British Gas saying all our pipes need replacing as they ‘no longer do power washes on plastic piping’

[GordonsAliveAndEatsPies]

Hello - it’s just as the thread title says really. We have 19 radiators, some of which work better than others and after a bit of research before we call anyone DH figures out a power wash would be best so it was no surprise when British Gas said the same. It was also no surprise considering the number of radiators when the price they quoted was £1500 and tho we know local people could do it cheaper we accepted that would be the price for them to do it and authorised the work.

Two or three days ago I get a call from the engineer, who I felt at the time was eyeing up what he thought of the place, saying that British Gas had just had a ‘roundtable’ and decided they no longer do power washes on plastic pipes as they can’t do a life time guarantee so the most obvious solution would be to have all the pipe work replaced with copper. God knows how much that would cost and I can’t see anything about these new T&C’s on the BG website.

My instinct is he’s getting greedy and looking to upsell to even more expensive work. Has anyone else heard of this new ruling? It just sounds massively opportunistic to me...

I would get advise from other corgi businesses. British Gas are always more expensive and these days use sub contractors a lot. I know engineers who don’t have a good word to say about them. We have had them maintaining our boiler/boilers for a very long time and their service used to be excellent but over the years it has worsened to the point that I am considering changing. They tend to concentrate on emergencies and getting new customers and in my area (not all) it is almost impossible to get an annual service. I would definitely get other opinions.

It sounds very opportunistic to me as well and BG are pretty known for it.

Get a quote from at least one other local form first (ideally more than one). If they're all saying you need to replace the pipes you can then compare quotes for doing so without the BG pressure.