Prices, FAQs and T&Cs

- Frequently Asked Questions

First time fix on a boiler repair, why are you so passionate on it?
You just replaced part A, how could you say part B is also faulty?
I am a home buyer, is it worth organising a gas and electrical inspection?
For boiler repairs, how often you make a mis-diagnosis?
What is the difference between a landlord gas safety certificate and boiler service?
I have some water leaking drops after you repaired my boiler, will you come back to inspect it?
Magnaclean is leaking after you cleaned it, will you pay for a new one?
What are special boilers?
iMessage sent from an email address rather than a phone number...?
Can I request a refund if another engineer said you had done something wrong?
Can I request a warranty recall at weekends or evenings?
Why is that you charge a callout fee for landlords and letting agents?
Do you provide a quote visit for a boiler repair free of charge?

1. First time fix on a boiler repair, why are you so passionate on it?

Needlessly to say, it is cheaper and quicker for a customer to get his or her boiler up and running again.

For our business, it is also beneficial. We use the saved time to do another job for another new customer. End of the day, we have earned the same amount money, but we have one more customer.

Having said that, to have a high first time fix rate, a boiler engineer need to be competent and experienced, ie, he should know what might be wrong by the information over the phone, and get it prepared before attending.

It also needs a good van stock of parts and spares for obviously reasons.

We have a passion to fix people’s boilers on our first visits. This is one of ultimate tricks we have adopted in our boiler repair business.

2. You just replaced part A, how could you say part B is also faulty?

As a boiler and heating repair specialist, we fix over a thousand of faults each year. Some of them, about 1 in 20 cases (5%), are unluckily to have more than one fault. Once we get your first problem fixed, eg, part A is replaced, then we can see you have a second problem on part B. Again this is not very often, but it does happen occasionally. This un-predicted fault normally leads to unsatisfied customers, and so it gets our competency questioned.

We are very experienced boiler and heating engineers, and it is very unlikely for us to make anything worse. These minority cases of second fault are just unlucky for both parties, but it is your boiler or heating system, we are sorry but you might have to accept this fact, and pay for part B repair too.

One thing is certain that we have more than enough work to cope with, we don’t need to create extra jobs.

3. I am a home buyer, is it worth organising a gas and electrical inspection?

It is always good to have a gas and electrical safety checked before you commit to purchase a property. We are probably the only firm in St Albans to have both gas and electrical qualifications.

It is £70 for a gas safety check (landlord gas safety certificate - LGSC, required for rented properties on a yearly basis), and £180 for an electrical safety check (electrical installation condition report - EICR, required for rented properties about every 5 years). As by their names these checks are for safety only, they are not for assessment of system performance and functionality, and they are not an energy efficiency survey either, ie, the customer will not get a detailed report like a home buyer survey report of around 30 pages, picked up by a surveyor from a selection of templates, saying found problems with photoes etc.

Here are two blank forms for both checks. After inspection, you will get these two forms filled with an overall safety outcome.

They are more like a MOT test certificate for a car, a passed or failure outcome with some advisory recommendation for satety at most. They don’t tell you this is a new Land Rover or an old Nissan Micra.

You can get gas certificate at the day, but need a few days to get electrical report.

In this country, once a home buyer made an offer to a property on the market, the overall successful rate to a final completion is about 30%. Due to this fact, we might require a full payment upfront before we do a gas and electrical inspection on a house or flat for sale.

4. For boiler repairs, how often you make a mis-diagnosis?

Mis-diagnoses do happen by us, even we are dedicated boiler repair engineers with over 10 year experience, but they are not common, probably 1 in 20 or ever fewer.

Once we find it was a mis-diagnosis, we will honestly admit it, and make an apology to the customer. We don’t pay any compensation, but will only charge a fee which has been supposed to be, eg, we will waive off the charge related to our mistakes.

