Our boiler’s on the blink and I was thinking about getting British Gas to come and fix it.
They seem to want around £500 if it takes 2hrs or more.
It might just be me being cynical, but I’m imagining it will take them this long as obviously they want the money.
Has anyone had their boiler fixed by British Gas and not actually been charged the maximum?

I’d find a local gas safe person.

We used to use British Gas as we were on one of their repair/pay monthly contracts. When we had the really bad cold snap over Xmas (3years ago maybe) our boiler packed up on Xmas eve!
Anyway BG didn’t have any available local repair men so they sent one of their contractors. They did a fairly rubbish repair, so bad that water from the boiler was left leaking onto a light switch. This resulted in the Mrs being electrocuted.

Ended up a supervisor came round and by boxing day BG had fitted a brand new boiler.

Needless to say we are no longer customers 😕

We had an intermittent hot water problem. By the time BG finished we had no hot water, no heating and a gas leak. In January with a six month old baby. We cancelled the contract.

LAst used them about 20 years ago

Every year they’d come out & service the boiler and bugger about for ages. About a month later it’d pack up, guaranteed. Eventually we called in Vaillant (for it was one of theirs) and the guy took one look and said “the wiring’s all wrong; did you do it yourself”. Apparently it was utterly obvious and the way the “service engineer” had been getting it to work before running away had involved a complex (or just possibly ignorantly accidental) bodge-round of the safety features.

When I called them up to cancel and told them why, they blamed the complex nature of our boiler and tried to do me a (only 4xnormal price) deal on a replacement

My aged parents got BG in to fix their old school non condensing boiler, who then buggered around for ages trying to fix it.
Ended up ‘condemming’ the old boiler as they couldn’t fix it. My folks were seriously considering the new boiler, I was livid with my folks as they wouldn’t let me look at fixing the old boiler (I’m an engineer). “oooh its gas-you cant tinker with, you’ll get in trouble, etc etc”

Anyway I bought and fitted a £30 water valving block and a box of o-rings later and it was fixed, been fine for a few years since. My folks have finally listened to how crap BG are.

I’ve had work done on several boilers over the last few years. British Gas have consistently been the most expensive quote I’ve had, so haven’t used them. I think you pay a large premium because you’re using a big energy company rather than a small tradesman – all of which is profit for British Gas.

Local company for me every time. Been a very long time since I’ve used BG and have nothing positive to say about them.

How old is the boiler, most manufacturers offer a fixed price repair,or you would be better off using a reputable local independent.

To be honest that’s plumbers full stop. Most experiences I’ve had with plumbers has not been brilliant. I’ve never used BG but don’t necessarily expect a local guy to be any better. Ask friends/family/work mates for recommendations if you can and go with the best sounding one out of that bunch. No guarantees but at least you’ve got half a chance. Don’t go with the cheapest, go with the one that has either been recommended or seems the most sensible when they come round to quote.

Blimey, its not looking all that promising for BG then.
Plan B and a gas safe registered plumber it is then.

USed them they were brilliant. We had a lot of issues with our boiler they arguably didn’t need to fix or could have charged us through the roof for, but they did all the work within the support contract we had. Excellent service for us.

Does your boiler manufacturer provide on their website a list of accredited repairers?

We had a full CH system installed in our last house. We got three local firms to quote. All came round in their working clothes or company polo shirt, listened to what we wanted, measured up then went away. 30-45 minutes each. A few days later we received a quote and all were within £500 of each other, £3200-£3700 if I recall correctly.
Anyway, someone had been going on about British Gas to Mrs PP so we had them I’m for a quote too. Young chap in a shiny suit with a briefcase walks in, glances upstairs and says “£6500. How does that sound?”
So I showed him the cheapest of the other quotes and he shut up and ran off.

Nothing wrong with BG plumbers, it’s just that their so expensive 😯 plenty of others out there just as good/bad that offer much better prices.

I think it depends on which BG engineer you get around like most trades some are good other are pants ,my sisters unvented cylinder leaked and required replacement she used BG and the most they could charge under the call out scheme was £429.00 for 2 hours plus work which includes parts ! she was very happy as the cylinder alone cost £800

Lots of good experiences, been a Servicecare customer for years (Swindon) I agree with the comments about it being down to the engineer. I’ve had seriously duff local plumbers cock up things in the past.

ServiceCare has saved me a fortune in parts and labour.

Funnily enough I’m at home waiting for the BG guy to call and undertake our annual service. Been on their service plan for years & so far have been very efficient. Crossed fingers I don’t have to post a negative……

Used to have the service plan and it was OK, but cancelled it when they put the price up to stupid levels

Now use my local Gas Safe engineer, who happens to be a mate who lives opposite us 😀

BG service engineers get a commission if they can convince you to buy a new boiler, hence there is a financial incentive to just lie and say they can’t get the parts or to condemn it.

My boiler is >25 years old and all but one of the spare parts are still available.

As above, they condemned my parents boiler due to “The parts no longer being available”, a quick call to the local Gas man down the road and it transpired that the parts were very much still available and it was fixed for £50.

