British Gas homecare-200 won't fix my boiler and sent £87 back for 5 months

lexie55_2

EliteHeat wrote: »

As ukwoody said above ....what's the boiler make and model? what's the problem / part needed?

I have to say that you sound as if you may be a tricky customer though

May have missed it, but still don't have the make and model of your boiler - many parts are readily available for older appliance that BG redeem to be obsolete.

Incisor

ukwoody wrote: »

Yes but bear in mind you get a full service for that premium once a year, and an engineer on standby 24/7.

That's a fitter on standby 24/7 to tell you your boiler is obsolete. And a full service which might also uncover a problem which cannot be fixed because the boiler is obsolete.

BG are in a position to know beforehand whether the boiler is obsolete and also in a position to know as boilers become obsolete. So they already know [or could easily and accurately work out] which customers have a contract for a fitter on standby 24/7 to come and tell them that their boiler is obsolete.

... but it does offer a peace of mind - especially to the elderly.

If they are happy to settle for someone on standby 24/7 to come and tell them their boiler is obsolete, then yes, peace of mind - fixing it would be a bonus. But if they want it fixed, there is no peace of mind until they know that the boiler is not obsolete, which they don't know until they call BG out. That's very little more peace of mind than waiting for it to break down and then to call a CORGI fitter from Yellow Pages.

It has been shown that *most* people would be better off putting a set amount aside each month to cover a service by an independent corgi engineer, with an additional amount in case parts are required. Over a 3 year period you would be significantly better off, but you might have to wait 3 or 4 days in the winter to get someone out - hence the benefit of the BG scheme.

At least you get to know your boiler is obsolete straight away. You are right about putting money aside, though.

katherinef1974

I only have good things to say about Homecare. They have come out to my boiler repeatedly including on one occasion a Sunday when no heating in cold weather. They were very apologetic as they could not do the repair on the Sunday as needed a part. Result, no heating in middle of winter until part available next day. Engineer went off in van came back with a stack of heaters to get us through the night and came back first thing in the morning with the part. Brilliant service.

mike_the_bike_2

I have recently (over the last 6 months) had calls from 3 customers who have been in dispute with BG regarding parts availabilities for their boilers. These people had the usual maintenance contracts and were told when their boilers had problems that they needed new boilers as parts were no longer available.

Parts being "unavailable" and "obsolete" means in reality that they are not a listed part number in BG's Central parts warehouse and therefore is unavailable for the engineer to order.

The reality of course is that by doing a bit of independent searching parts for many elderly boilers are still readily available if YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO FIX IT

Obviously BG is also in the business of selling new boilers too as we know that and also maintenence engineers to get a bonus if they persuade the customer to have a visit from a BG sales man

At the end of the day everyone can draw their own conclusions.

Incisor

mike_the_bike wrote: »

... Parts being "unavailable" and "obsolete" means in reality that they are not a listed part number in BG's Central parts warehouse and therefore is unavailable for the engineer to order.

Which means that BG should be able to tell whether they can actually deliver on the service contract on any system, and they should be advising customers when they have taken any particular boiler model obsolete. And not to do so is ripping customers off.

Obviously BG is also in the business of selling new boilers too as we know that and also maintenence engineers to get a bonus if they persuade the customer to have a visit from a BG sales man

At the end of the day everyone can draw their own conclusions.

I have drawn mine.

Poppy9

I've had a BG homecare policy for 14 years. My boiler is now over 30 years old. BG have told me that as it's old and a back boiler that it might be difficult to source parts for the peace of mind alone of knowing there is a plumber who can come out quickly is worth it alone for me.

The bits of my CH that break are the timer clocks and motorised valve. I've also had a new cylinder (even if it was a bit of a farce with the engineer spending over 10 hours in my house as he fitted the wrong style first time and I "demanded" the correct one fitted the same day! ) and numerous new thero valves on my radiators.

MarkyMarkD

But if you've had a homecare policy for 14 years, you must have paid them over £1,000 in today's money, which would have paid for an awful lot of repairs. I had all of my thermostatic valves installed from scratch for around £500.

I'm not sure why you can't have an electronic timer installed to over-ride the breakdown-prone mechanical timer clock. That's what we had done with our boiler. Presumably BG wouldn't suggest this, because they'd rather keep the "joker" of declaring your boiler obsolete up their sleeve.

There are absolutely oodles of plumbers who can "come out quickly". We have never failed to get one out urgently, in an emergency, and as soon as necessary, in a non-emergency.

Poppy9

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

There are absolutely oodles of plumbers who can "come out quickly". We have never failed to get one out urgently, in an emergency, and as soon as necessary, in a non-emergency.

The reason we went with BG was the problems we had getting a plumber to come out in the first 8 years of home ownership. In our previous house we installed a brand new CH system. The first plumber (who had come highly recommended) who started the system just didn't turn up one day when it was half done. Despite numerous phone calls and promises over weeks he never came back. We then had to find another plumber to finish off. This one came and quoted a price, which was fair for the amount of work left, and started a couple of weeks later. He was a blooming lazy sod who turned up at 8am but when we left for work at 8.30am so did he. He would return later in the afternoon (one of our neighbours was retired and told us). This was not going to be the weeks worth of work he quoted for and at the end he wanted double the amount, even though we had caught him skiving. We refused to pay as it was unreasonable so he sent a "heavy" around to threaten me. Luckily my Dad was well connected so the heavy went away;)

A couple of years later a part went on our boiler. We had 3 plumbers call and the first 2 were clueless and only the third could suss out the problem (he was a BG engineer but did private work). This engineer was good but very, very busy and hard to get when you had a problem.

Maybe it's the area but when we wanted a gas fire installed 5 years ago I must have gone through 1/2 the Corgi engineers in yellow pages before I could even get one to come out. I don't know whether it was too small a job or they are just too busy.

So for me BG are the easy option. Something breaks, I ring them and within 24 hours an engineer calls.