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the which site you have to pay for, however which do due diligence, they audit your paperwork, and speak to past clients before allowing you to advertise (they also do it every year), they also stop you advertising if the customer is unhappy and act as an intermediary, they wil resume your service if the issue is rectified satisfactorily, if not court action and a permanent ban is likely the end result. its a ball ache for traders which is why not many are on there.
i did have a couple of people from their come and quote me on a boiler in my old house, were nice people and ran the business side of things well, but for me personally didn't fill me with complete confidence i really like the technical details on things verging on the side of anal, probably one of them that traders hate dealing with, anyway i didn't go with them as i found the perfect guy as a recommendation on this site.
It's all on their website.
however the way they review boilers doesn't really provide the end users the correct information they would really require as they do not do proper testing of boilers.
to the OP, where are you based?
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In Entry 12, Captain Nemesis said "London".
As I understand it, the manufacturers pay a license fee to be allowed to use the Which Recommended logo in their advertising, and may also contribute to research funding.
Yes, Intergas do have 8 models, and no there really isn't enough between them to justify it, but that's what they have and I'm sure there are good reasons for it. As a summary...
The Rapid and Rapid Plus are the same boiler, just with different warranty periods. They're pretty much the same as their "original" condensing boiler first marketed some 25 years ago. Quite big, very heavy, very solidly built - some of those original boilers are still in operation today.
The HRE and ECO RF are very nearly the same boiler as each other. The HRE has an on-board timer which nobody in their right minds ever uses, and the ECO RF has an on-board RF chip which is compatible with Honeywell wireless controls using the RAMSES 2 firmware, so you don't have to wire in a wireless thermostat receiver. They're much more compact than the Rapids with a nicer looking casing, and have options for either internal or external expansion vessels. 7 years warranty on the HRE, 10 on the ECO RF. Very nearly the same price as each other, so I tend to just spec the ECO RF.
The Xclusive is the "new" boiler. Same ultra-reliable heat exchanger design, but better modulation than the older models, a fancy new screen, and a few small software tweaks. Internal expansion vessel, 10 year warranty, not much different in price to the ECO RF now. Bit louder due to the faster spinning fan, so tends to be a poor choice if the installation will be in a bedroom.
The Xtreme is pretty much the same as the Xclusive, but has an additional flue gas heat recovery module to pre-heat the hot water for slightly higher flow rates. Aimed predominantly at the new build market where regulations on energy efficiency are slightly tighter. Too expensive, the increase in cost over the Xclusive will never ever be recouped in energy savings from the FGHR unit, and I don't know anyone who's actually fitted one.
Other than that, all the boilers share the same basic heat exchanger design, principle of only 4 moving parts, OpenTherm compatibility, and the ability to alter a whole host of parameters within the installer settings to ensure the boiler is set up to the best efficiency possible for the system it's fitted to. No plastic hydroblocs or rubber hoses in any of them, it's all aluminium, copper, and brass (apart from the flue collector, which is plastic, but that's common to every boiler out there)
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Captain Nemesis
My thoughts to, but then who do they ask? If they ask people who've had a boiler in recent years, they won't find out about long-term reliability. But if they ask people who've had a boiler for a long time they only find out about the products the manufacturers used to make.
Take me - if I were asked I'd sing the reliability praises of WB - no servicing for 17 years and it's been absolutely fine. But AIUI, the don't make em like they used to.
(I was also thinking that the money I've saved through not having it serviced is a big chunk of the cost of the replacement. Hmmmm)
The Which surveys ask many thousands of members. They are not preselected by age or make of boiler.
I've heard it said that the Which surveys are unfair as they might include an over representation of educated middle class people who are interested in getting a quality product at a good price. I don't know how you'd get round that.
But I see their boiler surveys include quite a lot of poor quality unreliable rubbish. You see the same in their car surveys.
They say "According to our survey, almost eight in ten boilers from the least reliable brand require an expensive repair in the first six years. From a reliable brand that figure drops to less than two in ten. Pick a reliable boiler using our boiler reviews"
"In May and June 2019 we surveyed 8,458 members of the general public about the problems they had experienced with their main gas or oil central heating boiler. The reliability score is based on whether people who own boilers up to six years old have ever had to have their main boiler repaired since they bought or acquired it."
That looks to me like they can detect a pattern I would want to know about.
If they ask me, I'll tell them my Viessmann had one part replaced FOC under warranty after a design revision, and has had no other faults in 15 years. This seems pretty good to me, but who knows?
I've heard it said that the Which surveys are unfair as they might include an over representation of educated middle class people who are interested in getting a quality product at a good price. I don't know how you'd get round that.
But I see their boiler surveys include quite a lot of poor quality unreliable rubbish. You see the same in their car surveys.
