BG Central Heating breakdown care

Nice technique. I've found that on several occasions with large and especially public service type organisations like this that the approach of exposing or threatening to expose individual's incompetence can often produce results.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall
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True, but it's not the issue as I see it.

They are certainly trading on their market position and inertia of people to change - they seem a "safe bet".

They advertise their service products based on this perception and even use the notion of being a "paramedic organisation" i.e. an emergency service in their TV advertising. OK, so they have a brief on-screen flash mentioning "terms and conditions", but it is virtually illegible and only up for a few seconds.

This might comply with the letter of the law but the notion that they are providing anything close to an emergency service under central heating contracts is misleading. They are not.

Even on their web site they talk about a 24x7x365 priority customer help line. Call centre. Big deal. Still does not say when an engineer will visit.

They also have the audacity to prioritise customers with some kind of public service ethic. This is patently wrong. All customers should be treated equally and their contracts should stipulate a maximum call out time and a time to fix. Sorry to be hard about it, but I'm not interested in hearing that some of their fitters are off sick or are busy fixing old ladies gas fires. Yes, these things are important, but they should be able to provide a good level of service for *all* customers on the same contract.

I wouldn't even mind seeing different pricing levels for different response times - then I could choose. Failing that, they should refund part or all of the contract value if they fail to meet time performance criteria.

All I ever ask a supplier or provider of a product or service to do is what they say they are going to do. More is nice, but anything less is not acceptable. With their promotion of their central heating contracts, coupled with what happens in practice, they may be doing what they say they will do in the small print, which is basically nothing other than "best efforts", but they are selling something more. My issue with them is the gap between what is implied and what is delivered.

I don't feel that this should go unchallenged which is why I have raised the issue with the ASA and with Ofcom.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

In message , tarquinlinbin wrote

Probably the very people that BG sub-contract the work to.

Reply to
Alan

On Sunday, I was staying at my girlfriend's parents. Central Heating went wrong (nothing obvious), so they called the BG breakdown care.

Lots of 'It may be a couple of days before we get to you' until the girlfriend's mother mentioned that she was elderly and that her husband suffered from a couple of serious conditions.

BG turned up before lunch.

Afterwards my girlfriend's mother asked if we had the BG breakdown cover. She understood why we didn't, when I pointed out that as we couldn't play a 'magic' elderly, infirm, children, etc card, we would be waiting for BG until the middle of the following week, if we were lucky.

JB

Reply to
JB

I have AA buildings and contents insurance. It's the worst level of service I've ever had in my life. When applying for it, it took 10 iterations of the policy before they managed to get it right. I even faxed them an altered copy of their own document with instructions to change it so it looks like THIS. They still didn't get it right. They also couldn't get their heads round me wanting my wife and I named on the policy as Mr & Mrs X...they managed every combination of MR & MRs you could think of. At one stage I thought they were just taking the p1ss. I'm in the process of finding another provider now..

Ant.

Reply to
ANt

It would be interesting to find out where that cottage is, and how far it is from the nearest gas main - and how much BG would charge to connect them !

Reply to
tregoyd

I suppose that one can always lie, and ancient granny can be tucked up in bed because of the cold, away from the eyes of the fitter when he shows up. However, it isn't really the point. They should provision so that you get the service legitimately before lunchtime as well.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

A Keston engineer (off the record) said that the best thing to do with their boilers if working OK and giving the correct CO was to leave well alone regardless of what the book says. Downfiring condensing boilers are basically self cleansing by design though. My (upfiring) Potterton Envoy collects all sorts of stuff in the burner, but whether this would show up on an exhaust gas analysis, I don't know.

Reply to
Tony Bryer

I wonder if there is a market for a 'We are Bastards, and don't care about the elderly and sick' emergency service that gives priority to no-one, and allocated the jobs in the strict order that the calls came in.

If it was successful it could leave BG with 100% priority cases, with a bit of a dilemma as to what to do.

JB

Reply to
JB

In message , JB wrote

First come, first served. Exactly the way it should be otherwise too many people will get priority service by lying about their circumstances.

Reply to
Alan

I called the AA out one night and the chap they sent phoned me up en route to say he'd be delayed as a more urgent job had come in. 1 hour later he rolls up and apologises for the delay but as women are a priority then the dozy mare that put petrol in a diesel Disco got a priority tag whereas me with a broken cambelt was left til later. So much for equality.

Reply to
James Hart

It's not an issue of being bastards or not caring about the sick and elderly. That's the job of the various public services for which we pay outrageous sums and receive poor value for money, and also, of course, the family.

An accident and emergency service related to healthcare may well have to prioritise its resources but this is not the same thing at all.

BG, as far as this contract offering is concerned is not a charity, neither is it a public service organisation. There is a place for those, but not in the market of heating service contracts in the modern world.

It's really very simple. They should provision appropriately for the levels of service and the response times and offer services with guaranteed response times.

I'll give you a simple example. I have a number of items of networking equipment manufactured by Cisco. Some of them are critical to my business and I can purchase a 4 hour support contract for them; for others I can buy 8 hour a day, 5 day a week, next business day support because that is good enough. The prices are based on the product and the level of service.

I recently had occasion to use the 8x5xNBD support for a failed wireless access point. I had already worked out that there was a hardware problem with the radio section but it wouldn't have mattered. I logged the call on Cisco's web site (could have been by phone or email), received a phone call 20 minutes later and went through the problem with the support person. OK, the questions were fairly basic, but in 5 minutes, he had come to the same conclusion as I had before I called. He actioned a replacement and it was in my hands by 10am the following morning. All I had to do was to pack the faulty part and return it using the pre-addressed label.

So it is perfectly possible to offer a service, actually at a fair price, and to operate it correctly.

I suspect that BG fail at this through a lack of business expertise and the wrong culture. The attitude that they are doing their customers a favour, like the NHS seems to have, does not cut any ice in the modern world.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

They flat refused to come out to my partner with a flat battery because a Transit 120 is "above their weight limit". I moved to the AA from the RAC after the latter decided that they would go into the ambulance chasing business. Looks like I will be putting my business elsewhere again!

Reply to
Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)

But not to have cheap products with quality? Mmmmm

Reply to
IMM

There's quite a difference between a "fair price" and "cheap"

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

Big difference from top bucks and decent quality too.

Reply to
IMM

Of course. It depends on your evaluation criteria.

.andy

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Reply to
Andy Hall

Is it a coincidence that the AA and B Gas are now both cash-cow divisions of the dreaded Centrica??

Don't have anything to do with either of them. They are not the companies they used to be ... probably not even British either.

Reply to
BillR

You should see the knuckleheads that work there, I have. And their IT, its unbelievable. The PCs they have to use you wouldn't give skip room to. All the AAs & and B Gas "servers" have been centralised together in Mitcham (at the gas works) and a right hodge-bodge it is too :-). Most of the orig AA IT staff left under acrimonious circumstances and they seem to rely on contractors now.

Reply to
BillR

Well realistically given a reasonable standrd of installation (that does not beg to be inspected deeper) I would say something like 1-2 hours, including doing all the paperwork and testing the meter+ pipework.

Depends on the age and complexity of the appliances

Reply to
Ed Sirett

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