On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 17:45:09 +0000, John Stumbles wrote:

On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:45:14 -0800, Yvonne wrote:

Last week, I had a problem with 3 year old Vaillant EcoMax Pro 18E. It
was dripping water from the bottom of the casing. It turns out the
cause was related to the float in the condensate tank. Because of poor
design, the tank and associated siphoning equipment is prone to
malfunctioning because it gets gunged up and sticks, causing the
condensate to back up and spill over into the casing. It then drips out
the bottom of the casing.

The obvious way to treat this problem is to have someone come and
inspect then clean up all the components and put them back together
again. This of course leads to nice repeat business which the customer
pays for.

It transpires that there is a modified design available as a free
service exchange but unless you know about it and demand it, then its
not likely that any non-Vaillant engineer will fit it - particularly if
its a free lancer you have selected yourself or a sub-contractor to a
sub-contractor that the manufacturer might provide.
...
In my case the cowboy's first question was...'Is this a contact job or
a one off? When you mention you have a drip problem then cowboy will
say......' ' Oh, its a repair job then and parts will be extra. I havnt
got a big stock of parts in the van so I will have to go and get them'
'.


So let me see if I understand you right:

1. You have a problem with your boiler which turns out to be a fault
which the manufacturers have a free fix for, which engineers who
specialise in your make of boiler should know about.

2. You engage an engineer who isn't a specialist in your make of boiler
and who doesn't know about the manufacturer's free fix, who proposes to
charge you for doing a repair on the boiler as he would if it were any
other boiler repair job (including asking you to pay for him getting and
fitting model-specific parts for the appliance which, not being a
specialist in this make, he couldn't reasonably be expected to keep as
van stock).

3. And therefore he's a cowboy ... why exactly?

I couldn't have put it better myself. I fit mostly Vaillants and service
a lot of different boilers. I would not have known that this was a stock
fault with a free(?) upgrade part (non of the ones I look after have
shown this problem yet [1]).



[1] Partly because an annual service for these would usually include
sniffing the flue gases and cleaning out the condensate trap.


--
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter.
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