Gas company service vs. local gas man – a personal experience

There is always a debate on whose services we should use for our family utilities – local traders or gas companies. I was once told by a local gas man that engineers of big gas companies didn’t care about their customers because they were paid by fixed wages. It sounds making sense but there have been many reports that a lot of people are ripped off by cow-boy traders.

My experience with the gas man, Mr L, while having a new kitchen installed, was very interesting. My friend Paul arranged him to install our new hob on Friday. The installation itself initially seemed a good solid job. However, after performing a routine regulation check after such a job, he told us that the the gas system was leaking. The pressure of the leak was at 3.5 mini-bar, very close to the regulation limit for leakages of 4.0 mini-bar, therefore, would be potentially quite dangerous!

We had no choice but to arrange another meeting with Mr L on the following Thursday. The quote he gave us to fix the problem was unattractive and expensive.

Without worrying further, I had dinner with my wife. May in Britain this year was quite cold. Our central heating was supposedly on, but after dinner we were freezing. That was when I realized that there was not only a gas leakage problem, but our gas central heating was down as well. I called my friend Paul and he agreed to come over next morning to check on the problem.

Paul arrived early Saturday morning, despite having a terrible cough. He couldn’t get the central heating system to work but agreed to call Mr L to see if he could make a visit because the central heating was fine before his fitting the gas hob. In addition, before Mr L, a plumber fitted a new sink and made a test on the boiler to make sure it working.

Coincidentally, at the same time as all these gas and boiler issues were happening, we were due an annual check from our gas company. They have an insurance scheme where I could potentially have everything fixed for free. Unfortunately, I had difficulties arranging a visit from an engineer because it was a bank holiday weekend. The visit was eventually scheduled on Sunday, and I cancelled Mr L’s appointment.

Everything seemed all right until Saturday when I received a call from our gas company late afternoon. They wished to postpone the visit to Monday, which was very inconvenient for me as I had already arranged to spend time with my wife in London, as it was a public holiday. The lady over the phone was very impatient, and I was quite annoyed at her. In the end I was marked as “costumer refuses to change” and was told to wait for what would happen. But, they never called back.

With some reluctance, I call back on Sunday just to be sure of what was happening. To my relief, I was assured that an on-duty engineer would come to address the problem.

When the engineer, Trevor, arrived, I offered him some coffee then showed him Mr L’s statement. He took note of it and preformed a retest on the gas pressure. It was revealed that there was no leak at all. When asked about the central heating system, he went ahead to check the boiler. There, we discovered that the boiler had in fact been switched off. After switching it back on, everything was working fine. Clearly Mr L was up to something. There was nothing wrong with our system, yet he told us of all those problems. We were very lucky that our annual check from the gas company was due. Otherwise we might have wasted a lot of money on Mr. L’s scam.