British Gas HomeCare excess rip-off

unionjohn

I have British Gas HomeCare Boiler cover (Boiler & Controls Breakdown Cover - £99 Excess) which comes "free" with the energy tariff. Having recently suffered a failed boiler it was repaired and British Gas are now trying to claim two lots of the £99 excess on the basis that their engineer replaced a failed motorised zone valve and a rubber pressure release valve. I am contesting this blatant rip-off. Following an unpleasant phone call with an aggressive staff member in their Cardiff call-centre I have written. I cannot see anywhere in the small print that there is a contractual right to do this and in any case everyones understanding of an excess is that it is applied once per incident not once per repairable item. This is the same as a car insurer taking two excess payments on the basis that they replaced two wing mirrors following one accident. I intend to bring this up with the main site as they are recommending these tariffs currently. I will update Forumites on progress.

Hasbeen

According to the T&Cs, you agreed to pay them (though slightly ambiguously worded) £99 for each repair that they do on your boiler. 
Basically a fixed fee for each separate repair.

D3xt3r5L4b

2 separate visits?

Hasbeen

D3xt3r5L4b said:

2 separate visits?

That is why I stated ambiguously worded. BG state each repair not how many visits.

OP has had two separate repairs for separate items.

MWT

unionjohn said:

... and British Gas are now trying to claim two lots of the £99 excess on the basis that their engineer replaced a failed motorised zone valve and a rubber pressure release valve.

That would seem to be correct, you have two separate items that each failed and were each repaired...

Matthaus73

No help to you but thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will definitely not br renewing  my contract with them !

MWT

Matthaus73 said:

No help to you but thanks for bringing it to my attention. I will definitely not br renewing  my contract with them !

Don't expect to find anything better though, there are major 'gotcha' clauses in all of the insurance backed products like this.

D3xt3r5L4b

Hasbeen said:

D3xt3r5L4b said:

2 separate visits?

That is why I stated ambiguously worded. BG state each repair not how many visits.

OP has had two separate repairs for separate items.

It’s not ambiguous at all. 

You had 2 separate repairs done so you get charged 2 lots of excess. 

MWT

I can see where the problem comes from though, people tend to think of the heating as a single system, so 'fixing the heating' is 'one repair' when of course it could involve multiple repairs to different parts of the whole system.

I'm not sure you'd want it to be 'per visit' either as it might take more than one visit to complete a fix if additional parts were needed..

Al_Ross

Was the two parts replaced at the same time as part of one repair,or was the second part replaced for a different repair?

MWT

I just went to read the T&C in detail and it is all clear in there, but you do have to read the small print...

This is the definition for the excess:

Note that it says the excess applies to each repair, and the word is in bold which means it is a defined term.

This is the definition of 'Repair':

Note there that repair is defined as being for each individual fault or breakdown.

Thus multiple faults = multiple excess payments.