do bg operatives tell porky pies.

[Soggy_weetabix]

An interesting conflict here.

I think we can assume 2 things before we proceed....

BG are expensive
BG are greedy

Whilst they have some great engineers, they also have a hugh amount of labourours who they allow to work on gas.

Let me explain the latter of the comment above....

I was called to a house (im a self employed gas man) where BG has cut the supplies due to a failed 'tightness test'.
A new ECV, govenor and meter were there, with the screw tightened (not the test nipple - surely I need not explain more).

The engineer must have literally 'hung off' the ECV lever to close the gas to perform a tightness test. Im 15 stone and I could not do it.
I loosened the screw and performed the test.

I dont think I need explain why his test failed and mine passed.

Dave

 

[Gasguru]

And here's another seasonal BG fallout job I picked up the other week.....

Potential customer calls me just after 9.00am Monday morning. He's got my number from another customer of mine and asks me if I can get the heating/hot water going. Tells me he bled a few radiators the night before and now the Micron in the kitchen just fires up and shuts down. Also tells me he's on contract with BG but they can't come out 'till Thursday. Appalling service. I tell him to phone them back and tell them you have a baby and elderly mother living in the property (partly true) since part of the BG scam is to prioritize (but they keep that quiet ). I also tell him to be very careful and watchout for the powerflush scam.

He calls me back at midday. He's managed to get BG round that morning and they've spent a couple of hours trying to get the system going. The numpty "engineer" has replaced the pump and spent a considerable amount of time on the phone. He finally gives up an tells the customer a powerflush is required at £800.

I offer to go round on the usual no fix no fee basis and re-iterate a powerflush is highly unlikely.

I get there, switch the system on and the new pump in the airing cupboard is whining away. I get the customers ladder from the kitchen and check the F&E vessel in loft above the airing cupboard (the access door is directly above). The float is jammed against the vent pipe and the vessel is empty. Fill it up and away it goes.

I could go on all day long with similar examples. I've only ever met 3 BG engineers that appear competent....the rest of them I see and my local TSM (or whatever they call themselves now) are an incompetent, dishonest, corrupt, expensive lot. If BG were anygood I'd certainly be working for them.

When BG stop advertising how wonderful they are (and their staff improve) we will stop slagging them off.

 

[Deleted member 105431]

And here's another seasonal BG fallout job I picked up the other week.....

Potential customer calls me just after 9.00am Monday morning. He's got my number from another customer of mine and asks me if I can get the heating/hot water going. Tells me he bled a few radiators the night before and now the Micron in the kitchen just fires up and shuts down. Also tells me he's on contract with BG but they can't come out 'till Thursday. Appalling service. I tell him to phone them back and tell them you have a baby and elderly mother living in the property (partly true) since part of the BG scam is to prioritize (but they keep that quiet ). I also tell him to be very careful and watchout for the powerflush scam.

He calls me back at midday. He's managed to get BG round that morning and they've spent a couple of hours trying to get the system going. The numpty "engineer" has replaced the pump and spent a considerable amount of time on the phone. He finally gives up an tells the customer a powerflush is required at £800.

I offer to go round on the usual no fix no fee basis and re-iterate a powerflush is highly unlikely.

I get there, switch the system on and the new pump in the airing cupboard is whining away. I get the customers ladder from the kitchen and check the F&E vessel in loft above the airing cupboard (the access door is directly above). The float is jammed against the vent pipe and the vessel is empty. Fill it up and away it goes.

I could go on all day long with similar examples. I've only ever met 3 BG engineers that appear competent....the rest of them I see and my local TSM (or whatever they call themselves now) are an incompetent, dishonest, corrupt, expensive lot. If BG were anygood I'd certainly be working for them.

When BG stop advertising how wonderful they are (and their staff improve) we will stop slagging them off.

That is a textbook example. Quote for a powerflush when the f&e tank is empty.

As if that aint bad enough they can't come out for 4 days unless you kick up a stink, this when they advertise 24hr a day service. Is it any wonder they are slagged off by all and sundry?


I hope you told the customer to put in a complaint!

 

[Gasguru]

They need reporting to trading standards and the ASA (another useless lot though) but really the company should be investigated for false advertising, fraud and obtaining money by disception.

 

[Deleted member 105431]

They need reporting to trading standards and the ASA (another useless lot though) but really the company should be investigated for false advertising, fraud and obtaining money by disception.

couldn't agree more. 2hrs and several phone calls and still couldn't twig an empty f & e tank. Who was he phoning exactly? It's no wonder they charge so much for a boiler change to subsidise their incompetence.

