Boiler Service cost - unresonabley high? Conflicted.
- Thread starter dishman
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Unfortunately there are a lot of different views on what to do on a service.
As a minimum remove the cover inspect carefully inside for leaks or other problems,
Check the burner pressure or gas consumption.
That might take 30 minutes on site so £60 to £90 perhaps.
These things are slewed by British Gas who do a Safety Check which is just measuring the flue gas composition taking 10 min and make people think that is all that is required every year.
As a minimum remove the cover inspect carefully inside for leaks or other problems,
Check the burner pressure or gas consumption.
That might take 30 minutes on site so £60 to £90 perhaps.
These things are slewed by British Gas who do a Safety Check which is just measuring the flue gas composition taking 10 min and make people think that is all that is required every year.
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I wouldn’t say that constitutes a service Tony. That’s more of a gas safety check, as you say by the likes of BG.
Read the manual, it can often be found in there.
It's sometimes worse than that.
British gas are known to turn their safety check into fault finding in order to needlessly condemn a boiler.
They tried this on with me a long while ago (I have posted about it here).
I had to get another local company to re-activate the boiler after they found there was nothing wrong. This was after the British Gas checker faked detecting carbon monoxide.
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Floating a 4 year old thread to trash talk a company tho.. Hmm
Oof, coulda done without reading this.. Just had a Ferroli Modena 80E replaced that’s been reasonable for 26 years, on the say so that the BG engineer found the CO exiting the flue to be way over (nothing registering on the internal alarm, thankfully), couldn’t get it below, and condemned it
£2700 to replace it (not by BG) with an Ideal Exclusive, including installing a condensate drain round half the building, will be a tough pill to swallow if the claim is BG BS, not that I could verify it now but don’t plan on keeping BG’s 300-a-year service plan the rental agency insisted on.
BG’ve been pushing us to replace it for years, every service, saying they can’t get parts etc; every year having to tell them to shut up and just do the service, perhaps this was a tactic and we should have called them out to prove their claim..
Oh well, done now.. maybe it was due
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No, the spam post I was responding to has been rightly removed.
I'm sorry to say, it's likely they had you over a barrel.
Your situation mirrored mine.
This happened about 14 years ago now, but I have seen similar reports of them doing this on Watchdog too.
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BG came to do a service (sorry.....safety check), and oddly took much longer than expected. After confirming all the readings were in spec out of the flue (although he seemed to spend a long time fiddling with the air/fuel mix or something), he was about to leave when he did one final Monoxide check, and then called us into the kitchen and stated he had detected a leak, and it needed to be capped and we needed a new boiler.
The boiler was maybe 35 years old, and he said there were no spares available. It was also November, and he knew the house had two elderly people in it (pressure).
He said there were no alternatives.
I asked for clarification where the leak came from. He pointed to an area where it looked like the boiler was not flush to the wall (it had always been like that) and then postulated it was probably the rope seal, which was not available as a part.
Asked to see his manager, who attended. He backed the staff member and agreed with his conclusion.
No scope for investigation or checking or anything.
Something felt off to me, so i went round the corner to a local firm. They made no promises as they had to be thorough to re-activate a capped device.
They came, did a full service, cleaned areas that BG had never touched in years, put a new rope seal on as a precaution (which they confirmed was a standard part), reassembled and the boiler fired fine with no leak. They charged about £250.
After a lengthy complaint letter, BG paid for the cost of the repair and refunded a portion of the annual service policy.
I swiftly cancelled my policy and have never used them since.
Boiler still runs sweet.
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What do you expect from a national company that spends much more on marketing than it does on customer base!
It's typical of the "get new customers and feck the loyal existing customers" attitude of corps today.
They couldn't care less if you've been with them since day one.
Edit... Sell, sell, sell!
Not... fixed it for you sir/madam
It's typical of the "get new customers and feck the loyal existing customers" attitude of corps today.
They couldn't care less if you've been with them since day one.
Edit... Sell, sell, sell!
Not... fixed it for you sir/madam
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I think a lot of the time it is a holdover from when they did actually provide a genuine service. But times change and people either don't realise the change or cling to known brands for fear of change.
I even knew someone who did not like switching away from British Gas as an energy supplier, just because of the name.
Glowworm Spacesaver 45-60
Ironically named compared to the size of boilers these days....
Great old beasts
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