It has been one week, 9 phonecalls, 5 emails and 1 formal letter of complaint and still British Gas have not been able to repair our boiler. This is despite the fact I have a "Homecare" policy with British Gas to cover all boiler and heating breakdowns.
This followed a surprisingly promising start with 2 engineers coming out on the day the boiler broke down. However they misdiagnosed the problem, ordered the wrong part and when the next engineer couldn't repair the problem with the incorrect part.
A new part, a fan, was ordered to be delivered the next day (Tuesday by now) from the British Gas Parts Distribution Centre in Leicester.
The next day came and no engineer appeared and no phone call was received. When I called to see what the problem was I was told the part had not been arrived.
However I was assured someone from the Parts Distribution Centre would call me soon. They never called me and despite a series of increasingly irrate calls to British Gas no part materialised.
I asked to speak to the mythical folk in Leicester myself but was told even the British Gas call centre didn't have their number. One call centre worker helpfully proclaimed "It's out of our hands". There didn't seem much that was in their hands !
The Parts Distribution Centre is outsourced. As it turns out, to a Swedish Company called Syncron .
I can only conclude Syncron are partly to blame here but British Gas must take responsibility for choosing this bunch of incompetents to manage the distribution of their parts.
On the Syncron website Jan Paulsson, Project leader at Volvo, another Syncron client, is quoted as saying "The result looks too good to be true."
There's one reason for that Mr. Paulsson, the results are too good to be true ! In fact after managing in our "low carbon house" without hot water for a week (unless its out of a kettle) I would think the results are pretty awful.
Still, we keep hammering away at British Gas and maybe the boiler will be repaired this coming week. For any potential British Gas Homecare customers who have stumbled across this "moan", my only advise would be think twice before you sign up to Homecare. The recovery of your boiler may depend on some not very competent Swedes based in Leicester !
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This goes some way to make our struggles with British Gas Homecare and their woeful care jobs in Guildford parts distribution centre in Leicester last year seem purposeful. I noted this evening that people are still writing in to BBC1's Watchdog on the subject.
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