Be Excellent To Each Other

Hiya,

I'm thinking of getting one of the call out services with these guys for my tenants (pay a monthly fee and the tenants call them if there is a problem). While they are quite happy to wait to hear back off me while I am in work, it's not going to be very easy if something goes wrong and I am on holiday. I've also found it difficult to get engineers out quickly. Being such a distance away I thought that this might be an easier option both for me and the tenants.

Anyway, I wondered if anyone here had had any experience with either of them? Either as a homeowner yourself or a tenant that has had this on a rented property.

Thanks for any sensible contributions.

BG are great, and I think it's a brilliant thing for landlords to do. I used to have a landlord that would insist on coming around and poking at the boiler themselves, which in the middle of January is bloody ridiculous.

I have bg, expensive and I have no comparison, but they check my boiler yearly, and have fixed it 3 times with call put on same day or next. One was an almost total rebuild.

I am with BG. No complaints so far

You can set it up so the tenants can ring, if an issue with the boiler etc

Yes, this is part of the attraction too. It seems to be far better for all concerned.

Thanks for your input guys, I appreciate it.

I have had British Gas replace my boiler very recently and I was very pleased with the service I received.

I would recommend getting a plumber to flush the system. As BG try and charge a fortune

BG came out to service my boiler, snapped the cover off the combustion chamber, then said a replacement part was unavailable and condemned it.

On the upside, they were able to fit a replacement for £4K the next week.
I politely declined and paid half that to an independent, but had to wait ages to get it done.

I had mine condemned as the heat exchange was leaking. Tbf it was a really cheap boiler installed when the flats were built. My upstairs and downstairs neighbour have had theirs replaced this year too.

Why did it cost £4k? Mine was £2600 all-in, including £400 scrappage and The Hive.

Mone cost £4k plus in Bicester from BG. Lesson learnt hard there. Latest one was £2.7k from local guy.

I had some issues with my electrics where things kept tripping, so I signed up for the full BG package for around £20 a month.

I knew it would cost me £200 or more for a local sparky to spend the day getting to the bottom of the issue.

They came out and had all the tools and the guy got to the bottom of it within 2 hours. So well worth it

Where they take the piss is the cost of work outside of the insurance, during the investigation the guy found I have a dodgy earth cable

The earth cable has been fixed to an old unused copper water pipe in my garage, whilst not lethal it removes another layer of protection and also made the job of finding out what was tripping the power a lot harder.

They sent me a quote for £300! I couldn't find an earth spike online costing more than £30 and the hole to get the earth cable out of the garage is already there.

They will also increase the cost of the insurance after you have had it for a year.

My last boiler was about 25 years old, it went wrong and BG came out and said it needed a rubber washer in some pipe

He tapped the details into his laptop and said there was no part number so it had to be condemned.

The local plumber over the road replaced it for £50, the washer cost 30p

Nothing to do with who to go for, but I have an amusing story about British Gas who came to quote me on a new boiler and radiators. (I think I may have told this story before but whatever… I’m doing nothing else at work)

My wife had organised British Gas to come and give us a quote on a new boiler. She was out when the man came so I dealt with him… when I opened the door I was greeted with one of the thugs from my year at school. He stunk of stale smoke and didn’t take his shoes off when he came in.

We exchanged greetings, were polite to each other and did the usual “So who do you still see from school?”. I am still best friends with his old girlfriend who is now married with kids. I don’t think he enjoyed hearing about her successes. Anyway, he began to quote for a boiler.

I wanted a new boiler and new radiators throughout the house. I wanted a combi boiler so that I could free up the water tank cupboard upstairs. The BG guy first of all checked my water pressure. He opened up the water main as far as it would go so water was gushing into the sink. Seriously, the pressure of this would have hurt your hand if you put it under but he said that my pressure “wasn’t enough” for a combi boiler and instead he would quote for a like for like system with a water tank upstairs. Great.

He then asked about the radiators. I wanted them replaced as there was a couple of different designs throughout the house and they had seen better days. He asked me if I was “handy” as replacing radiators isn’t that hard and they’re not that expensive from B&Q. “Tell you what” he said “I won’t quote you on new radiators as you can do that yourself”

He’s right as I could change them myself, but that’s not the point.

He then went on to talk about all the insurances and other things that British Gas offer. He also talked about the fact that BG will be there forever and if you go with an independent trader, they might go out of business next week. He didn’t mention the fact that Worcester Bosch offer call outs as part of their guarantee so who fitted it is irrelevant but of course he isn’t going to.

Anyway, after much printing of documents and talking through what he was selling, he quoted me on the exact opposite of what I wanted and it came in just over £4K.

The next day I had a local trader come round who quoted me £2.2K for a new combi boiler and new radiators. Guess who I went with?

Your old school friend? Sorry, I sort of zoned out there for a minute.

There's a 'Frasier' episode like that.

Title

Indeed there is, and what's more it guest stars Dr Cox as the thug.

Is Frasier available to stream on anything? I think I'd like to watch it as I never got into it first time round.

While I think about it, is Seinfeld available to stream? I used to love that.

I don't like Seinfeld. I saw half an episode.

Well at least you gave it a go. No one can complain with that.

Frasier is currently being shown as a double bill in the morning on C4, they are at the mid point of the first season at the moment.

I'll probably be at work while that's on but ("Ahem" - Ed) seems excellent. I'll give that a go.

As a tenant, the BG thing has been brilliant. More so because my landlord is absolutely fucking useless at anything I can't organise myself (over a year to fix the en suite so far).

I've never liked the idea of an en suite

Do you just use a beaker of clean water next to your bed?

Last time I looked at Netflix's US site, it was on there.

Or buy the whole thing on disc for £35 or thereabouts. You can probably find it cheapest from some website whose name escapes me.

Thanks Curio, it's good the know how tenants find them.

And then you can be a rubbish landlord and get away with it. All round win.

Eh?

Curio seems pacified by having homecover despite having a rubbish landlord.

Ah! Yeah, I see what you mean now. I'd like to skip that tag though.

You should get him to post on here.

Brilliant.