Plumber broke my boiler

AptlySwell

Hi all, looking for advice on my best course of action. I recently got a gas and heating engineer from a local gas safe registered company to service my 7 year old boiler. The boiler was in full working order prior to the visit and I have not had any issues with it.

Whilst servicing it, he informed me that after turning the power on and off, the fan was no longer working and so the boiler would now not fire. After trying to fix it for approximately an hour, he said that he is unable to do so and my best course of action is to contact the manufacturer for a one time repair. They then left without charging me for the boiler service.

I looked into the manufacturer repair and this is a standard cost of approximately £450. I have home emergency cover so have looked into this too to avoid the up front cost of this if possible.

My question is, is the engineer / company liable for the cost of the repair and should I be expecting them to fix the issue at no / a reduced cost if these means ordering parts from the manufacturer, or pay towards the cost of a one time repair? I am concerned that from expecting a routine service I now have a broken boiler and therefore no heating or hot water until I can organise a repair at significant cost to myself.

TadleyBaggie

Fans stop working, not sure you can definitely blame the plumber for it.

TELLIT01

If the boiler was permanently switched on until the service was done the fan could well have continued working.  Once switched off and back on it failed.  When you switch anything electrical on, that is the time it is most likely to fail.  Typical example is a light bulb.  You certainly can't blame the service engineer.

Alderbank

What make and model?

7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

AptlySwell

Alderbank said:

What make and model?

7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

Thanks for responding. It’s a Baxi 224 combi

Renfrewman

Alderbank said:

What make and model?

7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

Alderbank said:

What make and model?
d
7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

My 50+ year old Baxi WM381RS boiler is still delivering....and cheap to run. I have self serviced it for 30+ years (I know I shouldn't) and over several years accumulated all the spare parts likely to need replaced for less than £100 total. All easily replaced with a few spanners and a screwdriver. MIL has had to replace her boiler twice in the last 15 years...£7,000 and she spends a third more than me on her gas bill.

born_again

. I have home emergency cover so have looked into this too to avoid the up front cost of this if possible.

Might be best option, if it covers boiler. Just check T/C

Alderbank

Renfrewman said:

Alderbank said:

What make and model?

7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

Alderbank said:

What make and model?
d
7 years is not unreasonable, especially for certain known culprits, and neither is £450 to replace (£200 for the part and £200 for labour).

Might get it a bit cheaper if you shop around.

My 50+ year old Baxi WM381RS boiler is still delivering....and cheap to run. I have self serviced it for 30+ years (I know I shouldn't) and over several years accumulated all the spare parts likely to need replaced for less than £100 total. All easily replaced with a few spanners and a screwdriver. MIL has had to replace her boiler twice in the last 15 years...£7,000 and she spends a third more than me on her gas bill.

The WM381RS first appeared in 1984 so a bit younger than you remember.

It's a very simple boiler with none of that energy saving nonsense like condensation or fanned flue so it should keep delivering for ever with basic maintenance such as a new thermocouple now and again, but cheap to run?

When new it had summer efficiency of 56% and hot water efficiency of only 40%, meaning that half the heat disappeared up that convection flue. About average for those days.

By contrast, a new Worcester Bosch Greenstar for example delivers more than 88% efficiency.

Big difference.

Exodi

Renfrewman said:
MIL has had to replace her boiler twice in the last 15 years...£7,000 and she spends a third more than me on her gas bill.

Sorry, but I'm not sure how you can draw the conclusion you're implying without knowing her usage or what she pays per unit.

For all you know she could be consuming twice as much as you and 'only' spending a third more due to her inevitably more efficient boiler.

My boiler (Alpha E-Tec 30s) has ~90% efficiency while yours seems to be about half that. Disregarding standing charges, I spend about £450 on gas a year. With the same level of heating, you might expect to spend double that, meaning just using my details as an example, there's not actually much in it between what you're spending extra for the same amount of heat generation compared to her replacing the boiler twice.

That's also not considering that replacing a boiler every 7.5 years on average is not typical or that you're gaily burning gas year after year to send half of it up the flue to heat up the atmosphere (referring to the environmental impact on everyone rather than the financial impact on you).

AptlySwell my view is the same as @TELLIT01 's, things are most likely to break when they're disturbed unfortunately, FWIW my heating engineer probably would have still charged for the service!