5. What is the difference between a landlord gas safety certificate and boiler service?

Landlord gas safety certificate (LGSC), or landlord gas safety check, or CP12 is a whole house gas safety check, on a gas boiler, gas cooker and a gas fire if there is one. It is also suggested that gas meter and gas pipe tightness should be tested.

A boiler service is working on a boiler only. It is not only a safety check, also it also involve in some maintenance work on boiler. End of a service job, you are supposed to get a paperwork to say what jobs have been done, and if the boiler is safe.

6. I have some water leaking drops after you repaired my boiler, will you come back to inspect it?

When we repair or replace a part on hydraulic path, or while we service a boiler, some water inevitably goes into boiler case, gaps and corners etc. While we try to clean and dry all the spillage before we leave, it is sometimes impossible to wipe off all the water, the remaining water might give a few of drops underneath the boiler within one day or so, but it shouldn't be more from the second day.

If you still get water drops after one day, please call us and we will be back for a check.

7. Magnaclean is leaking after you cleaned it, will you pay for a new one?

Unfortunately we are not in a position to pay for a new Magnaclean filter, even it was only leaking after we opened and cleaned it, during a boiler service or repair.

Magnaclean filters are massively installed but they are made from composite plastic materials that means they are not as strong as metals, eg copper or steel. As a competent boiler firm we are not afraid on dealing with them, but there is a risk that some of them might be damaged and leaking after we touched them.

We will come back ASAP to get a new Magnaclean to replace existing one but it is at customer costs.

8. What are special boilers?

Special boilers are listed as blow, they are about less than 2% among all boilers, but to get to the bottom of any fault on these beasts, a significant amount work is normally involved, so there is a callout charge which covers first hour labour.

Pulsacoil or Gledhill thermal stores
Powermax or floor standing storage boilers
Wall hung storage boilers
Back boilers
Heating Interface Unit (HIU)

Special boiler list

9. iMessage sent from an email address rather than a phone number...?

We often find some customers sending us text messages (iMessage) with their email addresses at sender's locations instead of their mobile phone numbers. It is widely believed this isn’t an intended setting, but they don't know it as a sender. So you can change it back to your phone number as followings:

iMessage received with an email as sender.

Only tick the mobile number instead of email address.

10. Can I request a refund if another engineer said you had done something wrong?

Although it is rare, but sometimes we get bad mouthed by another gas engineer about a particular job, either from a local independent one or an engineer from a boiler manufacturer team.

After Ian Braithwaite retirement in 2019, we haven’t come across any other local gas engineers in St Albans who can compete with us on boiler repairs, and our professional standards can also be seen and proven by our Google reviews.

It has been a new thing for boiler manufacturers to offer long boiler warranty now. The engineers from boiler manufacturers are pretty good on their own boilers, hence they tend to look down some local engineers work.

Since 2011 we have been operating our business in St Albans, we have found the most critical comments on our work were baseless, or misunderstanding. So if as a customer you request a refund or apology from us by believing in other engineers’ comments or suggestions on our work, ideally we wish to see a written report about this claim from the engineer.

11. Can I request a warranty recall at weekends or evenings?

We don’t work at weekends or evenings so all warranty recalls are carried out at normal working hours and days.

If we can, we might be able to answer text messages out of hours.

12. Why is that you charge a callout fee for landlords and letting agents?

Very offen landlords or agents aren't accompanying us while we are on site work, so it isn't always appreciated for our hard work and competent approaches, eg, travel to the site, with a heavy tool bag, access problems before we find a fault, upstairs and downstairs ping bang running etc. It is easily being treated as a free labour or second option visit.
Rented properties are for business.
As they don't pay, tenants are prone to give nonsense fault claims.

13. Do you provide a quote visit for a boiler repair free of charge?

Yes we do and it is free of charge if we can't fix a problem on our first vist, but we will also try to fix your boiler on our first visit if we can and if we have a part in our van stock. As we know we charge average labour rates and we don't rip people off like some emergency plumbers, we will assume all the clients don't object to this approach.