BG insurance a waste of money says "Which?" magazi

[mickyg]

I'm a little worried after reading this, I thought Homserve was supposed to be good.

What is the best thing to do when our Vaillant's guarantee runs out?

Although Homeserve will operate the policy you will only be served by Group Service engineers. As long as you go through Vaillant in the initial instance you will effectively be a Vaillant customer. If you went directly to Homeserve then your liable to come across the notorious Homeserve wombles.

 

[nickso]

Nickso an hour .
From walking in the door to having any baxi back boiler stripped completly down less than 10 minutes .

hardly. im not glazier as you well know and dont need half my shift to do a BBU. from walking in to stripping and cleaning the absolute worst BBU you have ever seen and check the rads and cylinder and walking out with complete paperwork is 1 hour. fact. i do little different with a clean BBU to dirty one, they all get pretty much the same treatment whether they need it or not and they are all spotless as a 20 year old piece of **** can be on leaving.

christ knows why i do such a good job on them, i wish they had never been invented.

 

[nickso]

depending on the contract held by the bloke, and its not clear at all what one he's on, he could be entitled to nothing at all or for a complete cylinder change.

at £18 a month I'd expect it to be the 400 and therefore the cylinder is covered. Even Bg aren't that expensive
The installation fault that the article clearly hasn't picked up on is indefensible.

£18 a month for 400, dream on. more likely 200. still covered though.

 

[mickyg]

depending on the contract held by the bloke, and its not clear at all what one he's on, he could be entitled to nothing at all or for a complete cylinder change.

at £18 a month I'd expect it to be the 400 and therefore the cylinder is covered. Even Bg aren't that expensive
The installation fault that the article clearly hasn't picked up on is indefensible.

£18 a month for 400, dream on. more likely 200. still covered though.

yep, got my numbers mixed up. Its been a while thankfully..

 

[nickso]

and that could be BG's downfall. using s**t labour to do a job they cant possibly manage. a BBU is one hour, even if you clean nothing cos its spotless you will still take the guts of an hour to strip it to find that out.

BG management need shooting if they think thats progress.

Please don't disrespect contractors en mass. You show yourself up. blanket statements are naiive and incorrect.

paul you know that wasnt intended for you so wind your neck in. there are no decent servicing contractors in this area. they are all 5 minute wonders. from what i have seen and heard from other patches i would put less than 10% of contractors as decent.

 

[davebgas]

Before anyone bites my head off I'm not defending BG as there are shocking instances. But I think the survey is farsical. Look at the survey amounts of custs!!! BG over 1900 asked, homeseve and Wb about 200 wasn't it? My god that is shambolic and mis leading gutter journalism. Playing devils advocate, would a medical study comparing products be allowed to be published with 1900 reviews and x% against the other smaller group??? No!!! In fact BG did very good, massive batch of test custs and a decent %age, scale the down to match the group of Wb and homeserve respondents and it tears them apart.
Again I'm not defending BG just think the study should be put into context a bit. Like we all know, we only ever hear bad things about all companies and for once I invite any 'joe public' Reading this to post any positive stories about BG, homeserve or any other RGI. We are all constantly reminded how bad people are at their jobs, don't we all think we should hear good things for once or am i in a dream world?
All the BG vs RGI debates aside, engineers who log on to here and spend their own time helping people deserve thanks, and to me it shows there are dedicated engineers out there.
Here's to ya lads.

 

[nickso]

DM . You really do need to get a life and forget you couldn`t make the grade that way you will be able to move on .

I couldn't mislead, mis-sell and rip off customers that's why I left ****ish gas; I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

As for management I couldn't give a to$$ what they think they're a load of shysters.

no you left cos you couldnt handle it and wanted an easier job, no shame in that. you dont need to mislead customers, i dont and neither do many others. as usual the bullshitters that an ineffectual management fail to deal with give everyone a bad name.

 

[Paul Barker]

Hi nickso

The company management regionally must be entirely different because since last year when the manager for everyone gathered us North East (an area which bears no relation to what the public know as North East, since it covers the East coast down to Hull) contractors together and layed down the law in a very no nonsense style.

Since when of the 25 odd guys in my area who were around then I only recognise two other faces. Sackings have been so frequent and for so little an offense (such as leaving rcd in the van.not wearing safety boots) we have all been literally ruled by fear for the last year.

So I am not just arguing with your point from my own perspective but I can speak for the present contractors in my area. we have safety briefs it seems every other month, and post work inspections aswell as the normal 6 monthly QA attending jobs with us.

It does us hard working contractors under close supervision, observation and monitoring a great disservice, and does nothing to promote the company who pays your wages and your pension to make your broad inflamatory prejudiced imature statements.

