Repaircare are a National Company offering fixed price appliance repairs. Their fixed price appliance repairs include call out, parts, labour and VAT.
Summary of services -
- Fixed Price Repairs
- Book Online 24/7 – Extremely easy booking system
- Text message sent the day before engineer arrives to confirm arrangements
- Rearrange or even cancel an appointment without charge any time up to 4.00pm the day before the agreed appointment date by visiting the “your repair” area of the web site
- Nationwide coverage
- Over 500 qualified Service Engineers
- 3 months guarantee
Get an instant repair quote – Repaircare
Who are Repaircare?
Repaircare are part of Connect Distribution who are the UK’s largest distributor of appliance spares and accessories. They supply much of the independent repair trade and I had a spares trade account with them for 25 years going back to when they were known as Electrue. Connect Distribution run the 4Washerhelp Spares site ( This previous Blog article explains more about them – New white goods spares and accessories site )
Very easy to get a quote
The Repaircare appliance repairs website is very nicely designed and easy to use and features 3 simple steps to get a quote.
Using the “get a quote” box you just select the type of appliance and brand from the drop down menu, and then enter your postcode. This takes you to a page showing a large calendar with all the available repair dates over the next few days and weeks highlighted in orange. The fixed price* quote is printed on each of these dates. If you click on any of these dates the box turns green and you can click proceed to complete the booking. It’s incredibly simple and well designed.
How do they do it? What’s the Catch?
I’m naturally pretty sceptical and not easily impressed – always looking out for a catch. It shouldn’t be possible for Repaircare to be able to include the spare parts in their repair charges but they are the UK’s largest spare parts distributor so they have access to much cheaper parts than most and they obviously think they can.
Repaircare advertised fixed price repairs but unfortunately the truth is they did not fix every appliance for the price initially quoted and covered themselves against really expensive repairs by their terms and conditions. They claimed most repairs should however be covered by the sum quoted but after a few months (of complaints) they changed the terms and conditions to remove their right to charge extra for certain parts. If your appliance is beyond economical repair it won’t cost you any more than from any other large company as they will just charge the call out fee.
Summary
Offering fixed price repairs is a big ask. Repaircare have access to very cheap parts because of their massive buying power as part of the UK’s largest spares distributor 4Ourhouse. When calculating the cost of parts they use the trade cost of parts and not the retail cost which everyone else uses. The price difference can be substantial and this gives them quite a bit of leeway. However, they don’t employ their own engineers and instead use a network of independent engineers, which appears to cause some problems at times where people have complained of poor customer service. Repaircare have been accused several times of washing their hands of some complaints when (presumably) a customer and the independent engineer have been telling them different things. However, I don’t believe they can do this because a customer’s contract is with Repaircare and not the engineer that they subcontracted to do the repair so if a customer is dissatisfied they should be responsible for sorting it out.
Margins must be small and this operation probably relies on economies of scale. As it is covering all of the UK they may be able to achieve the quantities of repairs necessary to be viable. However, they need most repairs to be relatively minor to balance out the expensive repairs. if only people suspecting they have a serious fault use them the system just won’t work. There have been complaints in the comments of this article though which is disappointing. They may have been struggling to cope with the work load at the early stages as they have promoted themselves very heavily. However, Repaircare did eventually respond pro-actively to public complaints and put in place a system to allow people to complain directly to a manager. People with complaints previously felt they had no option but to complain on the Internet because they couldn’t get past the call centre staff to complain to a manager. I put this contact detail on one of my comments – Contact Repaircare
If you are the type of person who takes comfort in prices being fixed and inclusive, then fixed price repairs may be for you. You could end up paying more than necessary if your appliance turns out not to need any parts or needs inexpensive parts, but you could save money if it needs an expensive part.
Make sure you read and understand their terms & conditions though as if parts are “too” expensive they can say the appliance is not worth repairing although all engineers from any company will tell you an appliance isn’t worth repairing if the repair is going to cost more or close to the price of a new appliance.
Alternatives?
Some manufacturers also offer fixed price repairs now at rates competing with Repaircare. For example Hoover / Candy, Ariston, Indesit, Hotpoint, Creda and even the obsolete Dyson washing machine have fixed price repairs. Also, AEG, Electrolux, Tricity Bendix and Zanussi have relatively low and reasonable labour charges.
Only 3 months guarantee
A mere 3 months guarantee on repairs is very poor indeed. Under the Sale of Goods Act, any repair should last a reasonable time, as should any parts fitted. 3 months is nowhere near a reasonable time for almost any repair especially if new parts are fitted. However, if that’s all you get (and there’s no law forcing a company to give any guarantee at all) you would have to pursue your claim in the small claims court or through a consumer help body if a repair by a company offering only 3 months guarantee failed after an unreasonable time outside 3 months.
Appliance repairers on Washerhelp
There are some appliance repair companies listed on my Book washing machine (or other appliance) repair page on Washerhelp including companies offering a much more desirable 12 month guarantee on repairs.
Booked a repair of our Miele washer, which is making nasty bearing rumbles. Charge was £129 rather than £70 – fair do’s, it’s a Miele.
The chappie turns up, says it will take two people to do the job and will have to be taken to the workshop, that the charge is too low, and went away. Still waiting a week later for an estimate of how long and how much. Not impressed so far……
Hello Tony. That´s not good. Have you tried ringing them? Please keep us informed.
Thank you thank you thank you… found this website on Google, just as I was despairing about the possible cost of calling out a repairman (or having to fork out for a new machine). But one Friday night in later, machine is fixed, by me – your new biggest fan :-)
I’m not sure that this lot are worth the hassle.
Appointments were only available several days on from purchase.
Their engineer failed to turn up for the first appointment.
Second appointment he diagnosed the problem but did not have the parts
Third appointment he ‘fixed it’ but told me not to switch on for 5 hours (it’s a freezer).
When I turned on it was exhibiting the same fault as it started with.
Still waiting for their engineer to ring me to arrange a further call. I will have been 3 weeks without a freezer and taken 4 days off work. The manufacturers would have been more expensive but I suspect more responsive and effective.
Their call centre is very much ‘computer says no’ . The operators are not empowered to do anything other than call the engineer and get his answer service, as I had already done.
It seems impossible to speak to a team leader or supervisor.
Great idea poorly executed. The system is process not customer focused.
Telephone calls are expensive and there’s a lot of ‘please hold the line’.
Hello L: Thanks for your contribution. I’m not sure what you mean about only being able to make an appointment several days on, as most people would want immediate appointments or within a few days.
Not turning up is bad, though that happens a lot across many companies as engineers can get stuck on a job or have traffic problems and it’s just not possible to complete all jobs at times. A courtesy phone call is expected though.
It’s also not unusual for parts to be required and a second visit necessary – that’s very common because it’s impossible to carry all but the most common parts for the most common machines. Even the manufacturers often have to return with parts another time although I would expect the manufacturer to have more parts than anyone carrying out repairs to all makes.
Reports I’ve heard indicate manufacturer’s service is commonly poor and long waits for appointments and parts common too.
Unfortunately I have no idea how many satisfied customers there are to balance things out as most people only contribute when not happy and all businesses have things go wrong to some extent. I’m hoping these are just teething problems caused by the success of the service, which may have overloaded them with calls.
In addition to my last comment, I forgot to add that leaving the freezer unplugged for at least 5 hours is often necessary for modern frost free fridges and freezers if they have become caked in iced inside. If this is not adhered to the fault will usually reoccur.
In my experience many customers didn’t follow this instruction because it’s too inconvenient, and the fault reoccurred. I don’t know if this is the case in your situation but it is essential to allow the unit to properly defrost if advised to.
Thanks Washerhelp
Re ‘I’m not sure what you mean about only being able to make an appointment several days on, as most people would want immediate appointments or within a few days’.
I can see the ambiguity in my comment, sorry. I was trying to say that available appointments were quite a few days in the future. As you say your need is almost immediate.
We did leave the freezer nearly 8 hours before switching it on. Hey ,after two weeks with it, whats a few hours?
I have now been contacted by a senior customer service person (after I advised them I was going to give negative feedback.)
Whilst the person who rang was very pleasant, we haven’t moved on at all.
They have a process…which I know off by heart as it has been explained to me repeatedly. That process can’t be changed.
What they are missing is that a good operation always needs processes but that when the process falters, service recovery must always be the priority over process.
Many companies make mistakes, its the ones that are flexible enough to recover well from failure that typically the customer remembers and recommends.
All I want is my freezer fixed…..
Regards
Laurie
Thanks Laurie: My attititude has always been that no company is immune from cockups and things going wrong so I agree that the sign of a good company is not defined by whether things go wrong or not but how they deal with inevitable problems.
The only thing I can say in their defence at the moment is that although they’ve done half a million repairs so far they’ve only just launched the service to the public, whereas they’ve previously carried out repairs for insurance companies. I suspect they are currently experiencing a big surge in demand.
Too good to be true…………cost £120……..chap turns up within a 12hr time frame only to say he has to order a part for the cooker (should only be a couple of days hes says) ….. its now the second week (third of not having a cooker) and still no part! Call centre just says dont know when part will be in!
An update…
It’s now just under 4 weeks since I engaged (and paid) Repaircare to fix my fridge/freezer.
The engineer had to return for a 3rd visit (now 4 days off work due to an initial ‘no show’).
He said that I had a big leak in the system and that the fridge/freezer was toast.
I know nothing about refrigeration but I questioned the logic of a big leak causing the unit to fail so quickly after his previous (unsuccessful) repair when he didn’t detect a leak. Also why was the fridge section working OK?
Anyway, he reluctantly tested the system pressure and it was as he left it fully pressurised i.e. there was no leak.
He thought that it was now the compressor and he would contact Repaircare for authorisation to order a new one.
I received an email from Repaircare saying ‘I cannot see that there will be a problem at this end and this engineer will order the compressor for you and once received will contact to make another appointment for you.’
10 days on I had heard nothing so I contacted the call centre to be told that it had been referred to the Technical Section, but ‘he’ had been off for a week or so. I should be patient and they will get back to me when they have discussed it with the engineer.
Four weeks since I started and my fridge/reezer is no further on towards repair.
I’m adjusting my advice from ‘not worth the hassle’ to ‘Avoid’.
Laurie
L A Wilson: thanks for the update. It is sad to see a few people having problems. I understand RepairCare are getting a hell of a lot of jobs coming through and I think they are the victims of their own success at the moment.
Without wishing to be seen as an apologist for repaircare I do believe it’s fair to say that most of the problems described in these comments are typical problems that you can commonly experience with many repair companies or repairmen.
Engineers not turning up occasionally, misdiagnosing faults, not having the parts, and when ordered parts taking ages to come are all sadly common issues experienced by customers of many repair companies because companies have to repair too many products and too many different brands. People commonly expect engineers to turn up with the right parts but this just doesn’t happen very often when engineers are expected to repair almost every make of appliance and every type of appliance. They’d need to drive around in a transit lorry to carry them all.
I’m pretty sure if I wrote a general article on repair companies and repairmen and left it open to comments we would get many people relaying the same issues with Comet, Curry’s, each manufacturer, and all the other repair companies as well as independent repairmen. I think that needs putting in perspective.
Having tried to put things into a proper and fair perspective RepairCare need to clearly deal with complaints better and get on top of things quickly.