They quote for powerflushes like there's no tomorow but yet overlook the most basic fundamentals of fault diagnosis. Fast tracking ex double glazing salesmen clearly doesn't work. . . . . .

 

[Agile]

Whatever was done then I think that BG, as the bastions of best practice......

when did they claim this accolade?

Copied from BG engineer recruitment website:-

Engineering

A customer who calls British Gas expects the very best in customer service and expertise and we aim to deliver this first time, every time!

Delivering on behalf of the business are highly skilled engineers, the public face of British Gas.

 

[ollski]

They need reporting to trading standards and the ASA (another useless lot though) but really the company should be investigated for false advertising, fraud and obtaining money by disception.

Are you suggesting that all heating engineers (yourself inluded) should be subject to criminal investigation for any possible misdiagnosis made in their career history?. Histrionics are 'de rigeur' for dm who carries a whole branch of harry ramsdens on his shoulder, but a little excessive otherwise.

 

[Agile]

"""20 May 2008 ... British Gas sponsors the route 15 old Routemaster bus - one of only four heritage buses that are still running in London. ..."""

At least BG are doing something good!

The Routemaster does more miles to the gallon than any of the later turbocharged buses.

The operating costs of the bus are significantly lower and passengers prefer them as they are hop-on hop-off !

 

[nickso]

And here's another seasonal BG fallout job I picked up the other week.....

Potential customer calls me just after 9.00am Monday morning. He's got my number from another customer of mine and asks me if I can get the heating/hot water going. Tells me he bled a few radiators the night before and now the Micron in the kitchen just fires up and shuts down. Also tells me he's on contract with BG but they can't come out 'till Thursday. Appalling service. I tell him to phone them back and tell them you have a baby and elderly mother living in the property (partly true) since part of the BG scam is to prioritize (but they keep that quiet ). I also tell him to be very careful and watchout for the powerflush scam.

He calls me back at midday. He's managed to get BG round that morning and they've spent a couple of hours trying to get the system going. The numpty "engineer" has replaced the pump and spent a considerable amount of time on the phone. He finally gives up an tells the customer a powerflush is required at £800.

I offer to go round on the usual no fix no fee basis and re-iterate a powerflush is highly unlikely.

I get there, switch the system on and the new pump in the airing cupboard is whining away. I get the customers ladder from the kitchen and check the F&E vessel in loft above the airing cupboard (the access door is directly above). The float is jammed against the vent pipe and the vessel is empty. Fill it up and away it goes.

I could go on all day long with similar examples. I've only ever met 3 BG engineers that appear competent....the rest of them I see and my local TSM (or whatever they call themselves now) are an incompetent, dishonest, corrupt, expensive lot. If BG were anygood I'd certainly be working for them.

When BG stop advertising how wonderful they are (and their staff improve) we will stop slagging them off.

That is a textbook example. Quote for a powerflush when the f&e tank is empty.

As if that aint bad enough they can't come out for 4 days unless you kick up a stink, this when they advertise 24hr a day service. Is it any wonder they are slagged off by all and sundry?


I hope you told the customer to put in a complaint!

little word on the millions of jobs that go without a hitch or powerflush every year though.

i wonder why we rarely hear of the jobs that go wrong for the independants on here, is their advertising not so good?

good or bad engineers of all companies and the self employed will make mistakes and everyone has to learn somewhere.

i personally would love to see the end of the recruits less likely to be decent engineers, such as the one above, as they make my life more difficult. sadly some good engineers dont get the chance to excell as although initial training at BG is far above most other companies their pollicy of throwing you in at the deep end once that training is finished makes for scenarios like the one above.

london has some of the poorest gas engineers on the planet it seems.

 

[nickso]

Whatever was done then I think that BG, as the bastions of best practice......

when did they claim this accolade?

Copied from BG engineer recruitment website:-

Engineering

A customer who calls British Gas expects the very best in customer service and expertise and we aim to deliver this first time, every time!

Delivering on behalf of the business are highly skilled engineers, the public face of British Gas.

nothing wrong with attempting good service.

i notice you picked up on my one mistake and didnt redress any of the other points i made glazier.

 

[Gasguru]

Are you suggesting that all heating engineers (yourself inluded) should be subject to criminal investigation for any possible misdiagnosis made in their career history?. Histrionics are 'de rigeur' for dm who carries a whole branch of harry ramsdens on his shoulder, but a little excessive otherwise.

I'd welcome it along with a completely new set of ACS assessments to differentiate the true boiler repair engineers from the rest (provided the assessment meant something ).

I can think of only 3 occasions where I have fitted incorrect parts/miss-diagnosed boilers...

