I've had a British Gas homecare agreement for years. They used to service my boiler every August. In 2006, I got no letter arranging an appointment for this; I rang, eventually, and it was done in November. In 2007 likewise no letter arrived; I rang in January and it has been done today. Not that they serviced it -- today BG call it "an inspection".
The engineer managed to turn off my pilot light and couldn't restart it. This was very bad news, and somewhat annoying. I don't need to have someone come out to disable my system, after all. But then he announced that he would have to call someone else to fix it. "I don't carry parts" he said. "You'll be lucky to get someone today". "You need a technician". When I queried whether the service engineers used to carry parts, he confirmed that they did. "We used to do services in the summer and concentrate on breakdowns in the winter."
Fortunately it was merely being difficult, and restarted after a few attempts and a long wait to reset the thermostat. But I feel swindled. British Gas forced me to take half a day off work. If there was work to be done, that's fine; but to make me wait even longer, possibly a day or so, if they manage to break something?
I want my boiler serviced every year. But in fact they're stretching the window longer each year. And they don't service it, they carry out "an inspection". And then they won't fix any fault they find?
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