To think that British Gas Homecare policy is a fraudulent scheme ?

[ThinkingtheUnthinkable]

Repeatedly cancelled appointments (mostly with no notice). People book annual leave time off work to wait in only to find it wasted or they turn down a shift to be in for an engineer who cancels last minute so they're out of pocket 'cos they could have worked that shift after all.

If an engineer eventually turns up after waiting over 2 months (caused by 2 arranged but cancelled appointment during that time).

Repairs that don't fix the problem so you have to wait another umpteen weeks with no heating or hot water before someone else comes and has another try.

Service staff who "don't do repairs" 'cos they're not trained for that apparently, so they find a problem during their service visit (which isn't even annual now so more problems can build up causing more breakdowns) and leave you having to wait for a repair engineer who may or may not actually bring a needed part with them.

Online chat help staff who promise a manager will ring you back but of course the managers NEVER ring back, so it's all lies.

Being told that because of excess demand at this time of year (coupled no doubt with Gas staffing issues) you can arrange your own repair by a certified heating engineer and British Gas Homecare will refund the cost but then it turns out they won't, so it's all lies.

Being told that customers must respect/understand that British Gas Homecare has to give priority to the more vulnerable but then seeing online that people's 80 year old parents still have to wait weeks for engineer visits and they too get cancelled so it can be months for them in an unheated house/no hot water. Besides that, they're running a business charging all homecare customers on the same basis, it's not like it's the NHS.

They're making millions by ripping their homecare customers off.

Please can some one suggest a reliable alternative service provider as I'm done being a British Gas Homecare policy customer.

My late dad had Homecare - awful service and he was supposed to be a priorty case as a 88 year old with health needs. Total ripoff.

Please can some one suggest a reliable alternative service provider as I'm done being a British Gas Homecare policy customer.

Put what you were paying BG into a savings account and call a local plumber when needed.

The only way they (BG) can make these schemes work is by ensuring they minimise the costs.

Yes I agree. DM who is 84 insists on paying for it. £250 a year and last year couldn’t get a service for months on end and when she had problems they wouldn’t come out. Eventually I got them to allow my own gas engineer to fix the problem sent them the bill.
However they have treated their employees shockingly.

Agree, agree, agree.

It used to be much better but over recent years (not just since the pandemic) it has been RUBBISH.

My brother had 21 appointments with them for a broken immersion heater, of which they turned up for only 3, teo of them without the part they needed.

My late 80s parents couldn't get an appointment to fix a leaking boiler within 3 weeks.

ask around.
we used a gas certified plumber locally for our yearly service. recommended by neighbours and also used by lical lettings agency. was very quick to come out as well when dh drilled through the gas pipe we had a leak.

They cancelled? You were lucky, they just didn't bother turning up for us! When they did turn up to service the boiler the engineer blatantly lied to DH by telling him it was the law we had to have a smart meter and our energy would be cut off if we didn't. He then rang his 'manager' so DH, who is partially deaf and struggles on the phone, could speak to them. DH just said he wasn't talking to anyone and ended the call.

On another memorable occasion they wouldn't let us have a call out at a certain time as it was 'reserved for those with children doing the school run'. After a lot of arguing and me posting on social media we got the call when we wanted it.

We now save the money and use an independent.

The alternative firms' alternatives aren't any better in my experience. A while ago i had an ongoing problem. A new PCB, various repairs later, they 'couldn't' fix because I didn't have a working room thermostat. A local plumber fixed the problem in minutes, recommended a replacement thermostat, and showed me how to fit it all for a fraction of the homecare fee.

I recall many years ago we had their cover for our boiler and pipework. Had to call them out as we were having issues with the heating. They came, barely looked at anything and decided we needed a power flush, which apparently 'wasn't covered' and would cost about a grand!!

DH at the time worked for a local authority and asked one of the plumbers who said it sounded like something else and to send off a sample of water from the radiator for testing, (I confess I don't really understand this bit). Tests came back that radiators were clear and didn't need flushing.

Complained loudly to BG who relented and refunded us our years subscription, at which point we employed a proper plumber who balanced everything and sorted it in an hour.

20 years on they are still working fine and never needed flushing.

They are awful. I will never have another BG engineer in my house again.
Put money in a savings account or find a decent local independent who will do an annual service.

I’ve had BG Homecare for years and never had any of these issues.

Get recommendations for a local gas operative/company. All big companies will pull this same shit. It is cheaper, quicker and easier to pay for an annual service and pay for anything that needs doing for the heating.

I mean pay a local person for that stuff, not British Gas

As others have said, far better to just pay for an annual service by a local plumber and put the extra saved in a savings account against future repairs.

