"Failed to diagnose simple boiler fault and refused to refund"

A review of Heat Xtra by SS written on Thursday 20th of October 2016

Asked HeatXtra to repair a simple everyday fault on my boiler which I suspected was a faulty thermister that was causing the boiler to shut down after a random period of time. HeatXtra engineer ignored the status of the LED's which show where the fault is and did not have a boiler manual or laptop to see what the error code meant.

After opening up the boiler and doing some tests he said the boiler was fine and that the random shutdowns were caused by too much sludge in the system. I was somewhat perplexed by this but thought this man knew things from working experience so asked him do the necessary work. He said it would cost £175 on top of the call out fee to clean out the system but he could could not do it for another week or so be cause it was a 2 man job and he was very busy.

I paid him the £60 callout fee he asked for. A week later I called him again to do the work but he said he was busy. I called him again several times and left messages with his wife but he was always busy elsewhere and did not give me a callback. Seems he was just not interested.

In frustration I called out another engineer who said he could not find any sludge

in my system and the fault was what I originally diagnosed from the error codes. The thermister was found to be faulty and the boiler worked fine after it was replaced.

When I asked HeatXtra to refund my £60 due their misdiagnosis, the engineer made ail kinds of excuses and refused to give me a refund. When I mentioned I had City and Guilds Level 2 In Electrical Installation and was familiar with fault finding/diagnostic procedures he had the audacity to say " If you have Electrical Installation qualifications then why did you call me ? Why did you not do the job yourself ? " The plain and simple fact is that I could have easily replaced the faulty electrical part myself but I would be breaking the law as only a person who is Gas Safe Registered can open the cover to a boiler and do repairs.

Does this HeatXtra engineer not know this ? In effect he is asking me to break the law.

I would not touch HeatXtra again with bargepole

HeatXtra do not seem to realise that customers talk about their experience. If you do a bad job for me I will give you a bad review. If you do a good job I will be happy to give you a good review.

If you need a good reliable Gas Safe Engineer I will be happy to recommend the following 2 people below.

D Turner Plumbing 07891 623053 Sinfin Derby

Encore Plumbing Matthew Giddings 01332 299999 Allenton Derby

I have used both of these tradesmen and was very impressed by their professionalism and service..

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