Plumber not Finished Job

macman

There is no contractual timescale unless you agreed one with them, and no statutory one, merely what a court would consider 'reasonable'. Since you have a working and presumably safe system, then unless there is a gaping unfilled hole where the old flue was, then there doesn't seem to be any great urgency to finish the job.
One day to do all this work was never feasible-what did they originally quote you?
If you get someone else in you would be in breach of contract, and it's unlikely that you would be able to, because no sane RGI will sign off someone else's work as their own, because they then become legally liable for it.
I was under the impression that the boiler was not working.

diystarter7

macman said:

I was under the impression that the boiler was not working.

ditto.................

SergeantBaker

diystarter7 said:

macman said:

I was under the impression that the boiler was not working.

ditto.................

Another important detail you missed @diystarter7

cmthephoenix

So is what you are saying is that the plumber left you with working heating and some comparatively minor items (you can put a towel or expanding foam in the flue hole to stop the heat loss) and is prioritising his other jobs that may have no heating at all in this very cold spell? Accidents happen to the best of us; you could have been there to let him back in and avoided this all. You're not unhappy with his standard of work? Plumbers /heating engineers that do a good standard of work and correctly prioritise their workload for the circumstances at hand are hard to come by IMHO. Just keep contacting the company and ask when they can send someone to complete the work and don't pay the full amount until they do. Is 8 days to complete the minor work in this desperately cold spell when others may be without heating really that big a deal to you?

Edit: Just to add so when you came back to the house at 2pm you found the plumber waiting outside it and he'd been there for 2-3 hours so potentially you left the house at 10am and he got locked outside it at 11am after him stepping outside and the door unfortunately closing on him? I can imagine he will have been feeling very upset about that especially as he had no mobile phone on him. Emotions are not easy to contain and I can understand that he himself maybe reluctant to return (though of course the office can send someone else and probably should)

Wyrmbald

diystarter7 said:

Thanks, OP
Do they have feedback on Trustpilot etc? If so and it looks like they care about it, you can leave an honest review re the delay, lack of contact and left in the lurch with a 2 yr old.  Often gets results but keep it concise, honest and  factual. However, you could wind them up but I have done it to people did some windows and they were missing appointments, false promises and then i left a review got a call the same did and sorted the next. They wanted me to remove the review as they had fixed the problem. I refused and pointed them to the fact that I had updated the review as fixed but with the stress and waste of time that came with it. Then they offered mr 50 as a goodwill, i told them to stick it as behind the 50 was I had to remove an honest review. Just them harassing me like that did stress me out but as they were also rude to me initially is the main reason I did not remove it.

Good luck

Thanks very much for your input.

Sorry to hear that you've had trouble too, but sounds like you dealt with it well. They do have a lot of good reviews which is one of the reasons that I went with them in the first place. I'll definitely think about leaving a review or perhaps just raise it as a possibility with them to see what kind of reaction I get. 

Wyrmbald

cmthephoenix said:

So is what you are saying is that the plumber left you with working heating and some comparatively minor items (you can put a towel or expanding foam in the flue hole to stop the heat loss) and is prioritising his other jobs that may have no heating at all in this very cold spell? Accidents happen to the best of us; you could have been there to let him back in and avoided this all. You're not unhappy with his standard of work? Plumbers /heating engineers that do a good standard of work and correctly prioritise their workload for the circumstances at hand are hard to come by IMHO. Just keep contacting the company and ask when they can send someone to complete the work and don't pay the full amount until they do. Is 8 days to complete the minor work in this desperately cold spell when others may be without heating really that big a deal to you?

Edit: Just to add so when you came back to the house at 2pm you found the plumber waiting outside it and he'd been there for 2-3 hours so potentially you left the house at 10am and he got locked outside it at 11am after him stepping outside and the door unfortunately closing on him? I can imagine he will have been feeling very upset about that especially as he had no mobile phone on him. Emotions are not easy to contain and I can understand that he himself maybe reluctant to return (though of course the office can send someone else and probably should)

Hi, I agree that he did a good job, but the work left doesn't feel that minor considering that we have a hole in the wall of a bedroom in our house during this cold spell. I've tried stuffing it to the best of my ability, but I'm not exactly a DIY master which is why I hired someone to do it. I also agree that he's right to prioritise people that might be in a worse situation, but if he would communicate with me perhaps we could get that all sorted. I'm not sure about going away this weekend to visit my wife's family, and leaving the boiler switched off in the cold weather. Couldn't that possibly lead to damage to the pipes? Anyway, I appreciate your perspective and largely agree with it. One of the reasons I came on here was to figure out how to respond to the situation. I don't think that engineer who visited us was upset with me and we left on very good terms, which is why I'm surprised that he hasn't returned or communicated with me why he can't... 

Wyrmbald

macman said:

There is no contractual timescale unless you agreed one with them, and no statutory one, merely what a court would consider 'reasonable'. Since you have a working and presumably safe system, then unless there is a gaping unfilled hole where the old flue was, then there doesn't seem to be any great urgency to finish the job.
One day to do all this work was never feasible-what did they originally quote you?
If you get someone else in you would be in breach of contract, and it's unlikely that you would be able to, because no sane RGI will sign off someone else's work as their own, because they then become legally liable for it.
I was under the impression that the boiler was not working.

Apologies if I wasn't clear about the boiler working. I never meant to give the impression that these guys were in any way a dodgy outfit, but just wondered how to approach getting the current issues sorted. I do think that part of the problem was that they only scheduled one day or the boiler move, as a little more research has told me that it would usually take two days. I'm basically in agreement with the people who have said that they did a good job in the circumstances, but not impressed about the lack of communication over how to get it sorted. Anyway, I'll continue trying to speak to them about it and see where I get. 

macman

They did move the boiler in one day, it was working when he left. But you also wanted a whole host of additional jobs (some not related, such as removing an old rad) doing in addition, which was always going to require at least one more day. Did they not make this clear? Relocating a boiler is a bigger job than just installing a new one.
Boiler repairs and breakdowns are always going to be prioritised at this time of year, and emergency callouts will have soared as soon as the cold weather started. If you'd done the relocation in the summer months, then they'd probably have finished it on the second day.

Forwandert

Wyrmbald said:

which is why I'm surprised that he hasn't returned or communicated with me why he can't... 

Didn't you say he was sick? If its not the installers company and they are sick as an employee, they would have no reason to be contacting you.

Wyrmbald

macman said:

They did move the boiler in one day, it was working when he left. But you also wanted a whole host of additional jobs (some not related, such as removing an old rad) doing in addition, which was always going to require at least one more day. Did they not make this clear? Relocating a boiler is a bigger job than just installing a new one.
Boiler repairs and breakdowns are always going to be prioritised at this time of year, and emergency callouts will have soared as soon as the cold weather started. If you'd done the relocation in the summer months, then they'd probably have finished it on the second day.

I agree, much better to have done this in the summer, but various circumstances required that we do it ASAP. I'm pretty sure that everything I've described was included in the understanding of the job to be done. Also, it wasn't removing a radiator from upstairs; I simply told the engineer that if it would save him time, I'd be happy to wait for him to do it when he came back. Like I said, I feel I was very sympathetic to the situation at the time.

Anyway, thanks very much for your thoughts/feedback. I mainly didn't want to come across as being unreasonable, but also didn't want to wait two weeks for the problem to get sorted. The wheels turn slowly, but I do believe they're turning so I'll wait and see what happens...