Prices, FAQs and T&Cs

- Frequently Asked Questions

This section is for business operation not for technical issues

1. Is it true you don't charge for a callout?
2. Do you charge for callouts in London?
3. Do you always adopt a "no fix no fee" policy?
4. I am a landlord, why do you require my personal details?
5. As a tenant, can I organise a gas job with you on behalf of my landlord?
6. How likely will you fix my boiler on your very first visit?
7. How is it justified that you charge me a fee by a boiler reset?
8. Do you have insurance to cover your work?
9. How long a warranty will you give after a repair?
10. After you repaired my boiler, an existing part has stopped working, will you give warranty for that?
11. What is a typical fee after a successful boiler repair?
12. Have you successfully repaired all the boilers you attended?
13. Is being Gas Safe registered a guarantee of carrying out competent repairs?
14. A gas engineer said I need a new boiler, is it always true?
15. What is your approach if I still have a problem after your repair?
16. Why are boiler spare parts so expensive?
17. Who do you recommend to repair my boiler if you are not available?
18. Why do you hate an intermittent problem on a boiler?
19. Where is a good forum for me to ask for plumbing and heating questions?
20. Is it okay for me to ask for “no fix no fee” on my boiler repairs?
21. First time fix on a boiler repair, why are you so passionate on it?
22. You just replaced part A, how could you say part B is also faulty?
23. I am a home buyer, is it worth organising a gas and electrical inspection?
24. For boiler repairs, how often you make a mis-diagnosis?
25. What is the difference between a landlord gas safety certificate and boiler service?
26. I have some water leaking drops after you repaired my boiler, will you come back to inspect it?
27. Magnaclean is leaking after you cleaned it, will you pay for a new one?
28. What are special boilers?
29. iMessage sent from an email address rather than a phone number...?
30. Can I request a refund if another engineer said you had done something wrong?
31. Can I request a warranty recall at weekends or evenings?
32. Why is that you charge a callout fee for landlords and letting agents?
    

1. Is it true you don't charge for a callout?

We don't charge callout fees for local domestic clients within a 10 mile radius of St Albans. As we adopt a "no fix no fee" policy, customers are not even charged for a diagnosis if they don't want to go ahead with expensive repairs (exceptions apply). We quote and charge by completed jobs - not by hours spent.

Apparently there is nothing free while running a business (business costs are about £25 per hour). As one of the most competent gas engineers in our locale, if we go for another different job instead of yours, we might well get paid for our labour and time.

Please be aware that if we need to come back with a new part or similar, the labour charge is from £100 to £140 for two visits. We just want to look after customers who are unfortunetely in having their boilers break down. We usually don’t charge customers if they don’t want to go ahead with further repairs by us, and we don't charge customers if we are struggling with a diagnosis or we have failed on your boiler repairs.

In the mojority of cases, we can get to the bottom of your boiler problem on our first visit, explain the fault to you, and give a reasonable quote and timing to come back and fix it, if we can't fix it on very first visit.

We also reserve the right to charge a diagnostic fee £70 if all three conditions are met: 1. A significant amount of work is involved before we get into the bottom of the fault. 2. The diagnosis is correct and given to customer. 3. The customer decides not to go for a further repair or a new boiler with us, or we have a problem on access to the fault point.

If we fix your boiler on a first visit, we normally charge you between £70 to £100 for labour, plus part or parts incurred. The "fixed" means your boiler is up and running again by our work.

We aim to make our customers happy and hope to be employed to fix your boiler not only this time, but possibly in the future. We value the trust from returning customers and recommendations and we are getting more and more work by word of mouth.

We charge for weekend and evening callouts as out of hours, and we charge for callouts for rented properties. We also charge for a London callout if we agree. We might also charge for a callout if it is over 15 miles distance.

Callout Charge Flowchart

2. Do you charge for callouts in London?

Yes, we do charge for callouts in London. At the moment, it is £90.

We are often requested to travel to London for unusual domestic boiler repairs, and also for commercial boiler repairs. The above fee is for domestic clients.

3. Do you always adopt a "no fix no fee" policy?

For most boiler repairs, the faulty problems are persistent, so we know which parts need to be replaced. We adopt a "no fix no fee" policy.

Occasionally, we come across intermittent problems, and thus cannot be 100% certain in our diagnosis. In such a case if we are with a boiler and it is up and running again after a break or cooling down period, the problem isn't always evident at the time. We will let you know of this uncertainty, and it is up to you to decide whether or not go ahead with a repair with some degree of uncertainty.

If unluckily we make a wrong diagnosis, we can’t refund you all the costs incurred. But, we will try not to charge you for our labour.

