British Gas took 5 weeks to repair boiler, can I get compensation?

silps

Our boiler broke down before Christmas and British Gas took 5 weeks and 6 visits to complete the repair under our Homecare Service. Their excuse is it took time to get the parts. They are offering £50 compensation. I am told this is the maximum he can give otherwise if I don't agree then it has to be escalated through his managers and they may not even pay anything then because it isnt their fault due to the time it took to get the parts.

What has been other peoples experience of this? Should I take the settlement or escalate it?

Cheers.

nsp1274

Hi

I have just seen your post, so not sure if you will see this reply or not.

We had trouble with BG before xmas also. They came out on a sunday decided needed to order a part for our boiler (which has stopped working so no hotwater/heating). We were told the guy would be back Tuesday morning to fix it. Tuesday morning came and went without a word from BG, they then called Tuesday pm to say that the engineer hadn't come because the part was out of stock. Then I was told they would call me back in a couple of weeks when the part came in!

I made so many calls to BG trying to establish what was happenning and to complain about the length of time we had to wait - but i got nowhere, until a journalist became involved.

Strangley within a coupld of hours of a journalist speaking to the customer relations dept. the part was in stock and they were coming out first call the next day!!!! When the guy came to fix the part I enquired whether they had sourced the part locally (as I was told they would have to do) but he said no it had come from their warehouse as it had stickers on it.

I have been sent a cheque for £30 and am going to write back to complain regarding this - although at the moment I am not sure what the address is for a complaint as there is no address on the leter with the cheque:mad:

if I was you I would definatley not accept this and complain some more - I'm sure when this was happening that someone on a different forum was given a year free or half price - which wold work out a lot more than £50 (that is if you are going to stay with BG)

Nile

Hello silps

I'll move your thread to 'The (Consumer) Vent' board.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

Regards

Nile

KILL_BILL

silps wrote: »

Our boiler broke down before Christmas and British Gas took 5 weeks and 6 visits to complete the repair under our Homecare Service. Their excuse is it took time to get the parts. They are offering £50 compensation. I am told this is the maximum he can give otherwise if I don't agree then it has to be escalated through his managers and they may not even pay anything then because it isnt their fault due to the time it took to get the parts.

What has been other peoples experience of this? Should I take the settlement or escalate it?

Cheers.

what did you do for hot water andheating during that time period ?

do you have an electrical immersion heater as a back up ?

silps

Yes we have an immersion for hot water but even if you keep it on for an hour it goes cold pretty quick when you go for a shower. We used portable heaters and hot water bottles to keep us warm.

Got a letter last week form British Gas stating full and final offer of £50. Will write back and see what happens. They were featured on BBC Watchdog last week for exactly the same issues as mine as well as other issues.

RadoJo

Sounds like they're fobbing you off to be honest! Have you even had your bills yet for the extra electricity used to power the immersion and heaters - they are all pretty energy heavy appliances? If not, then how are you supposed to know the out of pocket costs to you of their shambolic approach in order to assess whether their offer is fair? Is there nothing in the Ts and Cs of your homecare contract?