We 'self insure' which means we keep an emergency fund in case of boiler/roof issues and also budget enough for yearly services and general house maintenance.

Our heating went on the blink (a lot of years ago) we had an engineer out on a Sunday, fault located, he had the spare part in his van. It was all covered. We asked him without home ate how much it would be. He said a callout on a Sunday would by £70 an hour plus VAT, he was there for 2 hours. The part would be £200 plus VAT.

Yes, I used to have British Gas cover years ago until I spent two weeks in the middle of December without heating or hot water because they needed a part for my boiler and then when it turned up the guy who was supposed to fix it claimed no one was in when he called, even though I'd been sitting there all day and there was no card to say he called.

What I've done is to find myself a reliable local plumber who comes once a year to service my boiler/system and charges me £60 for that, although that might have gone up this year, and comes out to me when I call him, usually on the same day. Although, boiler rarely goes wrong and if anything is wrong his charges are very reasonable with no call out charge.

Any time he's had to order something it's generally been a matter of waiting just a few days as he goes to the plumbers' merchants to pick it up.

They left us without heating for five months last winter due to their utter incompetence. Luckily we had a wood-burning stove so we didn't freeze to death!

@BashfulClam

My sister who had a policy with them 25 years ago recalls that if you called them before 6pm they guaranteed an engineer visit the next day.

Chances of having a weekend visit now are very slim I would expect.

British Gas has been awful for many years, and has just traded on its name as some sort of "national treasure" (when in fact its home-maintenance wing has been a national disgrace for quite a while). It's had "British" in it's name since the old nationalised-industry days, which is it a veneer of respectability.

I'd say it's existing problems are now being massively exacerbated by general shortages in plumbing and trades caused by brexit. The diminishing number of qualified people can get much better work than sitting in traffic waiting to fiddle with someone's boiler pressure!

@2TurtleDovesInARow

We 'self insure' which means we keep an emergency fund in case of boiler/roof issues and also budget enough for yearly services and general house maintenance.

I agree with this. Insurance is really only for expenses which would be really hard to bear financially. Definitely useful if money is tight. But if you have a cushion of savings in the bank it will inevitably be cheaper in the long run to pay for what's needed as-and-when (otherwise the insurance would not be a profitable business).

Service staff who "don't do repairs" 'cos they're not trained for that apparently, so they find a problem during their service visit (which isn't even annual now so more problems can build up causing more breakdowns) and leave you having to wait for a repair engineer who may or may not actually bring a needed part with them.

We had our first one when our boiler was less than a year old. Apparently he had to condemn it and it needed a new part (conveniently not covered by the policy). I queried it as it was brand new and was told lots of houses on the estate had the same issue, it was a known fault with this brand/model.

It was going to take them a week to fix it, so we called in another plumber who said there was nothing wrong with it. He asked another to come along to check and there was still no problem. 8 years on, the boiler is still going strong and hasn't killed us.

I used to work for BG many moons ago, when younger and much more naive. Staff were pushed (bullied) to sell this cover (did it used to be called something like 5 star?) to customers, preying on people's fear and general trust of the company brand. It was a terrible place to work as an employee and after that had terrible experiences as a customer - vowed never ever to have anything to do with them again!!

We have Homecare. Last Christmas (2020) we had a problem with the boiler on the evening of 23 December. They couldn't come out on Christmas Eve, but they sent an Engineer round on Christmas Day who fixed things. We were pretty impressed.

A month or so ago we had another issue. It wasn't possible to speak to anyone on the night we had the problem and my husband used the online booking system to book an appointment. Because he is over 70 we are on the priority list. The first available appointment was about a week away. The following day we phoned someone local who came out that day and sorted it out.

My husband sent an email to BG to complain and they phoned the following day with an apology and refunded us what we had paid the local man (minus the excess that we would have had to pay anyway).

So although it was annoying that they couldn't come out, and it is perhaps not surprising that they were more short staffed than usual this year, we were pleased with their response to the complaint.

We got another company to do our home care contract. It was slightly cheaper. The engineer came out and Greg used to do it (boiler was 3 years ild) as he couldn’t get the fuse out. It was serviced twice, once by an independent guy to keep the warranty then by BGas before him. They switched it off with the spur switch 🤷🏻‍♀️ so we are kinda tied if we want cover to BGas.

@BestIsWest

Yes I agree. DM who is 84 insists on paying for it. £250 a year and last year couldn’t get a service for months on end and when she had problems they wouldn’t come out. Eventually I got them to allow my own gas engineer to fix the problem sent them the bill. However they have treated their employees shockingly.

OMG. That's shockingly expensive. Seriously speak to a local gas safe man!

This is the link for finding a Gas Safe person.
www.gassaferegister.co.uk/find-an-engineer-or-check-the-register/