British Gas Homecare - Terrible Service

[BritishGas66]

My elderly parent has a British Gas Home Care agreement for which they pay between £600 and £900 per year. This is supposed to cover servicing the appliances as well as boiler and plumbing cover. Massively over priced but supposedly offers peace of mind.

They have charged my parent £61 per month for the past 15 months and have done nothing for them. The charge includes a boiler and appliance service fee for a seervice that has not been carried out for almost two years.

After hours on the phone (parent was unable to access the system) they agreed to come and do the service that had been paid for. I took time off work and travelled - 250+ miles - to parents home to be there. They have just phoned - less than 24 hours before the appointment - to say they are not coming.

AIBU to be incandescent and suggest that you all avoid this “service” like the plague.

Yes = YABU people should be happy to pay for nothing.
No= If you pay for a service the company should provide it.

I've had BG Homecare for years, it's been an excellent service until this last year.

Unable to get the boiler serviced, a repair cancelled with 24 hours notice and rebooked for 5 weeks later, couldn't get through on the phone, took ages to get someone to answer the live chat. When I finally managed to speak to someone they admitted was all due to the lack of engineers.

I've found a local gas engineer, ironically BG put me in touch with him.

I'll never use them again, I've switched to Octopus and I've cancelled my Homecare. It's become an absolutely awful organisation, I truly hope they go under.

I've never heard a good word about BG Homecare.

At £61 a month, £732 a year, it would be cheaper for them to bin it and get a new boiler with a long guarantee. Mine was £1,850, is guaranteed for 13 years, and a service is around £120-£150.

I know £1,850 is a lot to find, but there are grants for this sort of thing if they're on a low income.

Snap,same experience at elderly mothers house,not serviced since May 2019 cos of Covid,they were only responding to emergencies at start of pandemic .2021 appointment made January,cancelled in new lockdown,April didn't turn up,eventually serviced yesterday by "contractor",no paperwork issued which may cause an issue with future house sale,mother now in care home.For all those saying why pay that much,previously they responded within 24 hours if you had a breakdown and no heating,vital if you are elderly.Very poor service.

previously they responded within 24 hours if you had a breakdown and no heating,vital if you are elderly

This is exactly why we encouraged parent to stick with this policy. Hugely expensive but peace of mind. Now,it seems, they are just paying through the nose for nothing.

They are dreadful. My timeline with them goes something like this.
2015 -I take out a service only contract .
2016- They do a repair at no cost to me.
2017-2018 annual services carried out.
2019 - service is due Feb. I get the reminders. I book the service. They cancel 3 times on the day (after I have booked annual leave).
2019 service takes place.
2020 (Jan) . Service reminder sent by BG. I book .
2020 (feb) They cancel twice.
2020. Well we know what happens.
2021. (Jan). Reminder to book service sent. I book.
2021 (March) . Sub contractor does service. Reports intermittent hot water. He books repair.
2021 (April) no date given for repair. I chase.
They tell me that I am not covered for repairs. I question why they did the repair in 2016 at no cost to me. They have no answer to that. They tell me that I can either book a one off repair (at a cost to me) or take cover for ongoing repairs. We choose the later as boiler is 20 years old.

2020 (late April) they cancel by phone. Their operator tells me the service is booked for June. I tell them that its a repair as service was done 2 months ago.
4th June - gas man arrives.
"I'm here to do your service ".
Me - "No, you're here to do a repair. The service was done in March".
Gasman- "I have nothing on our system to say that".
Me- I have the paperwork to prove it was done and that was when the fault was identified ".
Gasman - "OK, I'll have a look at it anyway and see what can do but you might need a part which I will have to order".
Gasman manages to do repair without new part but tries to upsell me a carbon monoxide detector (we already have several), a flush of the system and a filter because we have hard water (I keep the thermostat below 60°c to inhibit the formation of limescale. Am ex water company employee so not uninformed about limescale).
He then sends me a quote for all of these. I don't accept the quote.
11th June. Gasman 2 arrives "I'm here to do your boiler service."
Me- " no you're not! It was serviced in March. Your colleague managed to do the repair last week and No I haven't accepted the quote for extras I don't want. Please leave, I'm busy. It's not my fault if you can't keep correct service records and work out what is chargeable or not."

And breathe...

I have a Boiler and Controls only policy. It costs £2.50 per month.
It isn’t a fullscale HomeCare Agreement - so this means it doesn’t include a boiler service.

If the boiler breaks down, they will come out and they’re is an excess charge of £99 but repair bill is covered.

I go for this option because it is cheap and gives me access to their engineers for less than their basic fee for coming out to non-BG customers. If I want a boiler service, I can add one on for £85 and the total is still significantly less than going for HomeCare1 which is my £2.50 cover plus service of boiler included.

So far, over the years I’ve had it, I haven’t had to call on them for help. It’s costing me £30 a year and I’m happy to pay that for the peace of mind……although as others say, whether they would actually come out promptly in an a emergency, is anyone’s guess.

£61 per month….
Madness..

We have Homecare for our house we rent out and it's always been great for us. Our tenants can just use the app to arrange the stuff themselves and get repairs. But I haven't tried to call them in a long time so I guess their customer service might have taken a hit! I think it is expensive though – we do it because it's a rental and we don't use an agency so this is a good compromise, but not sure I would use it for my own home.

I've not read the thread but I wanted to add, possibly like many others, that I had dreadful experiences with British Gas. They are shocking! They took twice as much as they were supposed to, they never rectified things they said they would, they send random emails threatening me with court and each phonecall always took at least 45 minutes (of listening to fucking Coldplay) before anyone answered.

I hope your issue gets sorted. I am with Octopus now, far better and also cheaper.

Also that seems v expensive. I pay £40 a month and that includes non-boiler stuff too.

I think they bank on the name being recognised and hence people think they are trustworthy.

What a load of bollocks!

I pay £25 a month with them and they have been brilliant. Refunded without asking half the annual fee as they hadn’t serviced the boiler, completely covered an entirely new supply and fit of a hot water cylinder, really polite.

We were paying almost £40 a month pre COVID to BG and they came out three times to fix a problem. Each time said it was fixed and the next day it wasn't. Cancelled the contract and used a lovely local firm who fixed it first time and it's been fine ever since.

I've had a really good experience with BG. Pay for top tier - about £23 a month - and they came out in September when we had no water and again 3 weeks ago for a boiler issue. There the next day and sorted on the day

So my experience has been excellent - just to add another opinion to the thread

Surely British Gas is synonymous with poor service and high prices? I find it difficult to understand why anyone would be a British Gas customer anyway. I accidentally ended up as a British Gas customer at one point (they were hiding behind the name Sainsbury's Energy). I ended up paying someone else's gas bill, while having no idea who was paying mine, because they had recorded meter numbers incorrectly and were incapable of correcting the error.

Obviously it's reasonable to expect them to provide the service that has been paid for. On the other hand, with current issues affecting availability of staff in all industries, it's not all that unreasonable for them to cancel the previous day and reschedule. It's very unfortunate that you'd travelled a long way to be there, but they had no way of knowing that.