 

[gas_man_gaz]

primatic cylinders aren't covered, prob wasn't tho

 

[nickso]

Hi nickso

The company management regionally must be entirely different because since last year when the manager for everyone gathered us North East (an area which bears no relation to what the public know as North East, since it covers the East coast down to Hull) contractors together and layed down the law in a very no nonsense style.

Since when of the 25 odd guys in my area who were around then I only recognise two other faces. Sackings have been so frequent and for so little an offense (such as leaving rcd in the van.not wearing safety boots) we have all been literally ruled by fear for the last year.

So I am not just arguing with your point from my own perspective but I can speak for the present contractors in my area. we have safety briefs it seems every other month, and post work inspections aswell as the normal 6 monthly QA attending jobs with us.

It does us hard working contractors under close supervision, observation and monitoring a great disservice, and does nothing to promote the company who pays your wages and your pension to make your broad inflamatory prejudiced imature statements.

well im glad someone is taking responsibility for the contractors. its about time. would be interesting to see if any direct labour from the "north east" would agree with you.

as for my remarks. inflammatory, perhaps. predjudiced, er...no. immature, you will have to explain that as i dont see it.

ill accept my remarks about contractors may not be factually correct for contractors outside my area, but they are wholly correct and unpredjudiced for my area and the bordering patches. if you think its an "us and them" situation then forget it. i treat everyone the same, contract or direct.

 

[davebgas]

Paul, come work up here in the proper north east, we could do with spot on lads like you, BTW we have no contractor predjudice up here, we get on well, they r bloody hard working, dilligent and a credit, much like you sound, good on ya for putting up with some peoples fears and resentment

 

[plumberbob]

I've gone to two cylinders with coils leaking internally in a year and organised LD jobs for replacement, it never occurred to me to try and wriggle out of it, neither has it ever been suggested to me. Reading this thread is the first I have heard of such practices. We look after a right load of rough old heating systems over here, and have a lot of very happy smug looking customers watching with arms folded while you work like a navvy to fix their knackered old systems and boilers!

So yes it is obviously a regional problem.

 

[Deleted member 105431]

Sounds like it's reet grim up t'north. . . . .

 

[Paul Barker]

Paul, come work up here in the proper north east, we could do with spot on lads like you, BTW we have no contractor predjudice up here, we get on well, they r bloody hard working, dilligent and a credit, much like you sound, good on ya for putting up with some peoples fears and resentment

Thanks mate, I would like to work on your patch but just a bit too far to travel.

I'm actually quite happy where I am.

There are two sides to the coin, in our meetings we all slag off direct labour to one another, but we don't mean all of them. any diligent direct labour and any diligent contractor knows that there are a large number of people in the industry and let's expand this outside of BG, who don't do a proper job. The same happened when I was with RG Francis, customers used to watch in amaisement as I removed fire fronts off back boilers or took the burner out of a warm air unit, never having seen it done like that before.

But that is changing, the buzz word now is demonstrating to the customer how their annual "check" is such great value for money, so everything has to be done and very demonstratively. otherwise we will loose market share. That is now a very real threat.

Now my friend Dangermouth will differ in opinion from me at this point. But I do feel that the BG system care contract or any of the variations are the best value in the industry.

Yes it is true that there are a lot of parts changers out there but the initial response rate is probably the best in the industry and that goes a long way. Also contrary to the findings of the report above the extent of the cover is the best in the industry.

If you compare the Warmfront offering it is not as good as BG contract for the customer. If Warm front can't even compete with all the competetive advantages they have (of political friendly environment they operate in<corruption by another name>) then it is easy to see what a good deal the bg contract is for the public.

If I had a mum or a granny and they lived elsewhere in the country I would recommend it to them. Moreso if they had an old boiler. I would say go ahead and pay for the BG powerflush aswell because with a lifetime guarantee it is also great value especially as it then ensures the whole system stays on cover.

True that the boiler won't be looked after on average as well as it would by a manufacturer contract, but the entire system isn't covered by the manufacturers, the call out time isn't as good from manufacturers, and at the end of the day if the system water is clean and the parts are available the entire system can stay on contract as long as the customer wants it to.

 

[Paul Barker]

Nickso I'll widraw imature if you give up stating "contractors are bad" as a sweeping statment. Because your braod statment is just as bad as Dangermouth's on the counterbalance.

everybody reading from the outside will realise there is a grey area in the middle where the two polar views join.

Dangermouth is on a mission but he talks a lot of truth. But it is no more all the truth about everyone working for Bg just as what you say isn't all the truth about every contractor.