Post by dance2drop on Dec 28, 2014 16:44:26 GMT
Friday last week only a few days away from Christmas, we had no heating and no hot water whatsoever and we called a British Gas engineer in. He diagnosed something in the control panel had gone wrong, but couldn't get the part until Monday. That meant that for 3 days we had no heating and no hot water. We had to boil kettles, and used a fan heater for our heating. Fortunately then it wasn't as cold as it is now, but as senior citizens, we feel any cold more.
The engineer came and fitted the new part on that Monday. It seemed to be working for the rest of the day, until the next evening when all our power went off. Fortunately by chance I had just lit candles. Our electric metres are outside our property, and by elimination which meant coming in once switches were clicked up and this meant several visits. Hubby is slightly disabled with a prosthetic leg. (I could have done it, but no nothing about electrics and where to find anything). We are blessed with good neighbours which did help slightly.
Eventually the fault was traced to the heating and gas system cocking up our electrical supply. We contacted British Gas who sent another engineer. Apparently the newly installed control panel was faulty (or that's what he said). The engineer had to drive to outside London to get a new part and bearing in mind this was Christmas Eve, it was touch and go before they shut for Christmas. Two engineers then came and worked on it, but they were not entirely sure what had caused the malfunction. They were here for hours.
We have had heating over Christmas, but the water was not always hot. When I went to run a bath this evening (27th) it ran luke warm and therefore I had to abandon my bath. My husband has tried to increase the temperature, but no matter how he experimented with the controls, he could not achieve 60 degrees centigrade. We were left an instruction booklet, and although we are "with it" pensioners, you need the brains of Britain to work things out and as I pointed out in my complaint to British Gas, it is not really our job to do this !
We are not very happy bunnies as you can imagine. We are both in our seventies for a start. We will now will have to book YET ANOTHER engineer in to check things out. I should mention that before all this happened we never had problems with hot water before.
OK Cuddly Teddy Bear, I know I said I would be ceasing my input on here for a while, but to be honest I am a bit (excuse the language) - pissed off !
If things aren't completely back to normal soon, then I can see us being features on Watchdog or Rip off Britain. We have set in motion direct debits to cover us for any future faults, and feel like cancelling, but how many other Gas Suppliers are there and are they any good ?
The engineer came and fitted the new part on that Monday. It seemed to be working for the rest of the day, until the next evening when all our power went off. Fortunately by chance I had just lit candles. Our electric metres are outside our property, and by elimination which meant coming in once switches were clicked up and this meant several visits. Hubby is slightly disabled with a prosthetic leg. (I could have done it, but no nothing about electrics and where to find anything). We are blessed with good neighbours which did help slightly.
Eventually the fault was traced to the heating and gas system cocking up our electrical supply. We contacted British Gas who sent another engineer. Apparently the newly installed control panel was faulty (or that's what he said). The engineer had to drive to outside London to get a new part and bearing in mind this was Christmas Eve, it was touch and go before they shut for Christmas. Two engineers then came and worked on it, but they were not entirely sure what had caused the malfunction. They were here for hours.
We have had heating over Christmas, but the water was not always hot. When I went to run a bath this evening (27th) it ran luke warm and therefore I had to abandon my bath. My husband has tried to increase the temperature, but no matter how he experimented with the controls, he could not achieve 60 degrees centigrade. We were left an instruction booklet, and although we are "with it" pensioners, you need the brains of Britain to work things out and as I pointed out in my complaint to British Gas, it is not really our job to do this !
We are not very happy bunnies as you can imagine. We are both in our seventies for a start. We will now will have to book YET ANOTHER engineer in to check things out. I should mention that before all this happened we never had problems with hot water before.
OK Cuddly Teddy Bear, I know I said I would be ceasing my input on here for a while, but to be honest I am a bit (excuse the language) - pissed off !
If things aren't completely back to normal soon, then I can see us being features on Watchdog or Rip off Britain. We have set in motion direct debits to cover us for any future faults, and feel like cancelling, but how many other Gas Suppliers are there and are they any good ?