Please dont use this company. Waited in all day for the engineers ect could nt repair costs more than quoted ect…
Seems a under lying trend in this company poor service and over charging. Spend your money some where else.
Just to give the final installment on this saga….
After chasing by phone and email I was eventually telephoned and advised that the part (the compressor) was no longer available for my model. They refunded my £125 less £40 for call out charges. (Which meant I had paid them £40 NOTto fix my fridge/freezer!)
I telephoned Miele the following day and they were pretty annoyed at the information given to me as the part was readily available for immediate dispatch. They even gave me the part number and contact details.
I emailed the customer services supervisor who had taken ownership of my case. She replied promising to look into it. That was 10 days ago.
Suspicion is that the part was substantially more than the payment they had taken from me and they just decided not to tell the truth.
Their ‘fixed price repair’ promise hasn’t worked for me.
I have given up on them.
Fedupwaiting: Thanks for the feedback. What do you mean by waited in all day? If they turned up on day booked that’s not an issue is it? Many people have to wait in all day for many repair companies.
What was wrong with your appliance? If it’s beyond economical repair then it’s not worth repairing by anyone’s book. They do say they reserve the right to tell you it’s not worth repairing if that’s the case. All repair companies would do that. The only difference is that as they advertise “fixed repairs” there is a natural expectation that no matter what is wrong they will do it for this price. That’s a weakness in their business model IMO but they do make this issue clear in their terms and conditions at time of booking -
I do quote the above caveat in the review we are commenting on.
So you should have been charged £40, did they charge more?
RepairCare advertise fixed price repairs but unfortunately the truth is they do not fix every appliance for the price initially quoted and cover themselves against really expensive repairs by the terms and conditions quoted above. I must admit I’m uneasy with that because they advertise something but effectively say well only in most cases when it comes down to it.
I still expect most people would get good value for money from the deal and many will get repairs done for around £90 – £100 that would cost much more from the manufacturer or even places like Comet and Currys.
However, it’s clear that if you have a very expensive fault you will be told it’s not worth repairing. Any other company would just quote you a very high price and you would decide for yourself it isn’t worth repairing. Virtually all companies (unless you are using a local independent who may offer free estimates) will charge at least £40 – £60 if the appliance isn’t worth repairing. The main issue here is if you don’t read the terms and conditions you may be surprised and disappointed if this happens.
L A WIlson: Can’t think of any balanced point to put forward on their behalf there. I will put your experience to a contact I have high up at RepairCare.
I paid repaircare £116 to fix my washer-dryer over three weeks ago and it is still not fixed. I found their customer service extremely unresponsive. I called three times and the customer service reps never called me back when they said they would; and one lady simply brushed off my complaints by telling me to email them via the website. I sent them the written complaint about 2 weeks ago and still haven’t heard back. It’s like once you have paid, this company will completely ignore you even though they haven’t delivered the service.
In my case, when the engineer turned up, he refused to pull the washing machine out from underneaththe kitchen counter (which is not a massive job), saying that it’s not in his contract to do so. However, repaircare.com only stipulates that the machine CAN BE REMOVED, never is there one word on the service agreement that says the customer needs to remove it.
Repaircare is the biggest rip-off ever and to this date, I am still not sure if I’ll ever get a refund or my washer-dryer fixed by this company.
Jenny: This does happen with all major repair companies and manufacturers as well as many independent engineers. If the appliance can’t be lifted out to repair without risking damage to the flooring or even to the engineers back they will tend to refuse to do it.
We can’t know of course the exact situation and whether he was justified or not. I know you say it (quote – “can be removed”) but if an engineer believes it was particularly difficult they usually refuse. It’s always possible he was wrong in his decision but without seeing it none of us can judge.
You should be charged just the £40 call out charge in your situation.
Here’s the relevant TOC
There’s no excuse for your money not being refunded (minus the £40) prompty but it’s not a rip off. There’s no doubt you will only be charged £40. As I’ve said before they are currently extremely busy and adjusting to dealing directly with the customer after dealing before with insurance companies -
I will bring your complaint to the attention of the company as I have with the others. I don’t have anything to do with them as such but as my site is carrying their ads it’s the least I can do.
Avoid repaircare.co.uk.
First engineer (from one subcontracted company) arrived, and then left to order parts. One week later second engineer arrived (from another subcontracted company). Had no knowledge of first engineer, so he had to start again, and left to order parts.
One week later, phoned up and was told parts were on order. Then a few days later got a voicemail saying I was being refunded £70 due to B.E.R. She did not say what this was. Had to go to website order number to see that it meant “Beyond Economical Repair”.
So after 2 weeks I am still with a broken washing machine.
What a rip off. They offer a flat rate to fix the applicance, they refuse to do it if they can’t make a profit on it. They want to cherry pick, make a good profit from those breakdowns that are easy, and run a mile on difficult jobs.
Communications was very poor. Engineers did not phone before appointment.
Felt I needed to comment as all reports so far on repaircare are poor. My washing machine packed up on Monday morning; booked repaircare online Monday afternoon; They phoned me on Tuesday to confirm a visit on Wednesday; arrived by Wednesday lunch time and fixed my machine within 1 hour. I paid the origional fixed price of £104 and am a happy customer.
My Smeg dishwasher is broken. Repaircare engineer came today as scheduled to fix my machine, but as he has ‘very little knowledge about dishwashers’ he felt he wasn’t qualified to fix it at my house and needed to take it to his base. I have never experienced such a thing before and was surprised and dubious. Even worse, he had no paper work to give me to say he is taking the machine, but he already had my money so what could I do? I have no idea when -or if -this stranger will repair or bring back my machine and feel like I’ve been a complete mug. He was amazed that I should want a receipt for my dishwasher or any written agreement as to when I would have it back. Apparently I’m the only person ever to ask for this! Even if I get it back and it’s fixed, shouldn’t a bona fide company have paperwork for a client? Whenever I’ve called a repair man in the past they’ve had the knowledge and parts to fix it immediately….
I think you really need to question your impartiality in this matter. You quite clearly state that they shouldn’t be able to get the parts for the price in your review.
Given that they need some margin and the engineer wants to get paid this leaves around £50 of the fee for parts. Not many spares of substance under that figure I bet.
My own experience is of the engineer coming a day early, he did call, so not a complete loss. He came through on his way home from a ‘busy day’. Didn’t bother to bring any tools in with him. Opened the washing machine door and said it’s broken badly, they (RepairCare) won’t pay to fix that when I tell them what parts it needs.
7 minutes on site £40 thank you very much. I had the sense that I was just topping up his days income. He may have decades of experience and know what parts he will need (although I doubt it) but I was at least hoping he would have a look, if just to stop me getting suspicious.
It’s going to cost me £400 to replace this and all I have is a weary engineer’s gut instinct. I would love to see the ReapirCare statistics on how many they fix as opposed to write off. Maybe that’s hope they do it so cheap, they rarely fit any parts?
Hello Q. I don’t understand your point as I’ve tried to remain very impartial which means I try to look at things from both points of view. If I wasn’t impartial I wouldn’t even allow any critical comments and I wouldn’t acknowledge anyone’s criticisms.
I don’t recognise the words you attribute to me in my review. My review says, “Repaircare have access to very cheap parts because of their massive power as part of the UK’s largest spares distributor 4Ourhouse. When calculating the cost of parts they use the trade cost of parts and not the retail cost which everyone else uses. The price difference can be substantial and this gives them quite a bit of leeway.”
The retail cost of a part can be £150 but the cost to manufacturer will be substantially lower. As a major spare distributor they may have access to such a part for £40. Also they are quoting a lot more than £90 for some makes and some products.
I said the viability of the service is theoretically possible because of their access to very cheap parts and because the majority of repairs don’t even need any parts or only need minor parts.
Is RepairCare a scam?
It gives every appearance of being one.
On 16/08/09 I booked for a repair man to to come out and fix my fridge/freezer (Job Ref: C1135924) and was given a date of 20/08/09.
He didn’t turn up and nobody contacted me. When I called repaircare I was given the excuse of a problem with the booking on the computer.
I was given another appointment date of 01/09/09. The repair man turned up. He stayed about 5 minutes undid 3 screws and removed a panel, looked at the inside and said that it needed a new PCB. He didn’t test anything at all. He said that he’d order the part and that someone would phone in a couple of days to let me know when it would be installed. By the end of the week nobody had called me so I called Repaircare to be told that the part was no longer available (FOR A FRIDGE FREEZER THAT WAS LESS THAT 5 YEARS OLD ???) and that they weren’t going to do the repair. I was also told that my refund of the original payment less £40 would be done in 7 – 10 days (strange that they can take the payment instantly but it takes them up to two weeks to refund it).
Late on Saturday night I ordered a part from Currys Partmaster (So much for Repaircare’s claim that the part was no longer available).
The part arrived promptly this morning (Tuesday). I popped the front panel off the fridge and repaced the PCB myself in 2 minutes and the fridge is working perfectly now.
I would appear that Repaircare are not interested in doing repairs when replacement parts are involved and that they are quite happy to make as much money as possible by eaning interest on refunds that they hold on too as long as the can.
John: One of your criticisms is that the engineer, “undid 3 screws and removed a panel, looked at the inside and said that it needed a new PCB. He didn’t test anything at all.” yet you later say you went and bought a new PCB, fitted it and, “the fridge is working perfectly now”.
You can’t criticise the engineer for not testing anything and appearing to arrive at a diagnosis very quickly but then go on to confirm he was 100% right in his diagnosis.
Your other complaint about being told the part is not available when it was is much more serious and not the first time I’ve heard it.
Can you email me with your details so I can get a Repaircare manager to look into this please? Contact me
Just a quick followup.
More comments about Repaircare can be found on :-
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=23611819
and
http://www.fscked.co.uk/index.php/2009/07/is-repaircare-a-scam/comment-page-1/#comment-7085
The links above contain duplications of some of the complaints here so make sure you don’t get the impression there are more complaints than there really are. As I pointed out earlier all companies will have dissatisfied customers and some of the complaints are things that would be encountered with all repair companies due to the nature of the job.
Regarding John’s issue: I’ve had the following follow up from Repaircare’s online marketing manager -
That was me, back on June 18th……..Well, after four visits, we still have a Miele washer that, after bearing replacement, still leaks about a cupful every cycle. The original repairer is coming back again tomorrow for another shot, and they get full marks for persistence, but there has been so much head-scratching over this, I’m beginning to wonder if there is any realistic chance of returning it to its former (entirely leak-tight!) state. We may find out tomorrow.
