No heating or hot water since Christmas day morning - landlord seems in no hurry to help, aibu if I get cross now?

[PiperBeeley]

Landlord has only text me to say his plumber (who is useless but he won't use anyone else!) is waiting for his van to get out the garage then he'll call me to arrange a date/time - probably next week!! Our house is freezing and I have 2 asthmatic children! Anyone know what 'rights' I have??? TIA X

Its a great, proactive example of protective PR on the part of British Gas. They can only get postives out of that approach. No newspaper articles about leaving vulnerable people with health conditions in difficult situations. It absolutely was a sound commercial decision and nothing to do with philathropic good customer service.

Green shoots, Having a medical condition, children or elderly generally makes your household a priority case with British Gas and indeed many other heating companies.. People who do not fall into that bracket can manage fine without heating for a few days.

Same with a&e , police etc. Someone has to be prioritised and rightly so the above group of people should be.

Would you really let a baby freeze just because you got in there 5 minutes before them ?

To the op, get back on th3 phone to your landlord. It is no longer bank holidays. People are back at work now. Landlords have a legal obligation I think to at least get a plumber out to look at the boiler within 24/48 hours.

His "plumber" ? Surely it should be Gas Engineer if its a gas boiler?

Make sure he/she is Gas Safe Registered. He/she should be able to produce his registration card and on the back it lists what he /she is licensed to work on.

If he isnt registered he /she is committing a criminal offence by working on said boiler.

www.gassaferegister.co.uk/

Glad you got sorted OP.

Decent of the plumber to phone you and talk through the possible issues over the phone.

If I asked my landlord to provide electric heaters for us when the heating packed in, he would just laugh at us!

Apparently our shower pressure is getting worse and worse, and our temperature lower and lower, because of the seasons... Said to us by the landlord's repair man. What a load of shit.

Greenshoots the energy sector regulator, Ofgem, put together a strategy for dealing with vulnerable customers and expects companies to have extra assistance in place for them. Other utilities have similar. It's not purely a commercial decision or PR.

Anyway, glad you're getting sorted OP.

"our credit rating was too poor for a payment plan.

so 18 months without heating and hot water, whilst we saved up"

Ahh so THATS the reason behind your "i suffered so why shouldnt you" attitude towards the OP and others, Green.

How is your credit rating the fault of other people..............oh wait i forgot.............its only tenants who should take responsibility for their own actions.

It's sooo hard to get hold of plumbers in an emergency BUT this is why we got our property managed by the estate agents. I couldn't see my tenants sit without heat in December! Before that we had a tenant who informed us on the Saturday morning of August bank holiday that the boiler hadn't been working for two days . We still got someone out, paying top whack, as there were two small children sitting without hot water.

Fuck off with your in my day we didnt have heating, I dont have heating blah blah.

She pays rent to include heating as standard and a week without with kids is not good enough. The landlord is taking the piss.

Eatalot, the op has updated. Issue has been sorted within 48 hours. Not sure that the 'landlord is taking the puss' comment is warranted.

“Green shoots, Having a medical condition, children or elderly generally makes your household a priority case with British Gas and indeed many other heating companies.. People who do not fall into that bracket can manage fine without heating for a few days.

Same with a&e , police etc. Someone has to be prioritised and rightly so the above group of people should be.

Would you really let a baby freeze just because you got in there 5 minutes before them ?”

Yes, plumbers have triage where they evaluate who is the most vulnerable of their customers and might die if they have to wait an additional 5 minutes to get a boiler working again. It’s part of the new gas certificate checks, you know, to be able to identify the vulnerable.

Just like surgeons have their hands tied by the NHS until a patient receives a certain amount of likes on Facebook in order to get life saving treatment.

Haven’t any of you noticed those British Gas powder blue vans with “emergency” splashed on its hood and flashing their lights? I hope you pulled over and got out of their way A baby could have been feeezing to death. Every minute, folks.

It took my ex landlady two weeks to fix my broken boiler issue last November. Two bloody weeks without hot water. She didn't want to fork out for a new boiler and so she dithered about and sent two contractors out separately to try and fix it, both of whom said I needed a new one.

You are going to have to pester them every day to fix it because your hot water and heating should not rely on his van - he needs to pay a contractor to fix it if he cannot. Arsehole!

I think I would have demanded an emergency plumber on Xmas/boxing day. I think it is completely unacceptable to be without heating/hot water for a week, in December. Will the landlords give a rent rebate for this period?

If you are without heating and can't afford to go out and buy some electric heaters our fire station will supply you with an electric heater, they also provide them for people who can't afford to put gas on their gas cards.

We went 2 years without a boiler as it cost £6k to replace due to new regulations it couldn’t be repaired or replaced with a new one in the original position (despite it being there for 30 years) we didn’t have the money at the time, so used electric heaters and the immersion heater for water. Then got a £1500 electric bill!!

Exactly Allthegood. Why would people say just get an electric heater, when this will just increase their electricity bill? There is no reson to get other het sources, the LL just needs to fix the existing central heating. Immediately.

Because Lolita you simply cannot demand to be given something that does not exist - and you seem to have fabricated some of those 'facts' . The advice to get an electric heater is because it is better to havesome heat is better than having no heat and it is ALWAYS possible to negotiate with your LL for a rent reduction once all is resolved.

THAT is what happens in the real world, all the time!

'Get an electric heater in the interim' is the consistent advice from ALL sources, SHELTER, CAB, Landlordzone etc etc etc. It is common sense, far better than arguing about who has the better 'rights'!

It is NEVER possible to fix central heating IMMEDIATELY. If you think it is then you are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

As it is OPs landlord has acted within 2 days, she has an interim fix and the promise of a full investigation ASAP. What else do you think should have happened?

Eatalot, the op has updated. Issue has been sorted within 48 hours. Not sure that the 'landlord is taking the puss' comment is warranted
What a surprise there! Still, many will think that the fact it wasn't fixed within 24 hours was outrageous!

By the way, if you have children with asthma, you might want to indeed invest in heaters because you could be out of power as many have been in the last couple of days due to the snow, and moaning to the LL will not change anything and no-one else to blame for being freezing cold.

HEATING HAS BEEN FIXED

OP HAS NOT BEEN WITHOUT HEATING FOR A WEEK

As some have noticed, there is a temporary fix with the promise of a proper investigation.

Even shelter will tell you to buy electric heaters. Yes, they will use more electricity but you will use less gas as no boiler. Yelling for an immediate fix is something even corbyn wouldn't be daft enough to mandate because it isn't possible.

The landlord is actually obliged (as you
say!) by law to send someone within 24
hours.

God, there’s so much clap trap posted on here it makes me itch!

Total nonsense!

I may have contributed to the 24 hour misunderstanding because I mentioned an issue that got fixed within a day. But that was because it was possible to actually get someone out very quickly and because it wasn’t actually knackered. It was the pressure there too.

Reasonable efforts are required and being as quick as possible to sort out problems.

I am cynically amused by the foolishness of some on here, who have absorbed fantasy such as 24 hour fixes but are innocent of real useful stuff such as gas safe, epc, the how to rent info and so on.

Corbyn is the same. Today he is praising american letting rules. What, like Florida where 3 days late on the rent gets you notice, and if it isn't sorted it is two weeks to out the door escorted by a man with a gun. If we had that there would be a lot fewer no fault evictions, because sensible landlords use sec 21 to evict dealers/ wreckers/ non payers. This is because it can't be overturned by a judge who decides that the wrecker needs another chance.

Good luck, Scotland.