HomeCare 200 [days?]

[AntAndBev]

alright...I won't go into the detail of the last 11 days without heating, but the customer service with this british gas policy (no it's not an insurance policy, it's a maintenance contract 'sir') is the worst I have ever experienced.

1) Pushed to provide a senior manager's contact number, they gave us the Ops director (who when called turned out to be on annual leave) 2) 'forgot' to order the part 3) courier unable to deliver heavy parts on Mondays 4) courier unable to offload the part himself 5) 3 broken day long appointements 6) 6 hours of phone conversations 7) Customer complaints 'closed' without any follow up or conversation with the customer ! (followed by another offer to close a new complaint there and then if we had one)

it went on and on...

anyhow...they are finally replacing the heat exchanger tomorrow and as I'm going to cancel the agreement shortly afterwards I want to ensure that whatever they fit tomorrow is covered by its warranty..so...should all radiators be power flushed prior to fitting a replacement heat exchanger ? my thoughts, yes...otherwise the manufacturer will likely not cover any fault should it go wrong in future..there's not instructions/warranty cards/details with the part they delivered today to look at unfortunately....

[Andy Hall]

I had a very similar experience with them a few years ago.

They also seem to think that it's acceptable to prioritise one type of customer over another. Their problem is that they still have the public sector culture and mentality.

I was able to extract a refund of the entire year's payment from them.

Regarding a power flush, the warranty may well require it. The question, in the event of a claim, is who would honour it, the manufacturer or BG. Legally, BG will have been the supplier so any recourse would be with them.

BG may be offering their warranty instead of anything from the manufacturer.

They may offer you a power flush at several hundred pounds.

You could get one done by another firm at half the price.

You could rent the equipment and power flush yourself.

In any event, if you don't continue with BG on the contract, I think that you would find it next to impossible to make a claim for warranty for the part.

Given the circumstances, after the new HE is fitted, if you don't know what to do yourself, I would arrange for a competent local heating engineer (not plumber) to come and look at and clean the system. Ideally this should be before the heat exchanger swap but I don't think you have that option.

[BRG]

To be honest, that has not been my experience - and BG have maintained my C/H system since 1983.

My fastest response from telephone complaint to BG knocking the door was half an hour, my longest was one day and my longest 'waiting for spares period' was four days (delivered to the local PO) and funnily enough that was also a heat exchanger.

No they will not 'powerflush' as part of the maintenance contract - that will cost you extra (a lot extra).

my thoughts, yes...otherwise the

British Gas will be responsible for the warranty and not the manufacturer if anything goes wrong.

BRG

[AntAndBev]

Cheers guys, the part has at least arrived so hopefully in 10 mins my nextdoor neighbour will call me to say the engineer has arrived also :-)

In terms of service, they did indeed get an engineer round straight away, the problems started when it required a follow up at which point I suspect we became a missed target so there's no incentive to prioritise our job over new jobs coming in. It was explained to me that as this required 4 back to back appts to make the time, they would have trouble scheduling it in, which suggests to me they're focussed purely on the initial callout / high turnover of simple jobs. Would I expect anything different ? not if I was running the company, but as a consumer, yes I would.

I am a cynic, so do wonder if there was anything in the fact that the heatexchanger cost them 500-600 quid, deliverycost them 150 quid and then there's the day's labour which brings me on to.......

funnily enough, they managed to get a salesman around the same day to quote me for a new boiler. Simple fitt Ant.

[Andy Hall]

The point is that their contract is effectively worthless.

They don't guarantee a response time and make arbitrary decisions over which customers receive "priority". I'm not so hard hearted as to say that little old ladies should sit and freeze, but the company should provision such that *all* customers receive a rapid response. They are not public sector any longer and in any case are not empowered to act as a social service.

They have poor scheduling, as you have seen. If their system worked properly, it would have flexibility to accomodate jobs of different lengths and would substitute when required. It's

Amazing that.

Especially with you paying.

The fact that the replacement, plus fitting would probably cost £2k or so from an independent heating engineer allows plenty of room for attractive discounts while still making a bundle.

A power flush from BG is typically quoted at £600 - 800 separately. An independent will charge in the low hundreds. You can rent the machine for about £100 a day and DIY it. You can *buy* a machine for £800.

You aren't considering doing further business with these people are you?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sound business, Why take on old unreliable boilers on a fixed cost service when you can charge the customer to put in a new one, and have less reliability issues?