It’s that Miele again…..The original repairer eventually returned (after a long gap caused by holidays etc) and has, at last, discovered the problem – a drain pipe dislodged during the first dismantling! Everything is at last as it should be, and no further money changed hands. So – not a 100% “according to plan” job, but the required result, and strictly to Repaircare’s stated terms.
hi iv had the same big problem with my fridge/freezer i payed 100
th engineer came out when stated and said i needed a compressor to be ordered i asked how long he said shouldnt be long,2wks on not heard anything so i emailed repaircare and they said that the part would be with the engineer with in a fewdays and he will contact to arrange a day n time.waited another week still not heard so i rang him direct from the tel no.provided he said or yes and said he would call out on the friday,so i was chuffed as iv a newborn n need my fridge to store his bottles.thursday teatime i got a call from him to say that he will be calling on the tuesday weekafter i say hey i was promised friday,he said who said that to you and b4 i could say he put the blame on repaircare and i said no you said it yourself and denied it,and said they’v only just given me authorisation to order your part, i said to him but i thought you already had the part as i was told in an email and by yourself he turned the convo by repeating his self so i excepted the tuesday and by this time it was 4wks since i had payed for the service,tuesday morning came and as i was on my account coz i kept getting a funny feeling that i was gonna be cancled again but i saw dx has newborn need to be 1st job on day and up and running,so i though or so deffo coming then half hour later gets a call a lady to say that the engineer wasnt coming coz no engineer had turned up for work so i was angry then so iv put in a complaint with repaircare to ask if i would be entitled to a full refund i then got an email with in 10mins to say they was sorry that this has been on-going for 4wks and wil be getting a refund infull and should be in my account in 3-4days but now isee on my account that the engineer has re-booked for 5th sep also i noticed that they have been putting down that they visted on certain days and couldnt repair applience wich is a lie because according to them they didnt have the part still even after the dates they claim to have called so i dont kknow whats going on there i read on another site with people with the exact things said to them and same treament im just so hoping i do get this refund because iv now gone and bought 1 because i was told my refund will be in my bank in a few days so im worried now
(note change of e-mail address)
So sorry to hear of Emma’s problems, you’d think anyone with an ounce of humanity would hurry to help a young mother with a very new baby!
IMy fridge-freezer was condemned (previous postings on another thread) by my local retailer’s engineer,although less than five years old. Their manufacturers assn (AMDEA) says average life of an f/f is 16 and a half years. (That’s SIXTEEN AND A HALF)
My retailer has offered me £20 off the callout fee that I paid, PLUS an unspecified discount should I buy another f/f from them.
Have now written to ask for specific figures.
Someone has said I should take the retailer to the Small Claims Court but is that worth all the hassle?
How do we poor punters acquire “negotiating skills” ?
I have had a dreadful experience with repaircare customer service and their local engineer (north west london). Initially I booked a callout online to fix my Bosch dryer. The appointment was for 2 days after I made the online booking, and I took this day off work. That day I had a call from the engineer to say the first appointment he had was a week later, that repaircare couldn’t make commitments on his behalf! I had no choice but to accept. On that day, the engineer did come and although he couldn’t access the back of the dryer, said via deduction that it was a fault with the motor, he would order the part, it would take up to 7 days to arrive, then he would call me so I could arrange for access to the dryer to install the part. Two weeks after this appointment, having heard nothing in the interim, I receive a message from repaircare saying the dryer needs to be moved so the engineer can have access. I assume this is to install the new motor. I call the engineer’s number for 4 days straight and leave messages – no response. I call repaircare and get told the machine can’t be fixed (?!) and I will receive a refund, less £40 callout fee. They cannot tell me why the dryer can’t be fixed. Infuriated I asked to speak to a supervisor, who says he will leave a message with the engineer to call me back. Two more days, no response despite continued calls to the engineer, I call repaircare again. They finally tell me no part has been ordered as the engineer couldn’t diagnose the fault – he needs access to the machine to diagnose. At this stage it has been over 3 weeks since I first requested a callout. I ask why it has taken 3 weeks for them to tell me they need access when on the day of the appointment the engineer said he didn’t need access to diagnose the fault – so basically lied to me – and on subsequent calls to repaircare no-one told me about the diagnosis issue. They refused to give me a full refund, holding back the £40 callout fee – so I am currently stuck continuing with them despite having lost all faith in this particular engineer, and with their system, and having to take yet another day off next week for the engineer to finally come and supposedly diagnose the fault. I personally suspect that as this is an ‘expensive’ repair, they are trying to wriggle out of fixing it. I have no guarantee now that even if the engineer comes back, he will even fix it. The whole process has been exhausting and time consuming and I cannot recommend this service at all. I wish I had gone with an authorised Bosch repairer in the area (I have used them for other appliances such as the dishwasher and they were excellent)
Louise. If an engineer misdiagnoses the fault I don’t think you should have to pay anything, not even the call out.
Regarding the cancellation of your initial appointment. Repaircare’s Terms & Conditions say that -
This implies they sometimes have to cancel appointments as all repair companies do at times (eg. sometimes if an engineer calls in sick there’s no alternative but to cancel all his appointments). You could have received a refund under these conditions had you decided to try elsewhere. However, most people clearly are pretty desperate to have their appliance repaired so it’s hardly surprising you accepted another appointment. But even so, if you had booked a day off work and they cancelled on the day of the visit giving you no time to cancel your day off then I would say you should be entitled to compensation or at the very least a refund of the call out charge.
What’s good for the goose…
As with all such companies the terms & conditions say that if their engineer arrives and you are not in they will charge you the call out charge. This is fair as they shouldn’t have to suffer financial loss because you couldn’t make the appointment – even if you had a good reason. So why should things not work in reverse if a company fails to make its appointment – even if they have a good reason? When you booked the appointment you entered into a binding contract but the contract is not just one way. I wrote a brief article on my consumer advice section here, If I take time off work and their engineer doesn’t turn up can I claim compensation?
You may need to take advice from the consumer people ( I want to claim compensation from the repair company or the washing machine seller )
When you say the engineer said, “that Repaircare couldn’t make commitments on his behalf” I find that strange as if he is signed up to them as an agent then presumably they very much can, and need to make appointments on his behalf. No company can operate if contractual appointments made to their customers aren’t honoured or even accepted by their agents.
I don’t follow why he couldn’t access the back of the dryer. If he couldn’t access it then under Repaircare’s T&C’s they have the right to terminate the call and charge the call out as they can’t fix something they can’t access easily
If he guessed the part required and got it wrong you shouldn’t have to pay anything in my opinion. But if he literally couldn’t get access for some reason they have the right to abort the call and charge the call out.
I can’t fault Repaircare, they were brilliant! The bearings on my 7 year old Hotpoint washing machine started making an awful grumbling and grinding noise. I figured the bearings had gone and booked a repair with Repaircare. I suspected they might deem it economically unviable to repair but was willing to part with £40 for the callout since I would have had to pay at least that for a local engineer to come and diagnose anyway.
I was able to book a slot on the day I wanted and an engineer duly arrived and diagnosed the bearings as shot to pieces. He said he thought it likely they would not sanction a repair since he was recommending a complete replacement of the whole drum assembly. I did query this and ask why the bearings couldn’t just be replaced and he explained it was easier and less labour to do this rather than take it all apart and remove the bearings to possibly find the housing was damaged and new bearings couldn’t be fitted for that or another reason. A new drum would then be needed so he was just bypassing the potential trouble and labour of stripping it all down in the first place. I felt this was a reasonable decision and comment and he left saying he would contact me once he had a decision from Repaircare.
Off I went onto the web looking at expensive Miele’s and resigned myself to getting a new machine.
I was delighted when the engineer rang a few days later saying the repair was authorised! He came the next day and replaced the whole drum assembly and heater as promised and I effectively now have a new washing machine! All for just £104. I think that is damned good value for what I got and have no complaints at all.
I think it is worth noting that your experience with Repaircare may well be dependent on who they sub contract out to come and do the diagnosis and repair. My engineer was excellent and very thorough.
I wouldn’t recommend Repaircare to my worst enemy.
My Washer dryer broke down early July – I found the Repaircare site as it’s high up on google searches and it seemed a good deal. Appointment was booked and a local independent repair man was sent.
He spent about 5 minutes and said he needed to order parts.
3 weeks later and many calls to repaircare and also visits to the local repair shop and he came out the fit the parts (quite expensive – main pcb). Well he changed this and a few other small parts and the problem was still there. He said he had done as much as he could but would have to ask an expert (I thought that was what I was promised on the website)
Well another 2 weeks and many more calls and guess what – the same man appeared to refit the same parts ( the first words he said as he entered the kitchen was “this isn’t going to work but they’ve told me to try again”. Well it didn’t work.
Many more calls to repaircare and despite repeatedly asking for someone with more competence to be sent out this was refused. All I have been offered is a refund minus the £40 call out fee – this I have refused as why should I pay for a call out when the person coming out is not competent to do the job?
I have since called out another engineer – part of the electrolux network and he plugged in his computer and diagnosed the fault immediately and had the machine running within 20 minutes – he had to replace all the same parts as the repaircare man as he had blown them and one more part costing less than £20.
Overall the call centre staff only seem to want to give you a partial refund and don’t seem interested in helping you solve the problem.
STEER CLEAR of REPAIRCARE.
Thanks for your positive feedback Gavman. Unfortunately comments about any repair company will inevitably attract far more negative comments than positive because in the repairs game there’s always a minority of jobs that suffer cockups, and jobs that just go badly from the start. Satisfied customers rarely take the trouble to shout about it so it’s nice to see someone making the effort to balance things a little.
While not wanting to undermine any complaints, and some people do appear to have received poor service, it isn’t fair to assume that isolated experiences mean a company is no good and should be avoided at all costs. I’d appreciate it if people tried to describe their experiences without resorting to claiming the entire company are cowboys.
If you have a problem with an engineer it doesn’t mean all engineers operating for Repaircare are the same – that is an unreasonable assumption. Having said that, Repaircare are more accountable for the standard of their call centre and customer services section and how they deal with things when they do go wrong.
If things happened as you described Carlo I would also be expecting a full refund if they misdiagnosed or simply didn’t cure the fault and you’ve had to get it fixed elsewhere but I don’t feel it’s fair to assume and advise that all their engineers are no good because of your experience of one.
Booked a service call and was charged at the same time, but after taking a day off, the engineer failed to arrive. I have received an apology but no offer of any compensation for wasting a day of my annual leave to sit at home and wait for someone who failed to turn up.
Hello Disgruntled: As discussed in a previous comment I have written an opinion on this topic here – If I take time off work and their engineer doesn’t turn up can I claim compensation?
This issue can affect customers of any repair company as engineers often encounter problems that can make it impossible for an engineer to make an appointment. I myself had to ring customers and apologise saying I wouldn’t be able to make an appointment many times during my many years as an engineer. It was rare of course, but something that did happen every so often.
Reasons range from getting stuck in seriously heavy traffic and becoming very behind schedule, getting stuck on one or more jobs which take considerably longer than normal causing me to run seriously behind, to employers (when I did the odd stint working for other companies) booking way too many jobs in over way too big an area making it impossible to finish unless I was prepared to work until 10 at night, and to having minor accidents and having to cancel all my calls as a result of slicing my finger on a dishwasher etc. Large organisations can have problems if an engineer is off sick or if he fails to turn up for work already booked in due to sickness.
Clearly it’s extremely annoying and inconvenient if an engineer doesn’t turn up. At the very least they should ring and apologise asap. Most people will accept the apology and explanation in my experience but if they have lost a day off work they should be entitled to compensation if that’s what they want to pursue although it’s something you are likely to have to fight for, maybe even as far as the small claims court.
Can’t believe that you are recommending these people.
Received a visit early sept to fix the ice compartment on my Maytag American FF (4 years old) Engineer fiddled with back of fridge + eventually decided it needed new hose. 3 weeks later appeared at my door with wrongly supplied ‘washing machine’ hose. Said that he would be back with correct hose and parts (that he had broken) in due course. Had to turn water supply off to fridge as his tinkering now means that applliance now leaks.
So Maytag in worse state than when started. Apparently if this ‘engineer’ cannot fix appliance they will charge me £40 because it is deemed uneconomical to repair.
