British Gas - cancelling appointments

[PearlHeart3]

The radiator in my living room developed a leak at the start of lockdown (end of March), I booked an appointment through the British Gas website to get an engineer out as I have their homecare cover which includes radiators and pipework. The earliest appointment I could get was in a months time. The next day, they cancelled the appointment due to the Covid-19 situation and citing it was not an emergency. This leak, although not flooding the floor, is constantly leaking and I have a little pot underneath it which I have to empty several times a week. The result of this leak means my boiler is emptying of water and the pressure gets below the required threshold meaning I have no heating or hot water until I re-pressurise the boiler. This is fine once or twice, but I've had to do this about 8 or so times since the problem began. The leak is also getting worse (the pot was overflowing the day before yesterday when I went to empty it and spilled all over the floor).

The advice British Gas are still giving is that an emergency is classed as having no heating or hot water. If you try and book an appointment online for any reason apart from that, it will get cancelled. I rang up British Gas yesterday, spoke to a guy and explained my situation. I also mentioned I have a 7 month old baby and having a boiler which doesn't always work when you want it to (it was only installed 11 months ago) because of the leak is not ideal. Never mind the fact there is an active leak in the room where we spend most of our time. He put me on hold whilst he went to speak to a manager. On his return, he told me they would be sending out an engineer next Wednesday to fix the leak. Great. I said thank you and ended the call. I received a text message shortly after confirming the appointment was booked with a time slot.

Today I received a missed call (I was changing the baby) and a voicemail telling me my appointment has been cancelled because it is not an emergency. I phoned them straight back and explained everything as written above, but they are unable to rebook the appointment as it's not an emergency. I swear if I hear that phrase once more I will scream! I've asked to speak to a manager, but as they're all working from home, he was unable to put me through to them right then although he assures me a manager will call me back sometime today before 6pm.

Am I being unreasonable? It's not like this leak started yesterday and I'm demanding someone to come out RIGHT NOW to fix it, I've lived with it for 7/8 weeks and it's getting worse.

Can you not just call and say your boiler isn’t working properly? I don’t think you’re being unreasonable if it’s cutting out your hot water supply

I could do but I've already logged with them the initial problem. The pressure in my boiler is about to drop again in the next few hours so technically I won't have any hot water or heating again until I repressurise it but they class that as self maintenance and something you can do without an engineer.

There must be someone you can escalate this too and if that fails then just say you have no hearing or hot water , they have no choice but to come out then . You can stay out of the room and open windows so it will make it a bit safer for the engineer but imo this is an emergency!

I've tried escalating it, I was informed several times there's no managers to speak as they're all working from home. They guy on the phone said he could only email them to ask them to call me back today, which I have asked him to do.

The guy on the phone yesterday when booking the appointment for me asked if anyone was showing covid symptoms and I said no. I was even going to clear the floor area, disinfectant the radiator, pipework, boiler and floor before he/she arrived. It just feels like I'm going around in circles.

Can you just turn off that rad ? You shouldn’t need it with this weather now and it should resolve the pressure issue as it will isolate it from rest of the system. It isn’t an emergency OP they should be coming into your household for emergencies only, the gas engineers have families too

British Gas is woefully understaffed as the company has been poorly managed for years. I'd recommend switching suppliers once you've resolved this issue. For now, request help with your boiler.

Get on Twitter.
They seem to respond much better to negative feedback on there.

Unfortunately the leak is part of the pipework before the isolation valve, but thank you for the suggestion.

Oh I misunderstood sorry 😐. Yeah you will need them to come out in that case. Hope it gets resolved for you

I think if you're really desperate to get it fixed then just find someone local who is still working and will come in to fix it. It'll cost you extra, but if it's causing you such inconvenience is probably worth it. It's obviously not on their list of emergencies and there's not really much else to be done if that's the case, until they decide to expand their services. When the dust is settled you can try to claim a partial refund for your Homecare I suppose.

British Gas (well, Dyno-Rod, but under our Homecare agreement) came quickly to our rented property a couple of weeks ago, but that was a non-flushing toilet which is on their list of emergencies.