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[Marks DTM Calib]

Things are so going down hill these days, the average skill level of these repair men is so bloody awful its shocking.

Just been looking at a number of issues for friends who are paying monthly payments for service care and there all being miss diagnosed and resulting in long repair times and sometimes VERY expensive repair costs.

My advice to anybody on this forum is DONT buy these useless service plans, if your worried about such things, set up an account and pay the monthly cost into it.....then find a GOOD (good luck) local person to do your repairs/servicing.

In the mean time, I will continue doing it myself, getting a better quality job done and for less of MY hard earned!

[Auto Addict]

Couldn't agree more with you Mark.

When I was a lad, a tradesman was a tradesman, who took pride in his work.

[Marks DTM Calib]

Couldn't agree more with you Mark.

When I was a lad, a tradesman was a tradesman, who took pride in his work.

Trouble is, things are a little more complex (although lets still be real, boilers are NOT complicated things, neither are showers, washing machines etc...) and the knowledge of the support teams is just not upto it.

The same goes for vehicle repairs etc....

[aaronjb]

Toilets aren't exactly complicated either, but my parents (well my mum, since dad is still over in Germany working) had three plumbers come out to quote for replacing the upstairs crapper - all three sucked air through their teeth and then simply said "Sorry, don't really want to do it, it looks hard"

Business must be good for plumbers if they can't even be arsed to quote!

[edit] Oh yes, and they managed to instill so much fear in my mother about the loo they'd bought with their "Ooh, the feed and pan output are hidden, it could leak and you'd never know!" that she thinks it'll end up falling through the rather floor so is going to sell it at a loss because the plumbers merchants won't take it back (even though it's still in the box!). Grrr

[cem_devecioglu]

Couldn't agree more with you Mark.

When I was a lad, a tradesman was a tradesman, who took pride in his work.

Trouble is, things are a little more complex (although lets still be real, boilers are NOT complicated things, neither are showers, washing machines etc...) and the knowledge of the support teams is just not upto it.

The same goes for vehicle repairs etc....

yep.. it was me who solved the problems of omega not the mechanics unfortunately.. and even I need to teach them how the cambelt must be changed on a v6

[paul.lovejoy]

totally agree mark British gas what you pay them you could nearly cover a new bolier every 2 years when the warrenty expires

thing arnt that complicated anymore well except dishwashers of course

[paul.lovejoy]

Couldn't agree more with you Mark.

When I was a lad, a tradesman was a tradesman, who took pride in his work.

very true but sadly things are not the same people just want to make a fust buck. The training is well shite there are very few time served people left. most of what i consider old school with principles have either been squeezed out due to very low pay , got out the insdustry or retierd sad state of affairs

[Kevin Wood]

Yep, my experiences too. They concentrate too much on what they can't do for this or that reason and don't seem to bother to know their trade these days.

M.I.L recently had a new boiler (not a bad install, it I'm honest) but the fitter was adamant that it didn't make any difference to her gas bill if she turned off the radiators in the spare bedroom when not in use as the "boiler is on anyway".

That shows a total lack of understanding of the system he's working on. Why the break can he call himself "Gas Safe"?

[hercules]

british gas keep trying to sell it to me so i tell them how much would it of cost me over 8 years if i had taken out your plan against one repair which cost £99 and one repair i did myself at £14,i reckon ive saved about £1500 and then the person on the other end seem to go silent 

[Plomien]

trouble is we live in a disposable world and rather than repair something its thrown out and new bought which seems crazy to me when it could just cost a few quid to repair

[feeutfo]

The economics are all wrong. Technicians no longer exist. Fat cats, board members, excesses layers of management have all thier wages. It's not a long term career any more.

More broadly, every company we(in our household)deal with is the same, no matter the field, jobsworths on the front line, with management behind them who seem to be paid on thier ability to BS thier way out of any given situation. And needles to say they are shit at that as well.

More specifically, house hold tradesman, plumbers and sparks in particular, there seems to be an awfull lot of people have re trained and changed career to fill a void in these sectors, usually following redundancy or thier own jobs ending for what ever reason. The experience just isn't there.

Ultimately though, seems to me it comes down to economics. Partly greed, partly ignorance at senior level, partly due to a diminishing bottom line.

Let's hope we're near the end of our downwood economic spiral, and we can start to build again having learnt from the borrowing fiasco.



There might be another angle though. All things being relative and all that. There are some very clever members here, with the ability to understand a system just by looking at it for instance, and as "we" get older and learn more we are able to notice then, that we've more experience and can pick out that lack of experience very quickly.

Could we say the same 20 years ago? (40 or 60 year ago I'm some cases )

Shorter answer, yeah your right it's all breaked up!

[fiend61]

M.I.L recently had a new boiler (not a bad install, it I'm honest) but the fitter was adamant that it didn't make any difference to her gas bill if she turned off the radiators in the spare bedroom when not in use as the "boiler is on anyway".

basically kevin im afraid he is sort of right, if the radiators in the house have not got their own thermostats then turning off 'unused' radiators will cause a cold spot in the house which will then cause the heating system to work harder trying to compensate

[feeutfo]

And talking of outlaws, her parents had similar stream of servicemen round to thier boiler, I've not seen it, but it's been on going for years, every winter, freezing temps it packs in on it's own after a couple of hours. Ooh no I can't do that I'm not qualified, you need this bloke. Ooh no it's not that, it's this, he should have done that himself, he "fixes". No different, on and on it goes, it's the flu, the flues blocked, a week later new part(off eBay ffs) no change. They had no central heating for 3weeks during the cold snap.
Insurance cover policy on the boiler(but not the flu )

In laws have it written down,  as with most company's, for the compensation process.
For us it's almost a "here we go again" event. Make a note of what's happened, let them get on with it, and sometimes encourage them to cock up, then claim back the financial losses you've documented. Helps if they are part of an association or covered by an ombudsman

One day they'll learn, it's far far easier and cheaper to do the job right, do it once, and move on to the next job. Constantly dealing with repeat call backs is a double whammy. Not only is the tradesman not earning off a repeat call back, but he's also not earning off the job he should be doing instead of. Then getting a compensation claim for the cock up as well, if we all do our job.

[feeutfo]

M.I.L recently had a new boiler (not a bad install, it I'm honest) but the fitter was adamant that it didn't make any difference to her gas bill if she turned off the radiators in the spare bedroom when not in use as the "boiler is on anyway".

basically kevin im afraid he is sort of right, if the radiators in the house have not got their own thermostats then turning off 'unused' radiators will cause a cold spot in the house which will then cause the heating system to work harder trying to compensate

[Lazydocker]

M.I.L recently had a new boiler (not a bad install, it I'm honest) but the fitter was adamant that it didn't make any difference to her gas bill if she turned off the radiators in the spare bedroom when not in use as the "boiler is on anyway".

basically kevin im afraid he is sort of right, if the radiators in the house have not got their own thermostats then turning off 'unused' radiators will cause a cold spot in the house which will then cause the heating system to work harder trying to compensate

Shift over and pass me some!