Review of Domestic and General Domestic Appliance Insurance

I feel compelled to sumbit a review after the shocking service provided by Domestic and General. The service was so bad I feel it needs to be shared and I apologise in advance for such a long review.

My 78 year old mother took out a policy to cover her gas oven, and when the fan stopped working just before Christmas she telephoned Domestic and General to send out an engineer. The appointment was arranged very promptly, the engineer arrived very quickly and that's the only good points I can remember from the whole experience as it went down hill very rapidly from then on.

The oven is housed within a kitchen unit and had to be removed from the unit to gain access to the rear of the oven where the repair was needed. The engineer did not remove the rear oven shroud completely so he could see what he was doing inside the oven but just seemed to fumble around with only partial access to it. He replaced the faulty electrical part quite quickly but left our premises in a hurry without staying around to see if the oven worked properly, which it didn't. I telephoned D&G but the engineer wouldn't come back and said he would have to order another part as it must be faulty.

He turned up nearly two weeks later without any spare parts on his van which he is supposed to keep on there, and told me they should have come through the post. He left our premises once more without fixing the oven.

A week later the engineer turns up with the spare part (Hooray). Again he fumbles around with only partial access to the back of the oven, fits the new electrical part, swithches the oven on, and BANG something had blown. The engineer appeared to be clueless about what had just happened, told us it must be another faulty part and left the premesis again in a hurry without investigating further and leaving my mother still without her oven. By this time she was at her wits end and broke down in tears complaining to the utterly useless customer services about the engineer. After they spoke to him he was cheeky enough to say that he had no access to fix the oven even though in reality he had removed it twice to replace a faulty part. They had the shear nerve to back him without question, utterley ridiculous.

We requested a different engineer to carry out the repair in future and D&G told us we would have to wait another week simply because we wanted to use a different engineer. A week later we get a phone call telling us the engineer cannot make the appointment but he will be with us the following week with the spare parts on his van. The engineer finally turns up the following week but doesn't have the parts with him so I asked him to leave.

We decided to appoint an independent engineer after D&G told us we could have a pay and claim arrangement. The independent engineer had no problems regarding access to the oven and with his knowledge and cooperation from the oven manufacture's technical department we discovered the electrical part had been wired incorrectly by the Domestic and General engineer and that's why we heard a bang. The independent engineer promptly fixed the oven without difficulty once the new parts were obtained.

In summery, after approximately six weeks, four appointments and two different so called engineers, Domestic and General have completely failed to fix my 78 year old mother's oven. Absolutely useless!!!