Boiler warrenty call out time

davidmcn

Undervalued wrote: »

As an aside, even if you have a British Gas Homecare contract (or similar from elsewhere) I think you will find there is no hard and fast guarantee of how quickly an engineer will attend.

Indeed, as I've found out when I've been lumbered with a landlord's care contract in the middle of winters. These things are a false economy - the moneysaving option in the long term is just to pay for work as and when you need it, which also means you can choose whoever is available.

peter_the_piper

Bear in mind that some boiler companies warrenty relies on you having it serviced every year.

hollydays

davidmcn wrote: »

Indeed, as I've found out when I've been lumbered with a landlord's care contract in the middle of winters. These things are a false economy - the moneysaving option in the long term is just to pay for work as and when you need it, which also means you can choose whoever is available.

Being a landlord myself, I once found in winter no one could get up the hill where the property was located.

Undervalued

davidmcn wrote: »

Indeed, as I've found out when I've been lumbered with a landlord's care contract in the middle of winters. These things are a false economy - the moneysaving option in the long term is just to pay for work as and when you need it, which also means you can choose whoever is available.

Providing you are confident of finding a satisfactory person in a shorter time period.

Regarding cost, it is like any insurance. If you have lots of claims you are jolly glad you have the cover, if you don't you tend to begrudge the premium!

davidmcn

Undervalued wrote: »

Providing you are confident of finding a satisfactory person in a shorter time period.

Experience (and other anecdotal evidence) suggests that British Gas provides neither satisfactory nor timely persons, so other options should be preferable.

Regarding cost, it is like any insurance. If you have lots of claims you are jolly glad you have the cover, if you don't you tend to begrudge the premium!

There's a difference between insurances for things which you really could never afford (house burning down, car causing expensive injuries to third parties, etc), and things which you can usually self-insure for (occasional modest bills to gas engineers). For the latter you're just betting against British Gas etc, who know that on average they're going to make a profit out of you. (and if you make lots of claims, they'll probably stop covering you until you buy an overpriced new boiler from them)

Undervalued

davidmcn wrote: »

Experience (and other anecdotal evidence) suggests that British Gas provides neither satisfactory nor timely persons, so other options should be preferable.


There's a difference between insurances for things which you really could never afford (house burning down, car causing expensive injuries to third parties, etc), and things which you can usually self-insure for (occasional modest bills to gas engineers). For the latter you're just betting against British Gas etc, who know that on average they're going to make a profit out of you. (and if you make lots of claims, they'll probably stop covering you until you buy an overpriced new boiler from them)

Yes, I largely agree.

For various reasons I used BG for quite a number of years. I found about half of their "engineers" to be excellent, a quarter borderline OK and the last quarter quite frankly dreadful!

Currently I use an independent gas safe guy who was recommended and he seems OK if a bit on the expensive side.

I know two other gas safe registered "engineers" as they are both members of a club I belong to. Nothing about them encourages me to become a customer!