If I'm not confident in a particular boiler due to lack of experience on that model I'm honest, I tell the customer, treat it as a training excecise and charge appropriately or pass it to the manufacturer if a fixed price may be a better deal. As an example I won't work on the water side of Worcester Highflows....not cost effective for the customer.
Thats Not An Option For Us. I've an estate of weepy highflows to look forward to on a near weekly basis. If we could run away from jobs we couldnt fix/didnt have appropriate trainning we wouldnt have recalls either!
With diagnostic work you keep an open mind and start with the basics....something BG fail to do on a regular basis. They send inexperienced "engineers" and expect them to work on anything. They waste their own and the customers time..very poor business sense.
Agreed with that, I done a 1year apprentiship and within 10 weeks after that I was out working completley by myself with no clue nor expirience to my name, I and every other apprentice no doubt had jobs like your pump and empty F+E tank, one incident thats certain to be a new guy,
remember thres over 5000 of us, of course theres gonna be some bad ones, I garuntee If I took 5000 independants and looked through their job history there would be plenty of appauling quote/saftey issues and repairs.
I have resisted posting pages of other examples of their incompetence but I will if necessary.
as said above Ive pages of examples of independant Corgis that Ive been called out to once they couldnt find problems or left things unsafe, it happens everywhere in the industry and ill bet its an even spread over BG/independants.
I also have some wonderful replacement boiler quotes...extraordinary costs for non-compliant work (ie Part L). Lets see how they'd fair without spending millions lying to the public via advertising but just relying on customer referals (as most of the quality competent installers/boiler engineers do).
Ive no doubt you have some incredible boiler quotes, ive seen us quote £6k to change a mexico to a combi, without new radiators, thats just greedy salesmen, no doubt about that, but its a quote, we could qoute £10k a combi swap its still legal.
And nearly all my 1st visits are people whos friends have the contracts and couldnt be without them, remember for the few hundred unhappy customers you may have examples for, we hve 10s of thousands of happy ones,
By no means is our company close to perfect, Infact theres enough wrong with the way our engineers are treated that I will be leaving them soon. But sit and slate every engineer, or even say 90% are horible engineers thats completley innaccurate. We can run away from jobs that we dont like/understand, which unfortunetly causes some engineers to play the flush card.
Oh and for the record, A Powerflush is a good deal (assuming your system needs it) Free Radiators+Pipework for the rest of your life as they might be needed!
And for the systems that a simple chemical rinse would propably suffice, Our labour/quotes are mostly all pre determined, so adding chemicals, comming back for a 2nd visit to drain+fill a couple of times then inhibit would be nearly half the price of a powerflush with no garuntees atall, what would you advise somoene, take the Pflush, or get a cheap indipendant and hope he doesnt take your money+leave withouht doing it right.