They say "According to our survey, almost eight in ten boilers from the least reliable brand require an expensive repair in the first six years. From a reliable brand that figure drops to less than two in ten. Pick a reliable boiler using our boiler reviews"
"In May and June 2019 we surveyed 8,458 members of the general public about the problems they had experienced with their main gas or oil central heating boiler. The reliability score is based on whether people who own boilers up to six years old have ever had to have their main boiler repaired since they bought or acquired it."
That looks to me like they can detect a pattern I would want to know about.
If they ask me, I'll tell them my Viessmann had one part replaced FOC under warranty after a design revision, and has had no other faults in 15 years. This seems pretty good to me, but who knows?
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Captain Nemesis
Ah - when you put it like that it doesn't sound anywhere near as iffy as
Thanks very much for that, as their website tells one nothing - phrases like "Cutting-edge innovation", "Smart in every sense", "Making sure no valuable energy is wasted", and "Creates the warm and inviting home you deserve" don't tell me anything about the differences between products. You'd hope that all their boilers make sure that no valuable energy is wasted and create a warm and inviting home.
It is not based solely on customer experiences, and as Vulcan said some of the issues reported are down to installer not boiler brand, and this is where asking the general public there thoughts on the matter doesn't really help much, some say a boiler brand is terrible because it broke down once in 6 years even though they never services it, and then complain about how long it took to fix, but a lot of the time this is also down to plumbers or companies like British gas, whom aren't always very good at diagnosing faults, order the incorrect part or say they are waiting for parts as they are difficult to get hold of to give them time as they are busy or want to force you to get a new boiler, in the meantime the boiler brand is getting a terrible name for something that's not it's fault.
You can ask 10k people about their car and they would get the same type of responses, in many cases when cars go to a garage the fault is not always rectified correctly and so someone view of what is reliable can be skewed some what. This is especially true in modern vehicles where even dealers can't fix half of what comes through their doors first time round.
They also rely on installers giving their opinion, which again is not always reliable as people who love a certain brand will always look through problems with rose tinted glasses, a bit like brexiteers.
The only real test is to employ a professional to carry out proper tests, take them apart and inspect for quality etc, I don't think they will be able to give reliability ratings as most boilers these days have at least 5 years warranty (there is some available that have 2).
with modern boilers having such big warranty does it really matter what one you get? Probably not, more important now is the guy fitting it.
London's a big area though, some from Romford call themselves London for example
See the "table notes" on page 1.
As for owners, I don't think they ask for impressions.
Asking questions like
What boiler have you got
When was it installed
How many times has it broken down
Are not opinion questions.
If there are, say, 1% awkward customers, and 1% incompetent installers, there's no reason to assume they will all be Intergas owners, or any other particular brand.
If the breakdown rate for one brand is four times as high as for another, do you think that is an "impression?"
As for owners, I don't think they ask for impressions.
Asking questions like
What boiler have you got
When was it installed
How many times has it broken down
Are not opinion questions.
If there are, say, 1% awkward customers, and 1% incompetent installers, there's no reason to assume they will all be Intergas owners, or any other particular brand.
If the breakdown rate for one brand is four times as high as for another, do you think that is an "impression?"
Yes but as i said the results can be greatly skewed by the examples given, some people could say yeah my boiler broke down 3 times in 1 month, but are none the wiser that the "engineer" they had out took 3 attempts to fix the actual fault, this can be the case for people that are unfamiliar with the brand.
I've had this before on a ferroli boiler, had half a dozen people out to fix it, including homeserve, each one who turned up all groaned oh, it's a ferroli (their mind was already made up that it was the boiler at fault), changed various things, was told parts were hard to get (I found them easy enough in stock aswell so was clearly a lie) turned out when they did turn up they were wrong. Ultimately after i got fed up and done my own research and worked through a methodical process, it transpired that despite being told the only way forward was to get a new boiler, the fault was a collapsed hose that the original installer fitted to connect the upstairs and downstairs heating pipes and the boiler kept locking out, so nothing wrong with the boiler.
Had I have been clueless like most people are, then the boiler brand would have been blamed id have forked out for a boiler I did t need and the fault still wouldn't have been fixed.
Which is also open to preference from the "trades" they speak to which also makes a big chunk of whichs survey results.
This is the problem in the way which covers it's surveys, it is still open to bias and is not wholly accurate,however it is the best approach currently available even if it's not wholly accurate.
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Captain Nemesis
When you put it that way I don't know that I'd want to
I dont look at what they say about cars - anybody who describes a 3 Series as a large car clearly knows nothing.
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Captain Nemesis
I was going to make a jibe about that until I saw where you were from.
Borough of Hillingdon if it really matters.
Then you are fortunate enough to be within the operating range of @Mike_W who is an excellent installer. http://www.mwtheplumber.co.uk/
I was going to make a jibe about that until I saw where you were from.
Borough of Hillingdon if it really matters.
Lol do the jibe I'm not easily offended.
Sorry I kept asking but sometimes it helps, see muggles post above,
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