This clearly is not the case. It appears that the engineer is simply not qualified to repair this type/brand of appliance. I am expected to pay for his incompetence and mistakes.
Hello Helen: My review was looking at the service they offer and giving background information about the company, which was written at the same time the service was launched. In the last sentence of my review I say, “The article is independent in that I’m not so much personally recommending the service as merely pointing out its existence and what they offer.”
There were some complaints early on about people being charged extra for parts if they were over a certain limit, which contradicted the “fixed price” repairs advertised, but they decided to stop doing that some weeks in, so it shouldn’t be an issue any more.
There have been several complaints that I agreed seem justified and raised with the company myself. There have also been complaints that in all fairness, and without wishing to belittle, are typical complaints where things have just gone wrong, which I guarantee are typical to virtually all repairers. That’s not to say they aren’t genuine complaints but they need putting into perspective and are not necessarily proof that the whole company is useless.
As Repaircare carry out many thousands of repairs each week using a network of 500 independent repairers it’s inevitable there will be some that don’t go according to plan or even very badly so we need to try and work out the ones that are particular to Repaircare before branding them with words like “do not use this company” or “this company is a scam”.
This is where I have a concern for fairness and why I try to put a balanced point of view in replies. This can be mistaken for defending Repaircare but anyone reading my comments properly should see a roughly equal balance of trying to put things into perspective and agreeing with complaints.
The only thing I can say is that people experiencing genuine cock ups with individual engineers are not being fair if they say that it’s evidence the entire network of repairers are the same. There are 500 engineers and it’s unfair to say they are all incompetent on the personal experience of one or even several. I honestly believe I am a good engineer myself, but over my 30 years experience I cocked things up from time to time. I sometimes pulled a washer out a bit too fast and damaged flooring or broke hoses that were too short and I hadn’t noticed. I’ve ordered wrong parts at (rare) times too and so on and so on. Who hasn’t cocked up at work?
In my opinion, what differentiates between a good company and a bad one is not that things go wrong, because that’s a given, but how they are dealt with when they do. Unfortunately it seems many of these incidents have been compounded by customers having incidents drag on for several weeks, not being contacted quickly enough and some mistakes regarding parts and whether they are available or not. This is how they should be judged, not on incidents where a wrong part was ordered, or something got accidentally broken, or an engineer couldn’t make an appointment etc.
In Helen’s case the facts reported are vague, but if a part was broken by an engineer it’s clearly his responsibility to sort it out without charge. I think the person saying if they can’t fix it you will still be charged the £40 was possibly just repeating the company policy and not taking into account the circumstances. Please keep us informed.
WasherHelp,
I think you are being way too generous with RepairCare.
They displayed very poor communication:
(1) depending on engineers to contact the customer when my contract is with RepairCare, so it should be upto RepairCare to inform me when the engineer has given up the job, and that a new engineer will be taking it over,
(2) also communicate with the new engineer that he is taking over the job!! (which RepairCare failed to do, much to the annoyance of the new engineer) [See my problem with RepairCare: BrokenCloud #19. August 11th, 2009, at 3:45 PM.]
Also, on their website they made inaccurate logs of visits to me which did not take place!! Who is writing these logs?
This shows RepairCare have a big problem with communications with customers and engineers. They do not have established procedures to follow, eg always phoning to update customer of status, always phoning the engineer of the previous history of a job, do not use acronyms with a customer, especially on voicemail, eg BER (beyond enconomic repair) [See my problem with RepairCare: BrokenCloud #19]
I have never received such a poor service from any service engineer in my Life!!
Booked my fridge freezer in with repair care and was somewhat skeptical about them being able to fix it for a set price including everything, no hidden extras whatsoever i was told.. , i made sure to detail the several specific problems and list all damaged parts that were visibly broken..
The booking confirmation came through with just two bullet points.. i didn’t think anything of this until i stumbled upon this forum.. i immediately lost hope of them being able to fix this on the day as promised so just rang to cancel..
Even though it took seconds to book the call out i was put on hold to cancel, even though they instantly confirmed the booking they had to call the engineer to cancel, three minutes after my initial booking (i’m not exaggerating), who was suddenly unavailable.. now i have to wait and see if they have cancelled my call out in time to avoid the £40 charge. I wasn’t drawn to the terms and conditions on the website or run through them on the phone, this is both bad business practice and opens up a whole grey area of the Unfair Contract Terms and Conditions Act 1977. What i find particularly frustrating is there is absolutely no point in offering fixed price repairs for any problem with any appliance then hiding away a small condition that pretty much gets them out of repairing anything that’s too old or too expensive.. I’m glad i’ve cancelled, even though i could have been proved wrong on my decision it’s pretty obvious that my enormous and very expensive american style fridge freezer was going to far outweigh the call out fee, they’d have said i didn’t detail all the problems properly then shown me the two bullet points and walked away with my £40.
I’m going to contact the manufacturer directly as suggested by many people on this forum..
Mark: According to the terms & conditions you should get all money refunded if you cancel any time before 4 O’ Clock on the day before the appointment.
I used Repaicare when my hob broke and was intially impressed with the speed in which an engineer could come out. He went away saying that he needed a part to repair it. 6 WEEKS later after being told repeatedly the part was being shipped I get told actually its beyond economic repair. The hob is a stoves induction so will cost more than £700 to replace and is only a few years old so it is worth repairing but it will cost more than the ‘fixed’ fee they charged me. Really not impressed, especially after having to cater for a family of 5 for 6 weeks without a hob!
Still awaiting a resolution for the repair of my american fridge freezer. Since you imply my previous entry was in some way sketchy here ie the full story.
The water was slow to the ice compartment which was failing to make ice. Paid £164 for a repair/visit. F/F is 4 yrs old.
Sept 11th the engineer visited, spent nearly 2 hours and appeared to not really know what was wrong. He used rather hefty tools for the job (I had previously been able to disconnect hose from F/F using normal finger pressure). He concluded that maybe a new water hose was needed. He would order one and try that first. He then asked me to turn water off to the F/F because it was now leaking at the connection. This was not the case before his visit.
Sept 30th engineer appeared on my doorstep. Wrong part had been ordered/sent to him by repaircare. (he was brandishing a normal washing machine hose) He would go back, speak to repaircare, reorder etc. He mentioned that he had the other bits to resolve the leak – washers?
Mid Oct I wondered what was going on! Looked up job online. Appeared that job complete and that engineer had fitted new pat, had had a marketing call that day to find out if I was happy with repaircare and my completed repair!
21 oct – in response to my call the job was re raised with the addition of ‘THE CUSTOMER IS STATING THAT THE APPLIANCE HAS BEEN LEAKING SINCE THE ENG ATTENDED IF FAULT IS NOT RELATED TO PREVIOUS REPAIR WE WILL NEED TO CHARGE AGAIN’ on the fault description. The telephone operator told me that the job had always been open – the date disputes this. I since been told that the engineer re raised job in response to my call – perhaps reminding him that it was not complete??
Engineer said he would ensure part identified properly and ordered. It is only the hose for a maytag F/F of 4 years old, how difficult can this be? With regard top the leak – the engineer told me that I was confusing everyone by mentioning it. He said that these things did leak when moved about. I have moved house with the F/F twice and it has been perfectly happy! I refer back to the rather large wrench used to undo the hose. I am afraid that at this point my main concern was the way in which the customer care lady had cleverly seen the opportunity of gettig more money out of me. I had been quite clear that the F/F had not leaked before the visit.
31st October I checked to see if job progressing on new number!! it was closed. Not to despair apparently could not make an order on that number so another had been set up….
However, good news! I was told that the part had just arrived and that the engineer would be contacting me re a date to fit.
Sadly not such good news, in the middle of the next week told by text that part still on order.
Have phoned today as the customer service lady who is supposed to have called me some 6 or so days ago has still not materialised.
I would like to demand a return of ALL monies and to go elsewhere. However, my F/F is now less healthy than prior to the engineers visit – as a direct result of his intervention, so I will still be out of pocket. The engineers are not – I believe up to the job (not familiar with maytag at all etc) And despite supplying full details of F/f serial number etc we seem to be no nearer getting a part. Finally – If that part does not fix problem I will probably be told that F/F is not economical to repair.
Following yesterdays long telephone call, I looked at my job details this morning. I was surprised to see that an engineer called yesterday but that he could not fix my F/F. Not surprising as he did not enter my house….. I also spoke to Maytag who were able to identify part in about 30seconds. It would cost me just £41 but since my maytag now broken by engineer and not sure this was the problem anyway not sure this really helps.
Have given part number to Repaircare (Do I get discount for doing their job?) and still await communication from customer service lady who shall not be named.
Does any one know where can I go for help with this??
I’ve received communication from a manager at Repaircare regarding complaints.
I tried to do the above.However, repaircare system not working so you can’t send messages (call centre are aware of this). My last job no was C1190864. On talking to people at the call centre, they are unable to give me names of managers to write to, no supervisors are able to speak, it appears that there is no customer services department and ‘James’ is an apparition!
Hello Helen, it appears to be OK now. I can vouch for James being a real person. It’s quite possible the call centre staff don’t know of him because he isn’t in their department.
I was seriously looking at this company for a washing machine repair but I think not now :(
You can’t beat independant engineers by ‘word of mouth’
Darren. The hundreds of engineers doing work for Repaircare are local engineers. As with any nationwide network of engineers there will be some variance in quality, just as there naturally is if you pick a local engineer from a directory yourself.
Word of mouth is good though.
I am having a very difficult time with this company. They are a complete nightmare to deal with and in my opinion seem to have very little concern for their customers.
I originally had an engineer booked for the 10th Nov to fix my dishwasher, I called the engineer on the day and was told they were based 60 miles away and didnt cover my area. When I contacted repaircare they told me there was a mix up with the booking and they rescheduled the booking for yesterday 16th Nov, once again the engineer didnt show up and no-one contacted me.
Repaircare now claim that the engineer has ordered parts for my dishwasher (without even having seen it) and the parts arent in stock and they are having to get them from the manufacturer which wont be here for another month. (a familiar story on this thread).
Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated. My job number is c1198756.
Hello Helen,
We are desperately sorry for these problems you have experienced regarding this job. We take every single problem and complaint seriously, and investigate each one internally to try and ensure the same problems don’t keep occurring.
I am aware that you have been talking to our Client Support Manager Stephanie over the past few days to get this problem resolved. Stephanie will keep you informed of her progress and you can rest assured she will do her absolute up most to bring these problems to a conclusion as soon as possible.
Kind Regards
James
….oh and I’m not an ‘apparition’, very real in fact :)
Hi Doran,
A member of our client support team will call you today to discuss this problem further and hopefully get it resolved.
Kind Regards
James
Thanks James,
Stephanie from Repaircare contacted me today to try and resolve the issues, it was good to talkto someone who sympathised with the problems Im having and she has gone some way to reassure me that I will get my dishwasher fixed!
We will see…..
doran
Hi Doran,
Stephanie informs me that she has spoken with you and explained the situation regarding us awaiting delivery of the parts into the UK.
She will keep you fully informed of the job progress.
