To not have to pay £150 for this service?...

[BooseysMom]

Ok, so we have an air source heating system which has to be serviced annually (apparently) and we booked an engineer to do this at the hefty sum of £120 plus VAT. He not only arrived 3 hours late but proceeded to talk non-stop at DH trying to sell us other things we haven't needed before. He managed to make this last an hour. Then he fiddled around with the outside fan, removed some black bits from the filter, didn't replace the filter which we thought was a basic necessity and promptly left with the promise of quoting us for this lagging we haven't needed before now. AIBU to think this is a complete rip off? Should we refuse to pay? And does anyone know if these air source systems really need annual servicing? I'm sure DH could do what he did no problem and save us £150!

I don't know anything about lagging and parts but the annual service will be a manufacturer requirement to retain your warranty. If you don't have the service by an approved engineer then your warrant will be invalid.

your title makes no sense

With vat added it's not far off £150

You can't refuse to pay if he did the service.
Have you got evidence the service was completed?

If it was a fixed price and he did the relevant checks then you pay. If by the hour and he has charged you for the time he chatted and tried to upsell then only the hour/s was relevant to the service.

Surely it needs an annual service to maintain the warranty, just like a boiler. Obviously it is a choice whether to keep up with them or not.

None of the things you have mentioned would be a reason to not pay.

The warranty expired 2 years ago. We have it serviced every year and changed the company as the last one who was the manufacturer was lame, but this one made the first one look outstanding!

What does the service contract say?

Does it say what will be changed, what will be cleaned and what will just be checked?

Use this as your plan of action.

I have an air source heat pump and there was no requirement to have a service plan.

You had the service so yes of course you should pay!

Thanks. We don't have a service plan ..well I've never seen one anyway.

We'll have to suck it up and pay I guess! But it's def something DH could do himself. He changed the extractor fan in the bathroom so he could easily tip some bits out of a filter! I told him next time to YouTube it. Also the pressure is easy enough to check and fill.

It just seems a ridiculous amount to pay for what he did.

If he didn't replace the filter surely this wasn't completed properly?

Yep, my thoughts exactly. That's definitely something we'll be querying.
.thanks.

Why the heck did your dh not excuse himself with “I will let you get on, and I have things to do”

Or you could?

He wanted to keep an eye on him and watch what he was actually doing!

Could have used the time to confirm that is provided ie you say you thought replacement of filter was basic requirement. This will be clarified on contract what is a “basic requirement” and covered by a service visit

He didn’t do a very good job did he! Didn’t ask any questions about the filter etc?

You don’t need to have the filter changed, it just needs a clean out. You can remove the filters and vacuum them yourself

Well if your husband was hovering around him the whole time, of course he is going to talk. Was he suppose to silently get on with his work with your husband peering over his shoulder. What an embarrassing way to behave.

If you don’t want to pay to get your boiler serviced then don’t, but you can’t have a service and then refuse to pay. And £150 sounds perfectly reasonable.

I paid more than that for my ashp service but the plumbing side of the system was also re pressured and the engineer had a long journey to reach us. They do stop working if they are not serviced because mine did (only just moved in).

It would be dishonest not to pay. As your husband was present all the time, that was the time to mention any shortcomings in the service.

And surely the price was quoted beforehand and you booked the service with that knowledge?

I hear you. British Gas is now also quite shit. The engineers come in, fiddle about for five mins and spend the rest of the time trying to sell you a new boiler or something so they can get commission.

You can't not pay. You should've said at the time. Can you explain what you've done as part of the service? Why is the filter not put back properly. Why didn't you say something at the time?

You're not paying for the time it takes or how easy you think the job is. You're paying for the training and experience. Hovering around the guy blatantly not trusting him means you got a sales pitch on top.

People would be stupid not to get an annual service but if you want to muddle through with YouTube videos then crack on. Nobody is stopping you

The upselling is shit, but you're not just paying for the minutes to do the job, you're paying for the experience and qualifications the engineer has. It might be it only needs servicing every 2/3 years and undertake your own housekeeping of it in between, but if it's under warranty you should see if that's conditional of annual services by a suitably qualified engineer.