A differential pressure switch on a Turbomax (my excuse was the flu...it turned out the pump was intermittently siezing). The gland seal had previously leaked so I doubt the part had much life left in it.

An overheat stat on a SD...the boiler was locking out very occasionally...turned out to be incorrect restrictor ring..the boiler failed to flame sense in sufficient time due to excessive draught pulling the gas off the burner (but the stat was cheap and a distinct possibility and no mention of the ring in the MI).

A pcb in a Puma for no modulation. I had carried out the LGSR only a month before and the boiler modulated perfectly. Un-beknown to me the tenant had fiddled with the gas mod coil settings so not really by fault. The existing 6 year old board wouln'd have gone for much longer anyway.


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.

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.

BG claim to be the experts whilst they are nothing of the sort. The approach appears to be to chuck parts at it, then blag a powerflush or completely give up and blag a new boiler. I'm not saying all their employees are useless...just the majority. The business model only works due to the powerflushing scam and vastly inflated new boiler/system price subsidising the repair side. No doubt the non-BG installers part of the industry also subsidise their parts/new boilers. Again a totally unfair situation. If the competition commission had any teeth BG would have been broken up long ago (along with Eaga).

I have resisted posting pages of other examples of their incompetence but I will if necessary. 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).

 

[Trouble666]

I'm totally honest when I say I haven't read the entire post down to the letter.
But with regards to a PFlush; if you had the system installed by BGS, then a PFlush would have been done at the same time. As a result, you have a lifetime guarantee under the terms of the contract for a free reflush, on the basis you haven't lapsed in the contract.

Hope this helps.

Regards

 

[ollski]

I couldn't even pretend to claim to fault find everything.Aeveral jobs a week I go to are intermittent faults which are impossible to replicate and which the customers 18 year old son who is housesitting has no idea and couldn't care less about. I will take a wild guess and fit a part the next day and get recalled the day after when the customer can manage the inconvenience of a day off only to describe a totally different fault which requires another part and return visit......how woeful the service which required 4 visits to complete, what a shambolic company etc etc

You need to remember that these are contract customers, they are not paying for a callout or a breakdown as they do for an independant, they are calling for a sound, or a phantom or intermittent fault which they would never call out a charging eng. for, the work in the main is incomparable.

There are poor guys in the company and some areas probably have more of them than others. I find the quality excellent though as I do with the vast majority of all experienced heating engineers. I have to say I would rather the engineers working to gain experience were in the hands of a large organization with plenty of back up and training than on there own.

 

[gavinda]

BG claim to be the experts whilst they are nothing of the sort. The approach appears to be to chuck parts at it, then blag a powerflush or completely give up and blag a new boiler. I'm not saying all their employees are useless...just the majority. The business model only works due to the powerflushing scam and vastly inflated new boiler/system price subsidising the repair side. No doubt the non-BG installers part of the industry also subsidise their parts/new boilers. Again a totally unfair situation. If the competition commission had any teeth BG would have been broken up long ago (along with Eaga).

well out of 30-40 completed jobs a week i quote for maybe..maybe 2 powerflushes. maybe 1 boiler replacement. oo im a scamming bastard. no mention of the repairs that cost the customer f all. ive had maybe 2-3 complaints even about my service/workmanship. i must be ****e.

i'll start posting pics of privately installeed systems such as the one i saw last week. potterton performa. 1 meter of 22 on flow and return, then changed to 15mm speed fit branches off of it. no primary circuit . customer couldn get 4 rads working off of the drop that supplied it.


i suppuse thats how all private engineers work

 

[Gasguru]

You're missing the point

BG ADVERTISE that they are the EXPERTS...they are not and that is the problem.

Their backup and training is woefully inadequate. Having changed the pump (that probably wasn't required) why was the suggestion to check the F&E vessel not made...or was a powerflush an easy scam. Checking the water level/blocked feed should have been the first check especially when the customer says they bled the rads the day before.

I get just as many intermittent and obscure faults as BG...offering a no fix/no fee ensures that.

And powerflushing is not always part of a replacement boiler quote...I shall post BG qoutes to prove it if necessary.

The problem here is that the BG engineers who take the time and trouble to post on forums are the employees that care about customers and no doubt provide a professional service. Just stop defending the rest of your company.....you are in the minority, most of your colleaques are hopeless.

And stop winging about customers and their systems....BG take on total carp (that is not fully checked out) that no sensible company should dream of insuring. Presumerably the bean counters have carefully worked out that insuring an obsolete system is still cost effective once the powerflush scam and inflated boiler replacement are taken into account.