Any problems feel free to give me a shout
Kind Regards
James
Very disappointed with repaircare. Washer-dryer appliance went on the blink in late September. Booked repaircare for £110. Repaircare sent around engineer, he replaced one part. Didn’t work. Sent around engineer again. He replaced another part. Still didn’t work. Engineer said he would have to go off and research job on the net… never heard from him again. Eventually after 6 weeks of having washerdryer clutter up my kitchen and not being able to do any washing, got the hump and ordered new appliance from John Lewis. Asked repaircare for standard refund (job cost less GBP 40) Repaircare refuse £70 refund claiming they have to send an engineer! Have spoken to credit card company who will do something on my behalf, but I am not impressed and will not use or recommend repaircare ever.
Hi William,
Sorry to hear you have experienced some problems with our service. This is definatley not acceptable. Would you mind emailing me your job number to escalations@repaircare.co.uk so I can get somebody looking into your job more closely.
Kind Regards
James
The comments on this article so far have provided a useful service to customers frustrated by problems they couldn’t get resolved at Repaircare. I’m glad Repaircare are now more proactively dealing with these issues, and by providing a method of escalating serious issues I think it’s fair to say most people would be better trying these avenues before adding further comments.
I’m sure the email address provided is not meant for all complaints but if you find the normal methods aren’t working the “escalations” email is there to use.
I won’t close the article to comments as people are free to add their experiences as long as they are a reasonable description of what happened. As I’ve said before, it’s not unusual for things to go wrong with any company so it’s how they are dealt with that defines them and James is clearly doing his best to deal with them.
Quick update on my previous post which was no 35:
Have spent last few months attempting to get refund – fobbed off repeatedly by promises. apparently they have now finally refunded me – I will believe it when it hits my account! It’s now the end of November and my initial booking was in July – these people really do not care about their customers they seem to just hope you go away! Would not recommend to my worst enemy – in fact I am proactively telling as many people as I can how poor they are!
Hi Carlo,
Please email me your job number to escalations@repaircare.co.uk so I can at least look into your job and confirm that a refund has now been made.
Apologies for the problems you have experienced
Kind Regards
James
Just had my first dealings with Repaircare. They haven’t called out today when they were supposed to. This made me check them out and now I find pages and pages of negative comments!
I’ll keep you posted on what happens next.
Hello Dave: Please do. Someone at Repaircare is actively dealing with any escalated issues and has posted several times on this thread recently. Also some of the earlier complaints were about terms and conditions that have since been amended.
An engineer not turning up is always inconvenient, but it does happen from time to time with all engineers for various reasons. It’s not very good you not being informed of course but until you find out the facts we can’t know if it’s something they deserve criticism for or not.
Hi. Thanks for the response. By way of update, I now know what has happened. Repaircare say they never agreed to send anyone out today, whereas Beaumatic who referred the job to them on Monday, say that Repaircare had ample time to send someone out. This is no consolation to me as I took the day off work to get the cooker fixed.
On reflection, I have decided to wait the two weeks for the Beaumatic engineer, rather than use Repaircare.
Thank you and good luck to everyone with getting their problems resolved.
Booked a repair about 3 weeks ago. engineer visited and identified some spares required. Spares not available so far and no ETA. Repair care cant give an estimated date. So I imagine it could be 6 months or 1 year or even more! When challenged repair care ready to give money back after deducting £40 call out charges. They wont tell me what parts are required either.
We used RepairCare for our dishwasher. The engineer came out within a few days but it’s 2 weeks later and we’re still waiting for the parts. For all their being part of a spare parts stockist (Connect Distribution), it seems RepairCare can take a ridiculously long time to actually get the repair moving. When I contacted them, they had a ‘nothing can be done’ attitude. Not impressed, wouldn’t use them again.
Same here Vic, no importance to customers whatsoever. ‘We will do what we can’ sort of attitude. No importance to customers waiting time, cant provide estimated date of repair but repair care will take money off ya even if they cant get it repaired!! I could’ve got my oven sorted even quicker if I went for a local bloke who could atleast tell me what parts are required. Its my big mistake to think Repair Care was better.
Mathew: To be fair spare parts are a problem for all repair companies and once a company has ordered parts from a manufacturer they often just don’t know when they are going to arrive. Sometimes a manufacturer may not even have any and have to wait for stock to come in themselves.
They don’t actually (currently) say on the FAQs what they consider is a reasonable time to wait for spare parts. They just say in most cases a spare part has to be ordered will only take 2 or 3 days but they are talking about spare parts the engineer doesn’t have on his van but they do have at their national spares depot. I would assume from the delays in yours and Vic’s cases the parts required are not in stock there and have had to be ordered directly from the manufacturer.
There’s a fair chance that it will still be quicker sticking with them if the parts have definitely been ordered as the chances are other repair companies may only have to order the parts too.
I would imagine most companies would be reluctant to describe exactly which parts are required if you are wanting to cancel the job after they’ve ordered the part for you. It might be argued the customer should get this information as they have been inconvenienced, but if Repaircare sent an engineer out and have ordered parts, and the manufacturer hasn’t supplied them in what the customer deems a reasonable time is it Repaircare’s fault?
If they refund the money it’s not necessarily an admission they’ve done anything wrong, it could equally be an acceptance you aren’t satisfied and want to cancel the repair. Should they tell you exactly which parts they ordered so you can try to source them elsewhere? It’s a difficult one that because on the one hand I can understand a repairers position which is that even hanging onto your £40 will mean they have definitely lost money on the deal, but on the other hand I believe if we pay someone to come out to look at an appliance we have a right to be told exactly what it wrong with it and which parts the engineer says we need. It’s an awkward one, but with them fixing it for a fixed price it might be argued the parts aren’t affecting the agreed repair price so we are less entitled to know which parts need fitting than with a company charging for the parts separately on top of labour.
Vic:
Any repair company trying to repair all of the tens of thousands of models made over the last 10 years or more of from all the different makes of dishwashers, washing machines, washer dryers, tumble dryers, cookers, hobs, fridges, fridge-freezers and freezers can’t carry anywhere near enough spare parts to be able to fix all faults first time so having to order parts is totally normal. The majority of repairs either don’t need any parts or only need parts carried on the van but inevitably some do need parts ordering.
Even Connect Distribution, which must be the largest UK spares company can’t carry everything even though they must have hundreds of thousands of parts because there must be millions of parts. If your appliance ends up needing a part that isn’t pretty commonly required, or your make isn’t one of the most common it’s likely that no one will have the part and it’ll have to be ordered meaning delays.
Parts for LG and Stoves spring to mind as being particularly difficult to obtain.
The only people potentially more likely to have the parts more often than all the other repairers are the manufacturer themselves but even then some of the manufacturers such as LG for example use local independent repairers the same as Repaircare. Many of the largest manufacturers still have engineers that have to fix a ridiculously diverse amount of appliances and still only carry a limited amount of parts so they still need to order parts too though in theory they should be able to get them quicker as there’s one less chain in the link. Once parts are ordered they are usually part of a large batch of orders and they have to wait for them to come in.
I don’t know how easily they can chase up individual parts but clearly with white goods appliances speed is often vital and keeping customers informed is essential to prevent them getting angry. The problem is if they really don’t know when a specific part will arrive there’s not much they can do other than say that.
With reference to #58, I am pleased to report that repaircare have given me a full refund, which is very decent of them. It seems they are actually trying hard to deal with issues which is good to see.
Totally dissapointed with Repair care now. Last week I was given ETA as 11/12/09. On 12t/12/09, ETA changed to 25th Dec……what a joke! On 14/12/09 I was promised by customer care staff that somone would look into what went wrong and get back to me. No one did!!! Today when I phoned them there is no such ETA and still couldnt guarantee if it could be done this year. Thats my christmas without an oven….fantastic….I will never forget this repair care….and hope you have a wonderful xmas with my money as well others.
Mathew, have you emailed James as per his last post Comment 62 ?
Repair care saga: used them to repair an LG washing machine. At first visit the engineer simply confirmed what I had already informed them of: the brand of the machine and that it didn’t get any power. Concluded the electronic board needs changing, was not bothered as to why it was shortcircuited. waiting time for the part 5-10 working days.
Of course the wait was 15 working days + a few more for a new appointment. Second engineer arrived, installed the new board and all hell broke loose with sparks and smoke from underneath the machine. Took a look and showed me that some other part had been corroded by water and will need replacing. There goes another 5-10 working days which again turned into 15.
Almost 8 weeks from the first visit I take another day off work for the 3rd appointment. When the engineer informs me that the previous person had taken some parts with him so he can’t put the new one back. He was going to get in touch with his colleague and then contact me again.
10 days later I got a message from Repaircare that the machine was beyond repair and they have refunded £75.
After 10 weeks the machine is left dissasembled and with parts missing and I am 3 working days and £85 out of pocket.
Hi Cyanna
Please email me your job number to escalations@repaircare.co.uk so I can at least look into your job.
Kind regards,
Gary
An engineer was scheduled on 23rd and we were so happy that we bought cake mix and other food to go in the oven for christmas. Engineer called in on 23rd, never knew we had problem with both ovens (double oven cooker) replaced part on one and said he sorted one out of two. After he left the flame dropped down and back to square one, both ovens out of use. A change in christmas dinner menu due to non availability of OVEN!!
On Comment 62, james requested for job number from Carlo
Well it’s not often I feel the need to give negative feedback.. But this lot (repaircare.co.uk) are responsible the worst service I’ve EVER had from any company.
Firstly the engineer kept turning up before 7:00am, despite the fact that the stated hours are 8-6. An appointment I still got charged for missing! When he finally arrived he was here for 10 minutes, fitted a non working part and left the machine in a worse state than when he arrived.
Despite many many calls to repaircare no one was available to take my call, no one called me back despite multiple promises to do so. I’m left out of pocket without a working washing machine.
DON’T USE THEM. Would be my advice.
Richard, have you emailed the managers who have posted email addresses several times on this thread? escalations@repaircare.net
Just interested to see if you get better response from them although it shouldn’t really get to that stage. An engineer just turning up before 7 AM without prior arrangement is asking for trouble.
Not sure if Richard has emailed anybody, but we have. Both emailed and spoken with both repair care and the firm who was 3 times at our house.
Repair care informed us that the firm has said we have tried to repair the machine ourselves! I wonder when would we have done that? Presumably between the second visit (when the technician has left and ordered a spare part, so he believed they were going to fix the machine) and the third when the technician told us that the previous person has taken some fitting braces with him. Between these visits we were missing a part (the one that was ordered) so how or why would we have tried to repair the machine ourselves?
In any case Repaircare is not interested and told us it’s between us and the repairer. Obviously we don’t have a contract with the repairer….But we did call them as well. Afterall we have the message they left on the answering machine that the machine was irreparable. They denied they have told repaircare we have tried to repair the machine ourselves, but that the machine is irreparable because it needs to be rewired and offered to remove it from our house for us!
Er…anybody knows a reliable washing machine repair firm? We pay for travel if they are out of the area……
Hello Cyanna. Your contract is with Repaircare, if they send a third party it shouldn’t change anything. Repaircare are responsible for sorting out any problems.
An alternative repairer may be the manufacturer Appliance manufacturers repair charges and contact numbers
I now that, I just wish Repaircare was aware of this as well.
We’ll probably call the manufacturer, see what they think of the mess repaircare’s men have made of things.
Assuming the manufacturer can repair it, this thing has now cost us same as a brand new washing machine of same model…..
Have now spent nearly as much as my oven cost on repairs to Repaircare and it still isn’t working, solely down to the poor standard of their work. If you have a problem, do yourself a favour and find someone (anyone!) else to do the work.
