On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:28:33 -0000, "Richard Owen"
wrote:

Hello,

I've recently moved house (September), and I continued my British Gas 3-star
service contract that I have had for 5 years.

An engineer came round this Monday to do the annual service on the 24 year
old Glow Worm boiler. As soon as the engineer left, the pilot light went
out, and kept going out within a few minutes of relighting. The same
engineer came back today to solve the problem by fitting a new gas valve,
cheerfully joking about Murphy's Law when you start messing with something
after months or years of fault-free operation.

During the fitting process the engineer accidentally bent the thread of an
elbowed threaded pipe. This is an irreplaceable part due to the age of the
boiler, so the only option was for the engineer to arrange for a quote for a
new boiler. The British Gas quote-monger will be coming round this evening.

This is highly dubious. It is more common for the thermocouple (a £2
component) to be the cause of the pilot going out although it can be
the gas valve.

It's also surprising that if parts like gas valves are available, that
an elbow isn't, although gas valves are fairly generic.



Cheek! If I took my car in for a service and the garage damaged the engine,
I'd hardly get a bill for a new car would I?

Does anybody know where I stand regarding responsibility here?

1. Even if I wanted to replace the boiler, I would probably not choose
British Gas because of the cost.

Very wise, and the service contract costs more than it saves in a
short time as well.


2. If I hadn't paid them to service the boiler, I wouldn't be in this
situation.
3. The engineer admitted the damage, so shouldn't British Gas rectify
their error?
4. If they offer a discount because of their error, could I get a quote
from a different supplier and ask British Gas to pay the equivalent of their
offered discount?

For the answers to these, you need to look in your contract..
Undoubtedly there are some get-outs for them, and to challenge you
would be in the realms of Unfair Contracts legislation.

They will offer you a discount from their high initial price.
Considering that the boiler was pretty old, I don't think that you
would stand a lot of chance in small claims action for recovering
anything.

You could ask for them to give you the equivalent of their discount as
cash, but I suspect that you are unlikely to succeed.

Probably the most you could expect to get as compensation is the
annual value of the contract. Some years ago, I had an annual
contract like this and they kept me waiting for several working days
for a fix to a similar fault that you have had, telling me that they
were prioritising old ladies and people with babies because they were
short staffed. That's complete ******** as far as I am concerned and
shows that they are still operating the mindset of a state monopoly.
They should have enough staff to give the service implied by their
advertising, even though contractually they can show up when they
like.

The net of that episode, after a lot of pushing and escalation was
that they refunded the year's contract.
I would suggest squeezing them fot that and putting it towards a
replacement installed by a less expensive firm.
You might be able to get more if you stick out for it, but I rather
doubt it.




--

..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl