Want a bath? You could take the kettle upstairs!
FOUR weeks without hot water is four weeks too long – especially when you have taken steps to prevent such a thing happening.
Graham Mackie, of Elgin, has a house insurance policy with Aviva which includes emergency cover if his boiler breaks down.
So when it stopped working he phoned and a HomeServe engineer was sent that day.
But he couldn’t fix Graham’s boiler, he needed to order parts. This was the Monday. On the Friday, the parts were fitted.
But the boiler broke down again the next day.
Graham had no hot water over the weekend. For baths, he and wife Barbara had to make trips up and down stairs with pots and pans full of water heated on the cooker.
The next engineer to come around wanted to cut out bits of the walls to look for leaks in radiator pipes.
Graham categorically said no to this idea. The boiler and house are less than six years old. It was the boiler that was the problem.
The engineer had another look and decided that it was, indeed, the boiler that was faulty – but yet more new parts were needed.
There then followed a
succession of promises, broken appointments and many, many phone calls.
At one point, Graham, who is 66, was told that to save running up and down stairs with kettles of hot water, couldn’t he plug the kettle into a socket on the upstairs landing?
Then HomeServe declared the boiler was unrepairable.
Graham phoned his local
plumber, who came out, fitted a new boiler and had hot water running through the taps again – all inside two hours.
It was a lot of hassle and expense, especially when Graham had been paying an extra £72 per year on his insurance policy to cover emergency breakdowns. He got in touch with Raw Deal.
We had a word with Aviva.
Their spokesperson told us: “We are very sorry that Mr Mackie was without heating and hot water for so long. This is unacceptable, and we are reviewing this case with our partner, HomeServe, to understand what went wrong.
“We aim to get things right first time for our customers. However, when we don’t, we try to put it right as best we can. HomeServe had already paid £500 towards a replacement boiler (as per the terms and conditions of the policy) and was making arrangements with Mr Mackie to install a new boiler.
“HomeServe will pay for the installation of the new boiler for Mr Mackie and, in recognition of the inconvenience, HomeServe will also pay Mr Mackie £600 compensation.”