Hello Rob: Sounds like you’re frustrated, it’s a common thing to think and say if you get let down by someone or by a particular product and we all tend to do it at times. But with respect it’s not fair to say all engineers must be bad based on a personal experience with one, just as it isn’t logical to assume that if he’d been great it means all the other engineers are great too.
Repaircare are organising a network of engineers, passing on the jobs and running the whole thing so they are legitimate targets for fair criticism regarding their web site, how they organise the job, and their customer service standards – and especially how they handle complaints (where they had a dodgy record in the first few months as early comments show). But Repaircare engineers are a network of 500 independent engineers and many are members of respected trade organisations. The chances of getting a good or bad one should be little different to picking one yourself from an advert in that there is inevitably going to be variation of quality amongst them. Each one of these engineers (as far as I’m aware) also operate independently in their own areas and advertise locally, so anyone taking your advice is just as likely to get one of these engineers anyway except without the fixed price.
In theory the chances of getting a decent engineer using a company like Repaircare should be better than picking one yourself in as much as Repaircare should vet them and can exert some influence or even remove any if they caused regular problems. If you have issues and complaints with any engineer you have Repaircare to complain to, whereas using them independently means you can only complain to them.
I’m not trying to undermine your complaint or even endorse Repaircare, I’m just trying to look at everything from a balanced point of view.
The continuing tendency of this thread to emphasise where things have gone wrong with Repaircare suggests that the problem is with their sub-contractor vetting and overall business model (costs vs pricing)
A similar thing appears to affect CityLink couriers – they obviously get a lot of business by offering their customers low prices, but the people at the receiving end (who only pay indirectly for the service, and therefore have no sway over CityLink themselves) generally get a poorer service because of it.
Called Repaircare to repair ceramic hob.Told an engineer was calling the following Tuesday.Received a call from Appliance Repair to say they dont know why i was told Thursday and it would now be the following Tuesday. I cancelled everything i was doing for that day and rang the enginner first thing as asked.All i got was an answerphone asking to leave details and someone would ring me back.I never recieved that call and i rang 5/6 times during the day.Late afternoon i rang repaircare and asked where my engineer was only to be told he wasnt coming as he had ordered parts but hadnt bothered to tell me.I immediately cancelled my order and am awaiting a refund.I hope the refund department works better than the rest of the system.I certainly would not recommend this company.
Paul, you might want to edit your first sentence as the days don’t make sense. I think some Thursdays and Tuesdays have got mixed up. Do you mean you had a day the engineer was booked to call, but instead of coming he ordered a part but didn’t ring to let you know he wasn’t coming?
I have tried to resolve the longstanding repair of my washing machine with Repaircare by using their escalation e-mail referenced in these messages. Despite sending 2 e-mails both with the job reference in them I have not had so much as an acknowledgement. The recurring threads in these messages about lack of customer service, poor communication etc are ones I can associate with. Appreciate engineers will vary but if the contract is with Repaircare they should be doing more to resolve issues for customers. Having lodged my fault on 7/12 /09 the machine has finally been returned today 25/1/10 only to find on first attempt to run that water now pours out from the bottom – not the problem in the first place. I would steer clear of using this company and wish that I had done so.
Thanks for all the above contributions. I wont be using their service which may be of some solace to all those who are understandably very frustrated by this company.
Thank God for the internet and this blog. Having problems with our smeg dishwasher, but won’t be using these
Repaircare recognizes that due to the very nature of their fixed price repair and the high volumes of work undertaken they occasionally fail to meet their own high standards and expectations.
Unfortunately, some of these problems are out of their direct control i.e. age of appliance, obtaining certain manufacturers parts which are not available in the UK and have to be sourced from abroad. In addition to getting hold of technical information relating to the oldest or most unusual appliances.
If you have a complaint regarding your repair please email escalations@repaircare.net quoting your job number and giving details of your grievance. Repaircare will respond to you within 2 working days.
I contacted repaircare three weeks ago when my oven stopped working (whirlpool). The engineer arrived on the arranged day and was told that the part had been ordered a few day previous. He took our mobile number and told us we will get a text when the part arrives. We waited another week and I contacted repaircare again to ask what the hold up was. We were told that the part had not arrived. I asked if they could chase it and was told that I should call the next day. We called again the next day and was told that the part had arrived and it was to be sent to the local enginner, this was to take TWO Days!!! (Don’t the post office do next day delivery???). This week I rang again ( I spoke to Thomas) and he agreed it should have been fixed. He actually tried to help and rang me back within 10 minutes , I was told the engineer was off until today ( thurs). I’ve rang again today and was told the part should be fixed next Tuesday that’s nearly 4 weeks since I flagged the fault. I asked if reparecare could arrange it to be fixed any earlier and was told they couldn’t. I am getting really frustrated – help!!!!!!!!
Pete, in order that we can trace your repair details please can you email your full name & address and the Repaircare Job No Prefixed By a C to escalations@repaircare.net and we will look into your complaint and respond within two working days.
I just contacted repaircare for quote, as know what problem is, the particular part will take 7 weeks to arrive, why?! The person on the other end of phone sounded completely disinterested. Natural instincts say no, rather pay more from company more credible (and interested)!
Sarah, Companies will usually quote the maximum time it may take to get a part even if it’s usually quicker. They actually have access to probably the largest spares stock in the country but there are millions of different parts. If they don’t have the part they will have to order it from the manufacturer.
Some parts, and some makes of part in particular can take a long time to get hold of. They may need to come from over seas. Many parts will unfortunately take a long time – often unacceptably long.
There’s just no system set up anywhere to fast track parts that aren’t commonly used or are from models out of production. It’s not economically viable. This isn’t any repairer or spare parts company’s fault it’s because there’s just too many different models and makes and millions of parts.
In cases where normal independent repairers don’t have a specific part and can’t get one quick enough I would try the manufacturer. Sometimes even the manufacturer doesn’t have a part in though and has to order it in turn from whoever they get to make them.
It depends on which make and which part you need as to how quickly you can get it but it’s not necessarily Repaircare’s fault for not having it and not being able to promise one quicker.
Sarah, the response from washerhelp is valid. However, if you email your appliance make, type, age and postcode to escalations@repaircare.net Repaircare will look into who dealt with your call and will also be able to specifically respond regarding the availability of part(s) to repair your appliance?
Booked a repair for a Hotpoint washing machine – specified exactly which lights were flashing – ie the error code. Engineer came, could not decypher the error code so spent 15 minutes on the phone to mate and then declared that as it was a Hotpoint machine, they would have to get a Hotpoint engineer in to fix it at their cost. Heard nothing so followed up …to find that it had been classified as irrepairable. I wrote to the escalation e mail address a week ago and not even an acknowledgement so far.
Why did they accept the booking – which described the error code – if they cannot mend Hotpoint machines ? Just cost me £40 to have a chap on site for 20 minutes of which 15 was on the phone to a mate. Not exactly a great experience and would not recommend them.
Charles/Sarah
My experience with repaircare was also a nightmare as it took nearly 4 weeks to get my oven fixed.
I would not recommend them. Go local! it would be quicker.
Charles (comment 96), we’ve tried to find your details but without your Job Number Prefix C followed by 7 digits this is proving difficult? Please email escalations@repaircare.net and we will answer your complaint. Thank you.
Pete, the engineers working at Repaircare are local engineers. They aren’t employed by Repaircare, they are independent local engineers who get work passed onto them from the Repaircare network.
I can’t comment on your individual experience as I don’t know the facts and I have no wish to undermine your complaint but nearly 4 weeks to get an appliance fixed can happen virtually anywhere and it’s not uncommon at all I’m afraid. If parts need ordering and have to come from a manufacturer it can take a long time.
Many people may be surprised but repairs to appliances are now very complex, and there’s never been so many different types and makes of appliance and so many different parts. The days when you had a local specialist fixing a small number of appliances with a large stock of spares for them and focussed experience are long gone I’m afraid and this problem is in no way restricted to Repaircare.
I’m currently writing an article about repairs in general highlighting some of these problems, which I hope to publish soon.
Hi Washerhelp,
I am supprised you say the repaircare engineers are local and independent. From speaking to an engineer they are given all there work by repaircare and work exclusively for them through 0800repair.com/ ?
Damien: Repaircare is a division of Connect Distribution Services Limited, whose registered office is: Connect House, Talbot Way, Small Heath, Birmingham, West Midlands. (Connect Distribution Services are the UK’s largest appliance spares company (as far as I’m aware) supplying much of the trade and stocking “over 1-5 million products”). They offer, “UK coverage delivered by a local engineer ensuring a quick response whatever the locality”.
0800repair is owned by Pacifica Group Limited with registered offices in Co Durham and as far as I’m aware use engineers who work under a franchise arrangement.
I booked a job with repaircare to repair my hob on 1st of March, was told that the overall cost was £123.00 and that an engineer would be at my house on 03rd of March. On 02nd of March I was sent a text message confirming that the engineer would visit the next day and a telephone number to contact the engineer if need be. My husband took a day off work for this, at about 12.30 pm he called the engineer to find out at what time they were visiting and they said that they had never received a job from repaircare and that they could not visit me until the 05th March. I called repaircare to complain and find out what happened, the lady I initially spoke to was very unhelpful and said that unless I wanted to make the appointment on the 05th that the only other thing was a full refund. She could not explain why the engineer had no knowledge of the job.
I then asked to speak to a manager and was passed to a gentleman called Shaun, he said that they had booked the job but it was not their fault if the engineer had not looked at his job list, that they could never guarantee that they would keep an appointment 100% because ‘accidents happen’ or traffic. However the point is that the engineer was not notified of the work in which case repaircare is lying or the that he was in which case the engineer is lying, which worries me.
Repaircare refused to compensate for the day off my husband has had to take for a no show and said that the full refund will take up to 5 days.
After looking at all these reviews I am now so glad I did not pursue the job and cancelled it altogether, as these people wash their hands off completely and cannot guarantee 100% that an engineer would visit on the next rescheduled visit.
I have now booked a local engineer who will only charge me £120 so even cheaper, he will make on the day I can make it and will make an a.m. appointment so I will only need half a day off work. Also he will call me to let me in the morning at what time he will be with me. Now that is service and customer care.
Maria. Your experience is frustrating but no repair company can guarantee 100% that an engineer will turn up. Even your local engineer can’t. Anything can happen from simple cock-ups to an engineer being sick or involved in an accident.
I’m afraid your lack of an offer of compensation for a wasted day off is also typical and you are likely to face the same reluctance no matter which engineer or repair company was involved.
As far as I’m aware, when you book an appointment for someone to visit your house you have entered into a legally binding contract and if it is broken and you have lost out financially you should be entitled to compensation. I think it’s wrong for companies to charge customers for broken appointments if they aren’t in when their engineer arrives, but refuse to pay anything out when they do the same to them.
When you booked an engineer to call through Repaircare your contract was with Repaircare and no one else. Therefore they are responsible if the engineer doesn’t turn up. I can see what they mean when they say they can’t be responsible if the engineer makes a mistake but I’m afraid they are because they took your money in exchange for a promise to send an engineer. The fact that they don’t directly employ the engineers is irrelevant.
As I’ve said before this isn’t a Repaircare specific issue it’s an industry-wide one. The chances are if anyone wants compensating for wasting a day off work waiting for an engineer who didn’t turn up they will probably get compensation, but only if they pursue it with a consumer advice centre or take them to the small claims court. It’s just how they’ve always done it and they’ve always got away with it, just like how retailers try to claim there’s nothing they can do about your washing machine suffering a major fault because it’s “out of guarantee”.
