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Central Heating

Replaced part was not needed due to misdiagnosis

Anonymous user 16/03/2024 - 2.38 PM

Viessmann boiler showing F4 fault. Our usual plumber came out and after telephone conversation with viessmann technical support diagnosed a pcb board was needed. He sourced one (240 +vat) and fitted it - only for the same F4 fault to appear within ten minutes of fitting. He then thought the new board was faulty. He advised us to organise a fixed fee call out with a Viesmann engineer (£300) - but left the new board in place. The Viesmann engineer has been today - diagnosed a fault and replaced the gas solenoid valve. Result - we have heat and hot water. Now comes the issue - the Viesmann engineer spoke to our plumber at his request and said in his opinion the fault was never with the Pcb and there was no fault with the one in situ ie our plumber cannot get refund for part. After a Christmas without heat or hot water we are loath to have our plumber come back round to take out the pcb he installed unnecessarily and put our old one back in for fear he will mess up the settings/ indemnify the warranty of the engineers work. In our opinion he should have put the old one back in before the engineer came to sort under the fixed fee. Our plumber wants to charge us labour for the visit when he mis diagnosed and fitted an expensive unnecessary part - and visit next week to swop the pcb boards back over. Technically we haven't paid for the part - but he left it in place hoping the engineer would declare it faulty so he could get a refund. I said I wasn't happy to have him 'mess' about with the system whilst it is working fine and offered to pay half the cost of the part even though the error was his not ours. He said he'd rather have the part - and arranged to come next week to swop it over, but will not charge additional labour costs. Does this seem fair? ( we had the boiler serviced by the plumber and a heat exchange plate fitted a week before the F4 fault appeared)

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4 Answers

Crawley HVAC Services

Rating: 5 out of 5

Horsham

The part needs to be either paid for in full by the customer, or removed by the plumber and taken back for a refund. Sometimes these faults are not always obvious, and if he was instructed to change the pcb by the boiler manufacturer then its not completely his fault, technically he owns the part if you haven't paid for it. He will struggle to send it back for a full refund, but he should be able to get over half the cost back. This is very unfortunate, maybe looking into a service plan would suit you better.

Answered31 December 2020

YELLOWSTONE SERVICES LTD

Rating: 5 out of 5

Manchester

A new pcb cannot be returned to merchant(all electrical items). Sometimes it happens- Vaillant Boilers have similar Issue , Fauly codes are general and very rarely point to one part. However I always like to call the technical dept of a manufacturer before "choosing which out of the two" is faulty- its all down to experience. On the vaillant fault code for defective pcb or gas valve , one way to identify whether it is dc on the valve or not and on the pcb is that the temperature on the screen will be erratic and not stable. Big companies may change both items out just because they can! Yes customer should pay for the part, whether they pay for labor is another matter. A bit of lliasing is required on both parties.

Answered15 January 2021

Saturn installations

Rating: 4.9 out of 5

Chingford, London

This is a common issue ,when an engineer gets a diagnosis wrong ,i feel they should not stitch the customer up for the coast of the parts ,unfortunately once the parts are fitted most boiler parts suppliers will not give a refund on a fitted part but if you are doing repairs all the time then you would need to keep the part in stock for the next job you may come across,i think it is fair that a percentage is paid by the customer but explained before ordering the part this may not solve the fault ,as some error codes will direct an engineer to one part and it maybe something totally different .I could not charge a customer for fitting a part if it did not cure the fault on a boiler as i would not like it done to me.

Answered20 January 2021

Anonymous user

Hi the F4 fault on a Viessmann boiler can be 1 of 4 issues it is basically referring to the flame detection during the ignition process and the boiler detecting the flame the burner produces. If diagnosed correctly he should have checked the correct start up process and seen the boiler failed at the point of gas vale solenoid not operating, he would have known it was not getting past that point. It would have only been the PCB if the gas valve was not receiving voltage from the PCB operating the solenoid valve allowing gas through into the burner allowing the ignition process to happen. In my opinion this was a miss diagnosis and therefore should not be paid for. After all you wouldn’t pay for a garage to fix your car after telling you what was wrong with it only for it to break down as soon as you leave the garage!!

Answered31 December 2020