Worcester Bosch Guarantee - Any recourse?

belbo_bagins

I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice on a recent experience my mother in law has had with Worcester Bosch in terms of her legal rights/recovering financial loss/etc.

She has a boiler that is within the guarantee/warranty period (approx 3 years old) and it recently stopped working leaving us with no hot water or heating for approx 3 weeks. As it is under guarantee, work has to carried out by Worcester Bosch engineers to maintain the guarantee - they send someone out to deal with the issue. We had an engineer who initially came out and said it needed a new part which they do not routinely carry. When he returned a few days later he was unable to fit the part as said he could not drain the system and we needed to get a plumber who he would liaise with so he could return at the same time to fit the part. We struggled to get a plumber (other than paying for a £500 24-hour call out service!) but each plumber we rang couldn't understand why he wouldn't carry the part nor why he couldn't drain the system. When a plumber did arrive he managed to drain it at the boiler with no difficulty. The engineer ignored her updates in relation to this (and did not call a plumber as promised), so did not come as he promised and Worcester Bosch said it would be a further 2 weeks until an engineer could come to carry out the work (and that the engineer should not have made these promises). At one point we had a plumber in the property who was a Worcester Bosch gold installer who had the part on the van, but when he called Worcester they said he could not fit the part as it had to be one of their engineers. We regularly called to ask for it to be prioritised as it had been a few weeks and young children were at the property (and even tried e-mailing the CEO who just ignored us), and thankfully got a slightly earlier appointment out of the blue. When this engineer arrived he had no knowledge of the previous work, said he could not comment on the previous issue as the system had been drained but diagnosed something completely different (the condense pipe was apparently blocked - that's all!).

So, in short, we had an engineer who gave us wrong information - not only causing us an extended period of having no heating/hot water with young children during the awful cold snap but also the cost of a plumber who ended up doing something unnecessary (who was baffled why they couldn't drain the system), made promises he ignored and clearly shouldn't have made, whilst Worcester Bosch denied a certified installer from carrying out work to rectify the issue, knowing we would still be left without hot water/heating.

Therefore, I was wondering what our options are following this? We will be submitting this as a formal complaint, but I'm unsure where we stand in terms of getting money back to cover the initial plumber - is there any legal rights here? What kind of outcome would people expect?

Appreciate any thoughts and input . Cheers,

[Deleted User]

Truth and proof are two different things. If the WB complaints procedure fails to give you the remedy that you seek then you could take WB to The Small Claims Court.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/

The onus is on you to prove your case.

JJ_Egan

If you are claiming under a warranty then it all depends upon the terms and conditions of the warranty .

Warranty is not your Consumer Rights in law .

belbo_bagins

Thank you both for the reply.
Dolor: Completely agree about the truth and proof; a lot of this is "he said, we said" which does indeed make this difficult. Could threaten/go down small claims, but hopefully it won't come to this...

JJ_Egan: Thanks, you are right need to check the T&C's about what exactly is offered in terms of guarantee/warranty - massive oversight on my part isn't it!

Thanks again both.