If I take time off work and their engineer doesn’t turn up can I claim compensation?
Well, I contacted Repaircare at the escalation email address provided on this and other sites, to enquire about the reasons why the engineer did not turn up and also to ask for compensation for my husband’s day off wasted to a no show. A lady called Tammy Foster replied to say that they do not know why the engineer did not turn up and they will not call the engineer to find out, also that no compensation will be offered.
No wonder the number of bad reviews on this site and others, poor customer service and a shambolic company who does not even take responsibility for taking money in advance and then not turning up or phoning to advice that they were not turning up. Had it been me to be caught in traffic or had I been unable to make the appointment due to unforeseen circumstances I have no doubt that repaircare would have charged me.
I will be taking advice from the Trading Standards.
Maria: As I stated in my previous reply I don’t believe this issue is specific to Repaircare, I believe you would have exactly the same problem with the vast majority of repair companies you could have used. None of them want to pay compensation if their engineer doesn’t turn up but they all want to charge customers if they break the appointment.
As with most repair companies, they have a clause in their terms and conditions which says -
I personally can’t see how any company can believe it’s right and fair that they can charge if you are not in and have therefore broken the contract/appointment but when they do the same they don’t have to compensate you if you have wasted a day off work, which if true, is clearly a financial loss.
I personally believe repair companies just operate like this because they always have, and presumably are rarely challenged. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are genuinely surprised to be asked for compensation but people in these positions should try to remember they are consumers themselves, and the same thing could happen to them any time. This is a consumer issue everyone has a vested interest in.
As I say in my consumer advice section on Washerhelp If I take time off work and their engineer doesn’t turn up can I claim compensation? the ideal situation is for us to always inform a company when making an appointment that someone will be taking time off work. This is based on the old fashioned “time is of the essence” clause in contracts. I’ve just done further research and found a new consumer guide leaflet which reinforces this by saying –
source – Problems with Goods and Services: Your legal rights (PDF file)
I’ve now updated my If I take time off work and their engineer doesn’t turn up can I claim compensation? section to reflect and comment on this. I think it’s pretty unfair and borders on being a ridiculous caveat to consumer law because how can you even prove you told them? And why should a consumer right to compensation be only given if you say the magic words when making an appointment? Why should companies only have to take care not to break appointments to the people that said the right phrase when booking? (which are probably one in a million).
On the other hand, as I also say in my consumer article, things happen which aren’t a companies or engineers fault which cause them to break appointments. They can be unavoidable incidents beyond their control or just every day genuine mistake that we all make. Should we all really be expecting compensation for every one of life’s inconveniences? However, companies expect compensation from us by charging a call out if we break an appointment so whilst any company charges for appointments broken by their customers – often through just as valid unexpected and unavoidable reasons – is it right or fair that the compensation only works one way?
I’ve thought long and hard before writing this particular comment because my overriding concern is to be seen as fair and balanced with no bias, and not to curry favour with any particular company or even consumers, only to give my sincere opinion on any specific issue in order to try and be of use to the general public.
I suspect some of my comments may have been seen by people with complaints as unjustly defending Repaircare but at the same time Repaircare will not have liked many of my comments either. I like to think this is a sign of a balanced view as neither side is likely to be over enamoured by all of my views.
This article has attracted 105 comments so far and I’m concerned that new readers are likely to read the first few comments but because there are so many of them skip down to the last few and assume there have been hundreds of complaints so I’d like to put a little context in place.
Out of 105 comments there are 30 complaints, the rest are my responses, further replies from those 30, some from Repaircare, and a few positive comments from satisfied customers. Just after Repaircare launched last year they were receiving around 1,500 repairs a week. If this was maintained they could have been called out to over 50,000 repairs in the last 9 months. Clearly not every dissatisfied customer will complain on the Internet (and of course it’s rare for a satisfied customer to post anything) but 30 complaints does only represent 0.6%. That’s not to say there haven’t been some very genuine complaints but my point is all large companies will always have complaints and as Repaircare are the only repair company I have an article that people can comment on I think this could create an unfair bias against them.
A proportion of these complaints were around 9 months ago just after their launch complaining (justifiably in my opinion) about one of the terms and conditions which seemed to contradict the “fixed price” promise, where a few people were complaining they had been asked to pay extra for expensive parts. This policy was changed though within months of trading and as far as I know is no longer an issue. I’ve since seen one Repaircare agent comment that they spent £700 repairing a Miele appliance which amazed him.
Over the last 3 months or so comments have centred around more general complaints about an engineer not turning up as arranged, or parts taking a long time to arrive when ordered, and dissatisfaction with how complaints have been dealt with. I hate to appear dismissive about such complaints but I don’t want this article to slowly but surely just fill up indefinitely with the inevitable drip of complaints about general cockups and parts taking a long time to get hold of because it’s unfair to only complain about one repair company. Having said that, I feel complaints about customer service and how a company deals with things that have gone wrong are legitimate complaints.
Therefore I would ask that negative comments be restricted to Repaircare-specific complaints which you genuinely feel should be of public interest such as particular customer service or consumer issues or their specific way of working rather than complaints that all repair companies get such as about broken appointments, misdiagnosis of faults, repairs becoming long and drawn out, parts taking a long time to arrive etc. because these are things that happen everywhere in the appliance repair game.
I always strive for fair and balanced views on my sites and whist there’s no doubt there have been some legitimate complaints made here, and I’ve criticised Repaircare on certain issues myself it’s pointless advising others not to use Repaircare because their engineer failed to turn up or because it took them too long to get a particular part because these things can happen to you with virtually all large repair companies. Therefore it will be helpful to focus if further complaints are necessary only on things unique to them.
No one from Repaircare has ever contacted me to try and influence what I say on my sites. This is just how I personally feel. I could turn off comments to the article but I believe that would be seen as trying to stifle consumer comments and experience, which I would not want to do either.
I really like your site but reading these posts it seems you have lost sight of things a bit.
Do you really think it is acceptable for a firm to operate with “broken appointments, misdiagnosis of faults, repairs becoming long and drawn out, parts taking a long time to arrive etc” just “because these are things that happen everywhere in the appliance repair game”? I can’t believe you do, yet you say none of these are reason enough to complain. I mean, come on.
Hello Jaunty. Thanks for your comments. I’ve never said it’s acceptable, I’ve said as it’s something that happens everywhere so it’s unfair to lambaste one company and no one else for it. There’s nowhere on my sites to complain about all the other companies engineers that don’t turn up from time to time or occasionally make a mistake so I’m concerned about fairness that’s all.
I’ve not said don’t post complaints, just try not to post complaints about general day to day problems that all repair companies are guilty of.
I try to look at things dispassionately, purely logically and looking at all angles and points of view. It may not be always the best way but I like to think it’s why people seem to like my approach to reviews and articles. I’m sure if someone is very angry with a company or has a grievance they probably won’t take kindly to a dispassionate view but that’s what I do.
I’ve also said (no matter how well intended) it’s bad advice to advise others not to use a company because their engineer didn’t turn up when all repair companies engineers break appointments too. However, I do think it’s legitimate to criticise a company if they give very bad customer service when something has gone wrong. It’s also bad advice to say don’t use a company because they took several weeks to get a part when all companies can take several weeks to get a part, and it’s not logical to say don’t use a specific company because their engineer made a mistake or accidentally damaged your flooring because all engineers make mistakes and accidentally damage flooring from time to time, we all make mistakes. It’s the attitude of a company and how they deal with the mistakes that are fair game, not the fact that it happened. I’ve occasionally misdiagnosed faults and accidentally damaged people’s flooring, and had to break appointments during my many years as an engineer (although I always rang them to apologise as soon as I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it), I still believe I was a very good engineer and I don’t believe any engineer has never broken an appointment, or misdiagnosed a fault or not been able to get a part quickly.
My last post was just trying to put some proper perspective on a thread that I don’t want to descend into simply a place for all future dissatisfied Repaircare customers to keep adding to indefinitely unless the complaints are more specific to them. To me, the fact that any large company has some dissatisfied customers is not remotely shocking or surprising. They all do.
None of us can possibly know if their engineers break more appointments or misdiagnose more often or take longer to get some parts than other companies, and we never will know unless we know exactly how many jobs they do and what percentage go wrong and are able to compare those figures with the same figures from all other repair companies. What I do know is that if only complaints about Repaircare are featured on my sites its may well appear as though they are the only ones where those kinds of things happen.
The things I mentioned (and you quoted) are pretty much par for the course across the repair industry. There are reasons for it, which is why I’ve written a new article trying to explain it to customers, many of whom have an over optimistic expectation of how straight forward it should be getting some appliances repaired these days.
I try to explain why it’s come to this in my new article but it’s something that affects the appliance repair industry in general Why are there so many appliance repair horror stories?
These people are charletans. The guy turned up stayed for less than 2 minutes and said he’d be back. Never heard from them again and surprise surprise they just claim the £45 call out charge. Do not use this company.
James, have you sent your complaint and job number (which should be a C followed by 7 digits) to escalations@repaircare.net ?
Your post is difficult to weigh up because it contains little detail and sweeping accusations. You don’t seriously think this is how they operate on purpose do you? Not sure why it’s relevant how long he was in the house as presumably he gave a reason why he couldn’t fix it there and then and needed to return, what was the reason? Was there a dispute or did he say he needed to order a part? It would be nice to see more facts, and please let us know if you get this resolved or not.
Repaircare / Sales and Service Bedford Review
Internal Leak problem logged on 04/02/2010
First engineer visit on the 08/02/2010, diagnosed a cracked tub. Advised that parts would be ordered.
I looked up on bosch website and could see that the part was available and in stock. It took Repaircare more than a month to find the part.
05/03/2010 – Service and Sales now decide they can’t fix it onsite, so needs to be taken away to their offices. (why couldn’t they have done that on the 04th Feb). Despite arranging for someone to be in all day, they don’t turn up. The excuse was that they couldn’t get me immediately on my phone. (withheld number and no voicemail).
10/03/2010- Engineer finally picks up the washing machine.
It takes them a further two weeks to actually perform the repair at their offices.
25/03/2010 – Engineer scheduled to drop it off, we are on holiday so arrange for someone to be there between the agreed hours of 9 to 5. Engineer turns up at 7:30 in the morning, leaves nothing so another day wasted waiting.
30/03/2010 – Washing machine finally delivered, appears fixed.
To summarise, I think this repair could have been completed within 2 weeks maximum at their offices. Regrettably I would advise anyone thinking of using repaircare to either buy a new machine or to use someone recommended locally..
Repair Care seem to have done a bit of a u-turn if my dishwasher repair is anything to go by. The engineer came, took a five minute look, said he needed parts and left. A month later, repair care refunded my money, less the £40 call-out charge deeming the machine as economically unrepairable. I called the NEFF people out, my dishwasher was fixed in 20 minutes for £72. In essence, repair care must make a fortune in £40 call out charges plus all the interest on the money they keep in the bank for a month.
BB: Repairs should be carried out with reasonable care and skill as defined in the Sale of Goods Act under the buying services rights section. I don’t know if there are any mitigating circumstances but if any repair company tells you your appliance is beyond economical repair and you can prove that it wasn’t then presumably you should be entitled to the call out back as they clearly made a mistake.
