They made my blood Boil-er (British Gas)

Member Name: B_O_M_B_A_

Product:	British Gas
Date:	03/09/08 (280 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Offer fairly low priced energy

Disadvantages: Considerably overpriced Boilers!

British Gas supply Gas and electricity to millions of people nationwide, and also have a very large business related customer base. I am myself one of these people and would like to share my experiences with them over the past 6 months since purchasing my house.

British Gas has been in the news quite a bit recently, unfortunately for them the press has been mostly bad, the first reason was for charging customers a ridiculous amount for boiler replacements or repairs, GMTV had a huge campaign against BG claiming that they were taking advantage of people who knew little about the boiler market and who thought they could trust a company as large as British Gas. Secondly they were in the press for making around £571 million profit in 2007, up around £480 million from 2006, although this sounds impressive they were blamed for charging people ridiculous amounts for their gas and electricity, claiming that their purchase prices had risen, clearly not.

I have had various dealings with British Gas, the first of which involved by boiler, I recently purchased a new house and two months after we moved in my radiator exploded flooding the lower level of the house. At the same time the boiler started leaking, luckily I had taken out the Boiler Homecare 100 pack, which was advertised to cover your boiler in case the worst happened, the cover costs me £12.99 a month. BG do offer various other packages that cover your pipes, radiators and electrics but the top one will cost you £26 a month.

I called out the boiler man on an emergency to come and get the radiator in a safe condition. When he arrived he removed the radiator but forgot the block it off, this resulted in dark black water spewing onto my floor, luckily we already had the carpets up because of the flood. After that he took a look at the boiler and confirmed it would need to be replaced, although I personally don't think he did a thorough check. He also told me that the cover I had only covered repairs, and NOT boiler replacement, I wasn't aware of this and it certainly wasn't stated to me when I took the cover out. This made me wonder whether or not he was lying and they could in fact repair the radiator, obviously replacing it would save them money and maybe make a neat profit out of the new boiler. I did however think I might as well replace the boiler and make sure it didn't start leaking again.

A few days later I rang up BG and asked them to confirm that my cover would not cover the replacement of the boiler; he also said that they would not replace the radiators. He did mention however that I could increase my Homecare cover to the top package for only £13 more a month, unfortunately it would not help me with this claim because I had already mentioned it, well, I'm not a sucker and bluntly said no, I also aim to cancel my cover in October when it runs out, if I put the £13 a month away I could pay an honest plumber to fix the boiler if it went wrong.

Now comes the worst part, I ultimately needed a new boiler and thought I would get a quote from British Gas to see what the damage would be. I booked an appointment at 5:30pm, which for once was convenient for me and the gentlemen did turn up on time. On arrival he told me he would be there for around 70 minutes, I didn't have anything else to do so that was fine. He spent around 35 minutes assessing the current location of the boiler, possible future locations, where the pipes could feed and finally how much it would cost.
At the time BG had an offer on which said if you had a Homecare package you would receive £350 off your boiler, also a further £100 off if you purchased one before 16th January, it was the 6th of January. The gentlemen placed in front of me a list of Boilers, I had no idea what the difference was, and although he tried his best to explain it was all a bit foreign to me. We agreed to go with one of the best boilers to ensure it didn't break down in future, after all the additional parts were added he showed me the final price. Now at the time I was thinking £2000 as a ballpark figure...wrong! He showed me a figure of £5200, this was for the boiler to be replaced in its existing position, labour, to have an external flew, re-piping, to have an element installed and to have my system flushed. As you can imagine my face went white, after he left I sat there wondering how I would possibly pay that kind of a figure.

Luckily however my Grandad had recently had his boiler refitted and gave me the name of the plumber he used (if you live around Bedford, UK and need a plumber this guy is brilliant, message me for his number). The gentlemen came around and looked at the damage, upon leaving he asked me what BG had quoted, I told him and he nearly collapsed, he said he would do it for £3200. This wasn't only however the boiler, this was to replace the boiler and move it into the loft to give us more storage space AND replace the six radiators.

After referring back to the BG quote I could see where the massive quote came from, they wanted £2000 for labour (I didn't realise BG workers earn £100k a year) and £1200 for the boiler, £600 for the flew and then the various other parts made the total.

The entire boiler situation was ridiculous and I feel sorry for anyone who gets conned, confused or persuaded to use them for a boiler replacement. It's easy to see where they made their profits in previous years and I hope they soon start to siphon them back to the consumers.

On the plus side however I do use them for my supply of Gas and Electricity and have been pleased to find my bills have been reasonable. Also in consideration to the current economic climate, BG has allowed their customers to fix their prices until 2011 without an added premium. I have done this and all it took was a simple call, I didn't have to wait too long to get through and the staff member was very helpful.

Overall BG are like any other business, they make money where they can, the problem is that in the modern economy social factors play an important part, and unless you keep your customers happy they wont ever come back, there are so many energy providers out there offering similar packages they should be working hard not to push their current customers away.

Summary: Get plenty of quotes before you dive head first in!