If a customer supplies a part, regardless it is new, refurbished or second handed, we will charge our labour fee to fit it on, even sometimes the part isn’t right or is defective.

4. I am a landlord, why do you require my personal details?

If you are a landlord and it is also a very first time we do business, we require your full name and home address for insurance purposes.

5. As a tenant, can I organise a gas job with you on behalf of my landlord?

Yes absolutely. But unless we have known your landlord before, and we has his or her approval for this particular job, you are obligated to pay us first then claim the payment back from your landlord late. It is the same for letting agents.

6. How likely will you fix my boiler on your very first visit?

As the number one boiler repair business in St Albans, we are very busy. If we don’t need to come back with a newly purchased part, we will still have another job to undertake. So we have a passion to fix customer boilers on our very first visits, but it depends on our competency and particularly on van stock. For the record, we have fixed more than 50% boilers on our first visits.

There isn’t any national or industrial standards for van stocks. From 2019, we have documented our company van's stock lists. We probably have the most comprehensive van stock in St Albans, but we are still not able to carry all boiler spares and parts in our van stock as that would be impossible. If we don't have a particular spare part in our van stock, we will have to come back with a new part, so the labour charge will be normally based on our two visits.

So with a good van stock and our experienced engineers, a customer gets cheaper and quicker repairs, and we then move on to the next new job for a new customer.

The company van stock list

7. How is it justified that you charge me a fee by a boiler reset?

We always adopt a "no fix no fee" policy. In contrasted to some fellow gas engineers, we don’t charge for a call out if we can’t fix your boiler or heating by our visit. But if we fix the problem we charge.

Occasionally we work on a boiler and use tools, and even put a new part or parts in, but if we still can’t get the boiler or heating up and running, then we don’t charge.

We also help local people by online guidance and basic checks etc and these instructions are offered by our web site without a visit, and we don’t charge for fees.

But per a customer request if we made a visit, and carried our one of the following work:

• Reset a boiler
• Switch on a boiler
• Relight a permanent pilot llight
• Boiler parameter adjustment
• Heating system pressure top up
• Open a radiator valve
• Programming heating and hot water on and off times
• Bleed a pump
• Reset a pre-paid gas meter
• Call Cadent (National Grid / SGN) to restore gas supply
• Call boiler manufacturer for a fixed price repair
• (this list is not exhaustive)

And if we “fixed” the problem and it is fine for over one week, regardless how simple it might have looked like, as a customer you get a working boiler or heating in the end, and it is an expected outcome.

Being a business, we have to draw a line here - no fix no fee, but if fixed we charge.

8. Do you have insurance to cover your work?

Yes. As a limited company, we always have an insurance policy to cover our gas, heating, plumbing and electrical work. Fortunately, so far we haven't used our insurance cover for any work carried out by us. 

9. How long a warranty will you give after a repair? 

We give an one year part and labour warranty for a new part or parts we replaced. For the rest of the boiler we don't give any warranty. 

It is very common to have seized fans, pumps and motorised valves in boiler and heating repairs. If we and customers decide just to free a fan, pump or valve by a lubrication, we will charge a fee, and there will be no warranty on these existing parts. The same is also applied to heat exchanger cleaning for combi boilers.

If we relighted a permanent pilot light and didn’t replace its thermocouple, we give only one week warranty.

Very unlikely we might have caused a workmanship minor leaking while doing repairs. We do need to work on old existing parts of the boiler to get a repair job done, but we can’t hold an endless liability on exiting parts. Any suspected workmanship leaking should be reported back within two weeks for a possible warranty recall.

We are often called back within one year for a problem again on the boiler we worked on before, the problem might even be the same error code. There are two possibilities: either it is the failure of the new part we fitted in, in such a case it is under one year warranty from us, or it is another issue other than the new part, therefore we reserve the right to treat an initial recall as new job and to charge accordingly.  

10. After you repaired my boiler, an existing part has stopped working, will you give warranty for that? 

We only give warranty for the part or parts we fitted it. Inevitably while we repair a boiler, we are not only dealing with the faulty part, but sometimes also need to take off other existing parts and put them back on. It is very rare but it did happen before a boiler had another faulty existing part unpredictably. Being a top boiler repair firm in St Albans with a good reputation, we want to look after our customers, but we can’t give warranty on all existing parts.

11. What is a typical fee after a successful boiler repair?

First we always endeavour to inform you of any chargeable service beforehand if you are reachable.

For a one-visit repair, the typical charge is between £70 to £100 for labour. The labour charge will be between £90 and £120 for a two-visit repair job.

As a rule of thumb, we charge around £70 per hour, and we can't work for free.

We don't add any money on parts or materials.

