I know that many of you on here a professionals. I only wish to highlight to you the problems faced by punters such as myself when looking for a heating engineer.
In the old days, it was off to the Yellow Pages and a quick look up the "plumbing" section. Then heating got complicated and the hot water tanks came out and were replaced by combis and microbore heating... suddenly us poor punters needed "engineers" as it was no longer suitable to settle for a mere "plumber" any more.
If you were foolish enough to engage a plumber and they actually turned up, you'd often be met, in the early days, with a blank look as they realised you had a combi boiler. I actually had a part taken off my combi boiler by one plumber (I still have no idea what it was, but it seems to have carried on working fairly well since...)
So then we get to a point where the internet comes along, but with the best will in the world, you don't get too many "heating engineers" setting up informative and accurate websites explaining their skills (or lack of them!) and that's fair enough... I deal with computers, you deal with boilers, the world goes around. I posted a message on here about a problem I had with my boiler, explained my thought processes regarding Vaillants "fixed price" system and got fairly roundly abused. "Agile" offered to give me the number of a mate of his he could recommend in Hinckley, but to this day I'm still waiting to receive that number! Fair do's - I have no divine right to it, but I'm just pointing out what happened.
It appears that I got a fair amount of abuse due to my lack of knowledge or for what were perceived as kind of daft questions... well, the problem is that I don't know how much a secondary heat exchanger costs or how long it takes to fit one, so I was asking people who I thought would know... or better yet, tell me what they knew!
Put the boot on the other foot... imagine your computer goes wrong. I may be able to come along and fix it in half a minute flat... it may take hours and take lots of spare parts... I don't know 'til I look at it or you give me an accurate description of the problem. So if I'm on a computer repair forum and someone comes along and says they've been quoted, say, a fixed price of £200 to replace 1GB of DDR RAM with 2GB of DDR RAM then I'm immediately in a position to know that this is not a good deal and would be able to tell the person that the memory alone costs approx £40 and the labour would be about 30 seconds for a competent person... If I merely abused that person for a lack of knowledge or told them to stop being tight and pay the bloke, then I wouldn't necessarily be helping out much!
I don't think anyone comes on this forum EXPECTING to get help, but it is often given by some very knowledgable people, for which I, and I'm sure many others, are very grateful. But the fundamental issue still remains... it is incredibly hard for punters like me to find the right person. I spent 20 minutes rummaging through the Yellow Pages and called 3 "engineers" (from "central heating services" section, not plumbers) and each one went, "errr....." and sounded less than keen when I said I had a vaillant combi boiler... I wouldn't mind so much, but two of their ads specifically said they were specialists in "all brands" of domestic combi boiler manufacturers!
What punters are after are engineers who won't charge for an estimate. Shock horror, yes, I know... OK, if I call you in an emergency situation then you have every right to make a call-out charge as I want you there quickly. But if I just make a call asking for an estimate then either give me a chance to describe the problem on the phone, or tell me that you'll give me a call and pop in when you're next passing my house to have a quick look and give me an idea of cost. Is that too much to ask for? Remember that I'm calling LOCAL tradespeople here, not people that would have to drive half way across the city to get to me...
It seems that most engineer's alternatives are, "look pal... I'm a busy man... them Vaillants are right sods, so many things can go wrong, it's probably the "insert strangely named device of choice here" that's gone wrong, bit pricey them, I can try changing that, but if it ain't that, it could be expensive as it'll be "other incomprehensible part" that's up the spout... dunno how much it'll cost, it's £65 call out charge and £50 per hour, even if I'm drinking tea and chatting to you, ok?" and, surprisingly enough, that isn't massively appealing to me as a customer! Or you get Vaillant's "£215 fixed price" which fixes 95% of the potential problems which is great, but the 5% of problems it doesn't cover are the things that go wrong 95% of the time! (i.e. heat exchangers, diverter valves...) and if it isn't fixable under their charge, they'll STILL charge you £85 just to come out and tell you that! What a bargain!
So can you see why us billy bunters get a bit fed up trawling through the trade ads and internet forums in the vague hope of tripping over a decent competent heating engineer who actually even knows how to pronounce "Vaillant" (hint: it's not "Vally-ant") let alone how to fix one?
Anyone know where I can find such a beast within a well-flung basin wrench of South Leicestershire near J21 of the M1?
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