Can he charge me for repairs that didn't fix the problem?

[CortinaV8]

"Call out fees" were created by plumbers, nobody else seems to charge this. Maybe its cheaper if you just bring your boiler round to their house, maybe you are then subject to a "Call in fee", I dont know.

 

[gas4you]

I charge an 'attendance fee' for the first hour. This is charged whether it is the same day response or if it is a planned repair that I have quoted. The repair always includes this attendance fee.

This is always clearly stated to the prospective customer before I attend. They then have the option to accept or find someone else.

 

[Agile]

Call out fees were started in the 1970s when heating systems started to become popular and there was not a surplus of those able to repair them.

They were perfectly reasonably to meet the travelling time and costs in getting to the customer.

When there were more to do the work they all started to advertise " no call out charge ". So now no one ever has one now.

But most either have a fixed diagnostic charge ( as we do ) or charge a minimum of say one hour and may have a higher rate for the first hour as well.

I think of our fixed rate being equivalent to 1¼ hours although I hope to spend far less in most cases.

Out of hours or at weekends usually attract an additional charge of say 1½ or twice the daytime rate.

Tony

 

[giblets]

"Call out fees" were created by plumbers, nobody else seems to charge this. Maybe its cheaper if you just bring your boiler round to their house, maybe you are then subject to a "Call in fee", I dont know.

You obviously haven't called out a washing machine repair man then - £40 before they even step through the door and then charge the repair time taken on top of that.

 

[ScottishGasMan]

Taking a car to any big garage will cost you their time to "diagnose" whether they find a fault or not, on top of that they generally start on the cheapest part that its likely to be and work there way through them till its working with you footing the bill for each one.

Not saying its a good idea but its how life is. Its easy for me working for SG, if i fit something and i've got it wrong i fit something else, end of story, but how could a one man band survive amongst newer more complicated+intermetent never mind expensive boilers.


In this case tho i agree its rediculous, if he fits a pump and hes made it worse or even just not made a difference the pump should have come straight back off and further investigation taken place.

 

[cowboyplumber]

"Call out fees" were created by plumbers, nobody else seems to charge this. Maybe its cheaper if you just bring your boiler round to their house, maybe you are then subject to a "Call in fee", I dont know.

And then TV repairmen copied them, eh Tone?

 

[cowboyplumber]

"Call out fees" were created by plumbers, nobody else seems to charge this. Maybe its cheaper if you just bring your boiler round to their house, maybe you are then subject to a "Call in fee", I dont know.

And then TV repairmen copied them, eh Tone?

 

[Agile]

When I was a student I used to repair radios and TVs for a small shop but they were all brought into the shop!

I used to get 5/- per radio and 15/- per TV !

On a really good week I could earn more than the shop manager who got £23 per week.

Oddly the radios often took longer to fix than the TVs. TVs were often just a dry joint taking about 12 min to fix but a radio might be an OC171 failed which could take up to an hour to diagnose and fix.

Tony