12. Have you successfully repaired all the boilers you attended?

No! We are still struggling on about 5% of boilers attended, ie, one in twenty boilers, for various reasons - parts are obsolete, beyond economical repair, intermittent problems or even wrong diagnosis etc.

Compared with fellow local boiler installers, we are highly competent at boiler and heating repairs. We earn money on most boiler repairs, and don't mind not earing on a few of them.

13. Is being Gas Safe registered a guarantee of carrying out competent repairs?

The answer is a big no! Being Gas Safe registered is only proof of knowledge of certain safety standards, and it is nothing to do with boiler repair skills.

Before I registered with Gas Safe in 2009, nobody at my training centres and none of my gas safe inspectors had taught me anything about boiler repairs.

One of my fellow boiler repair men said this in a closed forum: "To be able to repair modern boilers, a heating engineer should be accomplished in the following areas:

• A degree in electronic engineering.
• An understanding of what the boiler is actually doing and what it does normally.
• Years of doing my own car maintenance.
• Common sense.
• Then, ring manufacture technical support if stuck. They are supposed to know their own boilers best and most likely better than we will."

14. A gas engineer said I need a new boiler, is it always true?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, it isn't always true, because more than half of gas engineers are incompetent at modern boiler repairs. As we said above, being Gas Safe doesn't mean an engineer knows how to repair boilers.

Mark Ray from southeast London, he is an experienced boiler engineer, and a former frontline engineer at Vaillant boilers. He made this Youtube video, which we totally agree with.

15. What is your approach if I still have a problem after your repair?

In most cases, around 90% to 95% in total, a boiler breakdown is caused by only one fault, or one failed part. We fix the problem, and you get a working boiler again - job done!

But in some cases, customers are indeed unlucky if another problem follows. If the second problem is unrelated to our first fix, we will treat it as a new repair, ie a chargeable service. We give a warranty on the part or fault we fixed, not on the remainder of the whole boiler.

16. Why are boiler spare parts so expensive?

On average, a boiler is sold for about £900 to an end user. The maximum profit for its manufacturer is about £300 to £500. Quite a few boiler manufacturers operate in this way: make a cheap boiler to entice people to buy poor quality, and then sell parts for a fortune. For example, Halstead comes to mind, and Biasi spares are outrageous, too, as are Ravenheat and Glow worm.

There was a story I heard a while ago about someone pricing up a Ford in spare parts. It costs about 50 times as much as buying the car apparently. Buy a car, don't drive it, break it, and flog the parts on fleabay as genuine, unused parts for half the price; you'll still run a 2500% profit.

By the way, we don't add a mark up on any boiler and heating spares.

17. Who do you recommend to repair my boiler if you are not available?

Modern boilers are also classified as electrical equipment. In reality, boiler repair jobs are not for traditional plumbers without an engineering mind and electrical knowledge. But by law, you have to be on the Gas Safe register to work on boilers, so many Gas Safe plumbers are messing around with boiler repair jobs, until you decide to go for a new boiler.

Ian Braithwaite from St Albans AL4, 07837 064698, https://ianbgas.co.uk/, is another local gas engineer who impresses us with his boiler and heating repairs. He was an electric technician before, and he knows modern boilers well. Also, he does not seem interested in boiler replacement, so his opinions on boiler fault finding are at least not biased.

Latest update: Ian Braithwaite has retired since end of 2019, and lives in Shropshire now. We wish him well. Amazingly, he is still answering his phones.

2024 latest update: From some feedback, we have leant another St Albans local family run gas firm, PHP Plumbing, Heating & Property Services, has done quite well on some difficult boiler repairs.

18. Why do you hate an intermittent problem on a boiler?

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 play 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.

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.

19. Where is a good place for me to ask plumbing and heating questions?

At Plumbing and Central Heating forum on www.DIYnot.com.

http://www.diynot.com/diy/forums/plumbing/

Under the user name "hertsboilers", we often participate in answering questions along with other experienced gas engineers across the country.

20. Is it okay for me to ask for “no fix no fee” on my boiler repairs?

It should always be “no fix no fee” according to common law in this country, as you and the gas engineer have a contract that he or she is going to fix your boiler with a warranty, and you will pay the fee agreed.

We have been told many stories by customers that some gas engineers couldn’t fix a boiler problem, but took money, and refused to come back with a lot of excuses. Should these engineers be taken to the small claim court they would have no leg to stand on.

There are two types of fees as a customer you might have to pay, regardless of repair outcome. One is a callout fee, the other is diagnostic fee. Both of the two should be agreed beforehand.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

• Landlord gas safety certificate
• Electrical Installation Condition Report

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.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

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

1. 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.
2. Rented properties are for business.
3. As they don't pay, tenants are prone to give nonsense fault claims.