a set guidelines so one shouldn't be better than another when it come to properly servicing and analysing the boiler.


Prices do vary greatly so it is wise to get a good price.

Head_The_Ball

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Awarding a contract to the lowest bidder to carry out work you haven't a clue about and which is safety-critical is more comical than anything I could come up with.

That reminds me of this quote attributed to, but probably apocryphal, the American Astronaut John Glenn in the 1960s.

‘I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.’

And this one:

When Alan Shepard was asked what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."

Furts

sevenhills wrote: »

Dont many do that every year with their car?

Glad you find these things funny.

Many people may do this and they remain happily ignorant of what work is, or is not, included in the service.


It is all part of today's dumbing down ... "I want a service and I want it now". Assuming you have a car and operate in this manner (which in fairness may not be the case) do you check the intervals for replacing your pollen and air filters? How about the spark plugs? What if the garge has overfilled on oil?


A colleague took their new Kia Sportage for warranty work - the garage forgot to tighten any wheel nuts, and some fell off on the way home. His neighbour went to Kwik Fit (yes everybody knows that was foolish) and they did not tighten the wheel nuts. Did either car owner do any due diligence, or quick checks before paying? Of course not!



Cr-p service exists because consumers happily go along with this. Attitudes such as yours assist the concept of cr-p service.

Furts

Head_The_Ball wrote: »

That reminds me of this quote attributed to, but probably apocryphal, the American Astronaut John Glenn in the 1960s.



And this one:

All light hearted but not entirely relevant. All through tthe manufacturing process there will be accreditation, testing, quality and so on to minmise the risk of components failing. There will then be prototypes and testing. Mention these concepts to countless consumers with reference to their home, their car, or whatever, and one as well be peeing into the wind.


Standards could be vastly better in the construction industry, but they have slid down, and are still sliding, because consumers want poor service, poor quality and poor workmanship.


Remember British Leyland? Consumers said "enough" and BL had to revise how they ran their business. Equally there was no way NASA would have done business with BL to make their rockets!

sevenhills

Furts wrote: »

Remember British Leyland? Consumers said "enough" and BL had to revise how they ran their business. Equally there was no way NASA would have done business with BL to make their rockets!

So, aside from a Gas Safe engineer, what should people ask when asking about servicing their boiler?
What was the comment about a laptop, are boilers like cars and we need a laptop and an app, to read the fault codes?
What would need to be done on a 2 year old boiler.

*j*

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Awarding a contract to the lowest bidder to carry out work you haven't a clue about and which is safety-critical is more comical than anything I could come up with.

Why not? Seems like a good idea. The government does that with the rail network operators and that's always worked out just fine hasn't it?

Furts

*j* wrote: »

Why not? Seems like a good idea. The government does that with the rail network operators and that's always worked out just fine hasn't it?

This thread is going totally off topic here, but come along and get real. The 100% opposite of your comment is the case. The government awards to the highest bidder, not the lowest price.


Then coming back to the dumbing down concept, the government is not sufficiently staffed, trained and educated to always make this concept work. The rail companies are franchises just like you local new car garage. Which is then another topic on why standards are low!