Epic British Gas complaint-advice please !!

spiritus

My 91 yr old mum has BG homecare. For the last few years the BG engineers have been increasingly pushing the need for a system upgrade.

A few months ago, her hot water stopped. The engineer that came out only took a 2 minute cursory glance at the boiler, checked his notes in his car and then returned saying that because we hadn't followed the engineer's recommendation previously then there is nothing they can do. He explained the hot water will work if water pressure was reduced from the tap which worked whilst he was on site but stopped working several hours later

I rang again the next day and explained the issue and BG offered to send an engineer out the same day-he never turned up.

I rang again the next day and a different engineer called me back to say there's no point him coming out as we didn't have the upgrade work done last time.

I offered to pay for the work to be carried out outside the scope of the Homecare agreement in order to restore mum's heating and buy us some time to get quotes for a new heating system-my primary concern being to restore mum's heating ASAP. He refused.
He claimed he spoke to his manager but then later admitted he had only spoken to an older member of the team !

Mum was without hot water for over 2 weeks. We found an independant heating engineer who identified the part at fault in 5 mins and within a day the heating was restored.

I've written an epic complaint to BG wanting to know what their rationale was for refusing to allow us to pay for a repair that would restore mum's heating and that I cannot believe they would refuse us that option. It's akin to asking a garage to sell me a set of tyres for my car and them turning around and saying "no, mate-there's no point as they'll only wear out again in 12-18 months".

It should be my choice.

BG have taken over 8 weeks to get back to me with a "final response" to my complaint but are now asking for sight of the invoice that we received from the independent engineer.

I have sent them a copy but redacted the detailed description of what part was replaced as I didn't want BG's final response to me be swayed by what the independent engineer did. I have offered to send them them full invoice once their final response has been sent to me

They are now saying that as this forms part of their ongoing investigation they cannot reimburse us for these costs and that the final response will be sent to us in the next two days.

I'm not really sure how to play this. I feel the engineer we paid should be irrelevant to the explanation that BG offer us yet they are making it conditional.