Intermittet Boiler Lockouts or Noises

Intermittent problems or noises are a headache! If we attended but couldn’t witness the problem, should we charge for this visit? If we don’t charge, we lost our time and labour, but if we charge actually we didn’t carry out a meaningful repair for you!

If you have an intermittent boiler lockout or noise, ideally we want to witness it happening - we would wish to see a persistent lockout or noise. Often, a problem described by a customer could be caused by more than one part, so for example if you had a boiler lockout or noise yesterday, then after an overnight cooling down, the boiler may be working again while we are in front of it today. We sometimes can’t pinpoint the faulty part which is having an intermittent playing up.

For a good intermittent problem sometimes we ended up with such a situation - we made a few of visits, and we replaced a series of new parts, but the boiler is still having the same problem. If we charge the customer he or she still has a non-working boiler, it is bit unfair isn’t it? But if we don’t charge we lose labour and new parts, it is also unfair to us!

We do believe that your boiler is having a problem since it is your boiler and you are familiar with it. But without witnessing the problem, sometimes it is bit difficult to get to the bottom of the problem, ie, to get a diagnosis 100% right. We don't charge callout fee to local people (except for rented properties), and we adopt a "no fix no fee" policy, so we sometimes don't come out for an intermittent problem until it becomes more persistent.

We also work for insurance companies as a sub contractor. For a boiler repair, these insurance companies don’t allow us to make more than two visits and to fit more than one part for obvious reasons, ie, insurance companies generally walk away from intermittent problems.

Some customers agree for us to gamble on a series of new parts to solve their intermittent problems. In this case, we will use our experience, and replace one part with another, in the order from most likely to least likely, until we fix the problem. Obviously, all parts and labour will be charged. To avoid any confusion or misunderstanding, we will charge for each step beforehand, we can’t leave all charges to a final bill.

About 10% of boiler preoblems are intermittent. Having said that, we are not refusing to work on intermittent lockouts, but we just want to let you know that it might take more visits and cost more to get your boiler finally fixed.

Herts Boilers also maintain this blog site: http://www.boilerblog.co.uk/