Should I Pay These Charges?

pannierstan · 20 Sep 2006

Could you fix it pootas!!

Main thing is its fixed. However you could pay for a contract to cover you for these unforseen circumstances.

Imagine how you would feel paying £120 per year and then someone not knowing how to fix it or telling you you need a new boiler which by the way isnt covered by the policy.

pootas · 21 Sep 2006

pannierstan said:
Could you fix it pootas!!

Main thing is its fixed. However you could pay for a contract to cover you for these unforseen circumstances.

Imagine how you would feel paying £120 per year and then someone not knowing how to fix it or telling you you need a new boiler which by the way isnt covered by the policy.

Well obviously I couldn't fix it that's why I called a "trained" boiler engineer...

Obviously I'm happy that they fixed it however I don't think that is the "Main Thing"... The point is that if your a reputable company charging £38 per hour you should at least send an engineer who has:

1. Worked on the type of boiler before or
2. Has knowledge of the type of boiler

Considering I told them the exact model, year it was made and the fault you would think it would take less than 2 hrs to find a fault...

Like I say I couldn't have fixed it as I work in IT but if someone called me as their server was down I'm sure I wouldn't spend 40 minutes reading the manual for it, admit I hadn't worked on that type of server before and then call my mate over to have a look!!!

ChrisR · 21 Sep 2006

We all probably see things fairly regularly which are new to us. Much more interesting than the same old faults in fact! There are hundreds of different boilers; though they get to look the same after a while some things can be confusing

You'd have to be pretty clueless to need to do it on this one (on the face of it) but a call to the manufacturer's tech help line would have sorted a diagnosis like this very quickly, even if it took 10 minutes to get through.

Agile · 21 Sep 2006

Since we expect to identify the fault within 20 minutes on average then we could not manage on such a low rate as £38 per hour.

Firms that charge by the hour clearly have no confidence in their ability to diagnose faults and the customer is exposed to uncapped costs.

Because we expect to find the fault quickly we removed the time element from our charges and only charge a single fixed diagnostic fee.

As we also take along the spare parts which we think we may need we removed any charges for fetching parts. If we dont have the part needed with us then there is no further charge over the diagnostic fee. Parts are charged at close to the trade price and we never fit parts which are not needed.

Whilst we cannot always guess what the failed part is, we can set the labour element so that a client can know pretty closely what he is likely to have to pay.

Tony Glazier

pootas · 21 Sep 2006

Agile said:
Since we expect to identify the fault within 20 minutes on average then we could not manage on such a low rate as £38 per hour.

Firms that charge by the hour clearly have no confidence in their ability to diagnose faults and the customer is exposed to uncapped costs.

Because we expect to find the fault quickly we removed the time element from our charges and only charge a single fixed diagnostic fee.

As we also take along the spare parts which we think we may need we removed any charges for fetching parts. If we dont have the part needed with us then there is no further charge over the diagnostic fee. Parts are charged at close to the trade price and we never fit parts which are not needed.

Whilst we cannot always guess what the failed part is, we can set the labour element so that a client can know pretty closely what he is likely to have to pay.

Tony Glazier

It's a shame you don't work near where I live then......What you have said is exactly how it should be done....This way I would be charged for quality work rather than the number of hours spent guessing what the problem is!!!

Trance Nation · 21 Sep 2006

Glad u got it fixed mate.

Seems like a classic - "get the boiler fixed eventually, never mind trying to understand why a certain part has failed or what it does" scenario. I cant understand how anyone can run a succesful business on this basis.

Going by ur description of the fault i wouldve immediatly looked at h/w flow switch and sensor before anything else. Not too say that anything else wouldnt have been faulty but it would have been the starting point anyways.

However, its a lesson learned for yourself for next time.

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Should I Pay These Charges?

pannierstan

pootas

ChrisR

Agile

pootas

Trance Nation

DIYnot Local

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