Central Heating

Do I have to pay a Central Heating/Boiler Engineer when he did not fix the boiler?

Anonymous user 23/02/2024 - 2.54 PM

We booked in a service for our oil fired combi boiler (Worcester Bosch Greenstar) from a local chap who had previously serviced our ESSE cooker. he had confirmed that he was Bosch trained. Before he arrived to carry out the service we had a delivery of oil and the boiler stopped working. He arrived on time, replaced the oil pump and the burner nozzle, but the boiler still failed to fire. He then fitted a filter to the oil line and replaced the fire safety valve but the boiler still failed to fire. He then replaced the tiger loop, but the boiler still failed to fire. I noticed that the tiger loop was fitted incorrectly (feed/return transposed). I pointed this out to him and he corrected this, but the boiler would still not fire. He drained 200 litres of oil from our tank claiming it was contaminated with water. He eventually ran out of ideas and walked off the site. This is after over a week of having no hot water or heating. We then contacted Worcester Bosch and they sent an engineer who fixed the problem in less than an hour. The tiger loop had been fitted incorrectly allowing air to be drawn in on the oil in feed. The boiler had been set up incorrectly with the pressure set too high. I purchased a teflon coated filter for the heating oil that he drained and of the 200 litres, approximately 20 litres of ullage and water was removed by the filter - the rest I was able to return to the tank including one 50 litre drum of completely clean oil. We have now been sent a bill by the local chap for the parts and labour. While I accept that he replaced parts and spent the best part of a week trying to fix it, he replaced parts that did not need replacing, he replaced parts with new rather than see if the existing part was salvageable, he fitted parts incorrectly, he set up the boiler incorrectly and he drained the tank unnecessarily. Should we still pay him? Should we just pay for the parts? Should we pay a percentage of the parts?