Hi all. Recently posted in here about a problem 10-year-old Turbomax 242E. It heats the radiators just fine (even with the radiator dial set to "3", we have to turn the individual radiator thermostats right down or you end up practically burning yourself on them if you touch one!
However, the hot water is hopeless. Over a period of half a year or so, we've had to turn down the hot water taps more and more to little more than a trickle to get water out at a reasonable temperature - it then takes half an hour to fill the bath and must be horribly uneconomical on fuel...
Couldn't find a local plumber/boiler engineer who sounded confident about taking on the boiler, so had a bright idea and contacted Vaillant. They seemed very helpful at first, telling me in an email that they did a fixed-price callout and repair for £215 inc. Vat and "almost" all parts (apart from heat exchanger and expansion vessel, which would cost approx £100-£190). They said if they were called out and it wasn't something they could fix for £215, they'd tell us and if we decided not to go ahead, we'd have to "just" (!) pay the £82.50 call-out fee. they also tried to upsell us to a Homeserve policy for £24.99 per month which would include the £215 "fix" as quoted.
My wife then called their service line and explained the same symptoms to their call operative, who immediately said it sounded like a "system" problem and not a boiler problem and that if an engineer was sent out, it would likely be abortive and simply cost us £82.50 to be told they couldn't fix it... Furthermore, they then told us we'd have to "find someone local" who could help us fix the system as they couldn't help! Er, excuse me, there's something wrong with the damn boiler and it's your flaming boiler, waddya mean you can't fix it!?
With the benefit of hindsight, I'm starting to wonder if this is all a great scam by Vaillant to get engineers in houses, say, "ooh, it's your heat exchanger" or, "you need your system flushing mate" and then telling you that rather than costing £215 it'll be £500 extra or something, just hoping that you'll agree and go ahead as they're already there and so on...
...or maybe I'm just being cynical...
How does one go about finding a boiler engineer in Leicestershire who actually knows something about Vaillant combi boilers and can be trusted to actually diagnose the problem rather than pull our trousers down!?
However, the hot water is hopeless. Over a period of half a year or so, we've had to turn down the hot water taps more and more to little more than a trickle to get water out at a reasonable temperature - it then takes half an hour to fill the bath and must be horribly uneconomical on fuel...
Couldn't find a local plumber/boiler engineer who sounded confident about taking on the boiler, so had a bright idea and contacted Vaillant. They seemed very helpful at first, telling me in an email that they did a fixed-price callout and repair for £215 inc. Vat and "almost" all parts (apart from heat exchanger and expansion vessel, which would cost approx £100-£190). They said if they were called out and it wasn't something they could fix for £215, they'd tell us and if we decided not to go ahead, we'd have to "just" (!) pay the £82.50 call-out fee. they also tried to upsell us to a Homeserve policy for £24.99 per month which would include the £215 "fix" as quoted.
My wife then called their service line and explained the same symptoms to their call operative, who immediately said it sounded like a "system" problem and not a boiler problem and that if an engineer was sent out, it would likely be abortive and simply cost us £82.50 to be told they couldn't fix it... Furthermore, they then told us we'd have to "find someone local" who could help us fix the system as they couldn't help! Er, excuse me, there's something wrong with the damn boiler and it's your flaming boiler, waddya mean you can't fix it!?
With the benefit of hindsight, I'm starting to wonder if this is all a great scam by Vaillant to get engineers in houses, say, "ooh, it's your heat exchanger" or, "you need your system flushing mate" and then telling you that rather than costing £215 it'll be £500 extra or something, just hoping that you'll agree and go ahead as they're already there and so on...
...or maybe I'm just being cynical...
How does one go about finding a boiler engineer in Leicestershire who actually knows something about Vaillant combi boilers and can be trusted to actually diagnose the problem rather than pull our trousers down!?
