Review of British Gas Homecare 400

Thought I’d post my experience with British Gas only because when trying to find out who to complain to about the service I’ve received I have found hundreds of complaints about the same kind of issues.

To be fair it all started relatively well, I took out the Homecare 400 package on a rental property that I have as it sounded a good deal and would cover any issues my tenants could have.

I took it out on the 16th November and booked in a service for early December, Unfortunately the boiler started leaking between these times. I called British Gas and they stepped forward the service to the next day. The engineer turned up in the agreed time slot, looked at the boiler and told me that I needed a new heat exchanger, but I’d have to pay for it, which is understandable! He turned off the boiler for safety reasons and said he would be back on Monday morning with the required part. Unfortunately this is the end of the good service.

Despite calling to confirm the appointment, the engineer turned up at 15:30 replaced the part and left. Two days later I had a call from my tenant asking when the boiler is going to be fixed as it’s leaking worse than ever and flooded the kitchen. I called British Gas and they said they would have someone to me by 18:00. No one turned up!

I called them in the evening to find out what was happening only to be told by their "Customer Service" that an engineer tried to gain access at 14:20 but no one was home, I know that both tenants where in and explained this but he was adamant. After getting off the phone I checked my call status on my phone and discovered that I hadn’t reported the fault till 14:54 some 34 minutes after the engineer apparently tried to gain access. So either British gas service is so good that they can identify problems via a crystal ball before you’ve logged them or they are lying, you choose!

I called back the fella who I spoke too, said to him that I hadn’t even logged the call when the engineer was meant to have arrived at my property and just put the phone down!

Called back again and spoke to someone else who after two minutes said that he couldn’t look into the issue as their system is down as they go to a manual system at 21:00, I’m right in thinking that this is 2008, manual systems for a company the size of British Gas, seems unlikely or is it just me?

Currently I have to take another day off work to wait for the engineer, will he come who knows? Will he fix the boiler? Judging by all the other complaints about British Gas I’m not confident :-((

Will I be cancelling my home care you bet yah! Word of warning to anyone thinking about this service, probably is really good till something goes wrong, but if it does it’s a LOTTERY :-)