Decent local gas man. IF they are good they will be bussy and hence if it is a sytem they are not comfortable with will suggest someone else. Guy I use has always been excellent, and when he was dealing with my parents system that also has some soalr thermal e.t.c that he was not familure with, he did not bull shit, just suggested man he knew.

Used BG for years, had a boiler fault so signed up for the Home Care boiler cover and got the repair done as part of it.

£18 a month for a year’s cover and an annual service was better than the expensive fix I was looking at. Had the same bloke who came for each visit. Knew his stuff but was increasingly fed up with BG working culture. I got the impression a lot of the good engineers were gradually leaving and setting up on their own or sticking out until retirement or decent VR offer.

Stopped the cover and got with an independent engineer (ex-BG) once I got a new boiler.

Only one I actively avoid is Homeserve, electrician mate got an offer to subcontract with them and the rates were appallingly bad. So I suspect you are getting the very cheapest of people through Homeserve 🙂

Local gas engineer did a service and quoted a few hundred quid to fix a valve that he said was causing the boiler noise. Called bg to take a look and their guy readjusted the settings so they were correct then adjusted the bypass valve so it wasn’t making the noise that the other guy blamed on the valve.

I know a couple of gas engineers who’ve worked for BG in the past & they say that the service plan is essentially a good system in theory but it’s overpriced & if you stick the £15/£20 per month into an account you’ll end up having enough there to cover most things that go wrong unless you’re really unlucky & if nothing major goes for 5 years you’ve saved the cost of a new boiler should the need arise.

They also weren’t happy with the fact that when people who are signed up to the service plan eventually buy a new boiler, from BG (or elsewhere for that matter) they officially weren’t allowed to remind them that the 2 year warranty on the new boiler meant they didn’t require the service plan for that time period… #thejoinermusthavetoldthem

I’ve used them for fixed price repairs once when my regular guy was on holiday and my backup was too backed up with work(I was on holiiday too so unable to faff about getting another local).

They did the job fairly promptly, took two visits, one to diagnose, one to fit parts. Cost me a lot more than it should have, but that’s life, you can’t have tenants with young family without heat.

It’s good that they’re around as a fallback, but a good local guy/firm is usually loads cheaper.

As I couldn’t seem to find one I used Rated People to get a gas engineer. Guy came from Barnsley to Hudds for the job and I was so impressed with him I have him a bit extra as I didn’t think he was charging enough money! Serviced 3 gas appliances and did landlord certificate on all 3 for £120. I was well chuffed.

I wouldn’t touch BG with a barge pole, I’d rather be cold!

One of my neighbours is a Worcester certified plumber so when ours packed up we got him round for 5 minutes to have a look at it to see if it was worth repairing or if we needed a new one. He diagnosed a small circuit board fault and suggested the best option was to use BG’s £250 repair service* where they’ll replace up to a number (I forget how many) of items and guarantee the repair for a fixed fee.

He suggested this was likely to be the best value as it de-risked the repair for us and fixed the cost. If we’d got him to do it, it would have been open ended and the parts were going to be in the hundreds without the labour.

BG booked, they attended when they said and fixed it quickly and no problems since. Very happy with the service.

Hope you get it fixed.

G

We had BG round to fix our boiler a couple of years ago.

The first engineer quoted us a new boiler because ours was obsolete (though parts are still available), the quote was for a couple of thousand. And then scheduled a service (for about £120) to see if it could be fixed.

The second engineer didn’t like the “push a new boiler on customers” tactic and liked fixing boilers in preference. He ordered a few parts to replace to see if it would be fixed saying we’d have to pay for the parts (around £100). These parts still didn’t fix the problem totally so he ordered more parts (another £150).

It was finally fixed and has worked fine for the last few years.

The second engineer was very good and helpful and pretty much replaced our old boiler piece by piece.

BG completely failed to charge us anything and to this day have never paid a penny for an almost new boiler.

Sometimes their shitness is a benefit! 😆

BG wouldn’t service our boiler because it was the wrong make. Told us they would fit a new boiler so we could have their service plan. They didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t going to replace a working boiler just to get them to service it. We have used a local guy for the last couple of years who has been great.

Had a BG service plan for years. The work done for a service has gradually got less (they used to take boilers apart and vac everything out) although that is probably a reflection of modern boilers, and the cost has increased

They’ve always managed to get parts and I would say that repairs have been to a good standard and everything left clean

Every year I ring and ask for, and get, a discount on the renewal. This year they hit my price ceiling, wouldn’t go below and now I’ve gone independent

If you can build a bike you can fix most things on a boiler. I’ve serviced my own for years, I will never do anything on the gas side but plumbing is easy. I’ve changed a pressure switch that was faulty (a few screws and 1 electrical connection), a pressure release valve (couple of locknuts after draining system), the PCB (4 screws and some electrical connections) and I haven’t died. I spoke to a GS engineer and told him what I’d done and he said I’d done a good job. Some boilers are easy to fix and the parts readily available.