Repaircare won’t make anything in my opinion from the £40, which is about £34 once the VAT’s taken off, then there’s the advertising costs, the time taken booking the call, processing it and passing it to the engineer, paying the engineer (who’s likely to get most of it as they are independent engineers), and then processing the refund of the labour charge. I’m pretty confident they’ll lose money on these events.
It is very annoying – I had to pay the best part of £50 only to be told that the fridge freezer couldn’t be repaired. Easy money for them – rip off!
Inspector: Yes it’s very annoying, but have a look at some of the manufacturers charges some of which (like Ariston, Indesit, Hotpoint, Creda, Hoover or Candy) would have charged you more than double that.
It’s understandable that as customers we don’t feel we’ve had good value when we pay an engineer who just gives us bad news and we all hate it – but if your fridge freezer really isn’t worth repairing who do you think should pay the costs in finding that out?
I don’t think any large company can make a profit charging around £40 to £50 to organise a repair and send an engineer out – at least not the kind of profit that could be criticised. Trust me, it is very expensive to send an engineer out.
A qualified engineer capable of doing gas and electric domestic appliance repairs will cost on average around £28,000 a year, but when you add on the 12% national insurance you have to pay, and all the holidays, sick pay, and bank holidays and pension contributions plus employers liability, public liability insurance etc. it’s going to really cost a lot more like at least £42,000.
If an engineer works the 260 business days in a year that’s £161 a day. If he can do between 8 and 10 jobs in that day that’s £20 – £16 direct cost per job in wages alone.
Then there’s training costs, providing a new van or estate car and all it’s running costs, advertising costs, running a call centre or shop etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on.
I can guarantee, if a large company sends an engineer to your door it will literally cost them at least £30 to do so and probably more.
An engineer can only do 7 – 10 jobs a day realistically, and that’s often a big push, so all the daily costs of having an engineer out on the road have to be shared between a few people, which is why it’s expensive to have engineers come to our homes.
The engineer spent less than 10 minutes in the house!
7-10 jobs a day like mine? I think not!
Hi Inspector: If they only did 7 to 10 jobs a day like yours I guarantee they would go bust. 10 mins, half an hour or an hour, it still costs them at least £30 and maybe even £40 to send him. Don’t forget also the time he spent driving to your house which could potentially be anything from 5mins to half an hour and he will spend time on paperwork both before setting off and when he’s finished his day.
It represents poor value for money to us the consumer when an engineer charges £50 to spend 10 mins in our house only to tell us we need to buy a new one. I wouldn’t argue with that, but it’s not a rip off.
The costs of sending an engineer to our homes is already close to being simply not viable any more. I believe the repair business will eventually collapse (and possibly end up doing insured appliances only), in the same way that no one repairs irons and kettles any more because it costs too much for an engineer to repair them – even when you take them to their shop. Very few people will come to your house any more to repair a vacuum cleaner for the same reason, it costs so much to send one that it’s not worth repairing them in the customers’ house any more.
It’s only a matter of time before it’s not possible for anyone to make money sending engineers to repair the average white goods appliance unless they become a lot more expensive to buy.
I am still waiting for repair care to fix my oven after 6 months!
The first engineer broke the oven with the repair, the second one confirmed the damage – and guess what?? The first repair man came out again, fixing this damage and then claiming it was not him. The result was the second repair was not fixed (due to incompetent repair) and am now waiting for 3rd repair. THIS ORGANISATION HAS NO CONCEPT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE!! DO NOT USE!! I am now seeking legal support to redress the damage that has been caused.
Repair care do not understand the basics of the consumer goods act and will try and offload any issues to the contractors they employ – - please never use – they are dreadful and never make any effort to resolve issues!! I have never dealt with such poor service before and am threatening them with legal action – I would prefer not to however am being left with no choice.
Steph: As far as I’m aware, it is the company you contact who are responsible for anything that goes wrong. They can’t really respond to complaints by saying you have to sort it out with the engineer yourself. You paid Repaircare to fix your machine not the engineer or local repair firm so your contract is with Repaircare.
Here’s an example of a similar problem in another service industry, with someone complaining to Trading Standards about a builder who they hired to do some work. The builder used a sub contractor, and when things went wrong the builder fobbed of the customer saying it was the carpenter who was responsible. Trading Standards replied saying, “Your contract was with the builder and he is responsible for any work carried out by subcontractors used by him.” –
Trading Standards: Subcontractors
If you pay a company to do something and they in turn sub-contract someone else to carry out the work, and they cock it up – of course it’s the person who cocked it up that’s at fault. But it’s the company we hired and paid who should be responsible for making sure everything is sorted to our satisfaction. It’s unacceptable for us to be told to sort it out with their contractor ourselves.
As usual we don’t necessarily have all the facts though and only one side of the story. No offence meant to you Steph, I’m generalising about this issue which has cropped up before. Maybe Repaircare are being told conflicting things by the customer and the engineer in these cases and feel stuck in the middle, but that’s one of the downsides to using sub-contractors. If an engineer is saying one thing and a customer something very different I suppose it’s a tricky situation for them, but I don’t think the answer is to tell the customer to argue it out with the engineer themselves.
If a customer says an engineer has damaged something but the engineer denies it (which I suspect may be what’s happening in some of these cases) Repaircare have got to sort it out somehow because it’s not a dispute between the customer and the engineer, it’s a dispute between the customer and Repaircare about their engineer.
My repaircare customer experience was initially positive. I called them up, they quoted a reasonable fixed price to fix my steam generator iron, and gave me a slot the very next day. The technician arrived at the designated time. At this point it all went downhill.
The technician’s behaviour made my wife very uncomfortable. He was unkempt and rude. However he undertook the repair and demonstrated it to my wife and it appeared to be working. However when I tested it the very same day when I got home from work, it didn’t work.
I called a total of 6 times over a three week period in an attempt to get someone out to complete the repair. Unlike the first time when they were able to book me a slot immediately, for a recall it seems that they had to contact the subcontract outfit that actually completed the repair. Each time I called they promised to call me back immediately with a new date. Each time they failed.
Eventually I lost my patience and demanded a refund, which they eventually agreed to. I was told it would be credited to my card with 3 days. A month later I still haven’t seen it. I called them today and they said that my refund request had been refused by their Customer Services team! I asked to speak to the person who declined my refund and was told that the Customer Services team do not take calls from Customers! Priceless.
So I will be pursuing this through the Small Claims Court. It isn’t a huge amount of money, but cowboy outfits like this can’t be allowed to get away with such appalling levels of service.
Needless to say, give these clowns a very wide berth!
Hello! I just want to thank the moderator and the contributors to this thread for posting their experiences of this company. My oven broke last week and repaircare was recommended by the manufacturer’s customer helpline. They stated the fixed fee advantage that this company offered bit I have had my fingers burned before with large wonder-companies who make these unfeasible claims -last year my boiler broke and Home Assist who have a 2 hour callout promise (ie that they will attend in the next two hours) took 14 hours to fulfill this two hour promise it was only after googling them that i realised that this was a common complaint. So after kenwoods recommendation of repair care, i googled them and found this forum, read all ALL of these posts in order to appreciate both sides of the argument and it seemed to me that the problems faced by repair care are similar to those faced by home assist -that they draw you in with unattainable promises and used local contractors to do the work, so are able to shift the blame onto them when they fail to fulfill their promises. This forum has been invaluable in helping me make my decision, so I thank all of you, and commiserate for your troubles. Instead of using repair care, i used repairaid, who are based in the M25 and employ their own staff -no subcontractors. They agreed with price with me over the phone before hand, gave me a 2 hour slot to attend, they turned up on time, did the job, tidied up after themsleves and all for £29.99 plus VAT to diagnose and £29.99 plus VAt plus part to fix it.
If you are in the M25, consider using these people because i could not recommend them highly enough. and that is something that I rarely do.
i have found both Repaircare and their nominated agent wash-vac of South Ruislip to be wholly hopeless when it came to repairing my Caple oven.
Repaircare took my credit card efficiently enough but so far i have had absolutly no service in spite of waiting in for two days for them to call.
the first time I was told a repairman from Washvac would call to see what parts were needed and estimate the job. No-one came,no-one called and when I finally got through I was told that they could order without seeing it – but that no-one had got round to letting me know.
Then they booked in to come and do the repair today. I called them yesterday to confirm and was told it was definitely happening. Nothing did…no message no call. No-one in the washvac office untill 1100. No-one at repaircare whop gave a toss – and their system was down too.
When I finally got through no apology…just a “oh the parts haven’t come in yet You can book again if you like”
These people are a shower and I would never do business with them again.
I booked in and for my dishwasher to be fixed in April. The motor needed changing and then the dial was sticking. The dial was changed but the engineer broke an internal part when installing the new dial. Two months later after repeatedly chasing them and getting very little feedback, repair care have now stated that the part which the engineer broke is obsolete and the machine can no longer be fixed. They stated that they will refund my money and charge me a £40 call out fee.
What!!
Charging me £40 to come out and break a once repairable dishwasher so that it is now un-repairable is disgraceful.
I’m now trying to take this up with a senior manager but as yet am not getting much response.
Sara: Your experience of expecting an engineer, only to find someone had decided they didn’t need to call out but not actually informing you is unfortunately the 3rd or 4th time it’s cropped up here. It’s a problem they clearly need to sort out once and for all.
John: No offence meant but I do find it hard to believe any company would damage a customers’ machine and presumably leave it unusable, then try to charge them for coming out, leaving them with a damaged part that is no longer available. If so it would be pretty unacceptable. Is the part in question an essential part? Is the dishwasher working? Have they fitted the motor but only charged you for the call out (instead of the £100 or so they would have) as compensation? More details needed to get a proper idea of the situation please.
No offence taken, I would never have believed that this company would have behaved in this manner either so I’m not surprised that you’re finding it hard to believe.
The part which the engineer broke is essential as the dial simply pulls out of the machine very easily and the spins around rather than allowing you to set a cleaning cycle, we therefore cannot use the dishwasher. The motor was replaced on the first engineer visit but the machine would not work correctly upon the first use as the dial would stick. They then diagnosed that this needed replacing, at which point on attempting to change the dial they broke the other internal part.
They stated that they would charge a £40 callout and refund the remainder as they cannot fix the machine. I have however insisted that this is unacceptable as the machine was repairable on their first visit and is now beyond repair due to their actions.
I am still waiting for the manager to call me back (which they have been promising for 3 days now). I have chased several times today but the manager is never available to speak to but will ring me back shortly.
Thanks for updating John. Have you tried emailing escalations@repaircare.net which is supposed to deal with problems like yours that have escalated?
I would imagine the dilemma is whether the engineer was negligent when he broke the dial or not, and that’s possibly tricky to sort out. Has the engineer conceded he is responsible for breaking it or has he said it’s just one of those things and it just broke when he tried to remove it?
Thanks I will try that as well. I’ve already sent a complaint message through their ‘contact us’ webpage but as yet have had no reply. Verbally they have accepted that the engineer did break the part but are trying to excuse this by have saying that the part is very easy to break. I’ve still not been able to speak to a manager or engineer to confirm their actual stance, but the reponses I’m getting so far from the call agents do not come across as taking full reponsibility and taking action to compensate.
John, if you are lucky enough to have the name of the manager, start writting. Write to them personally, explain the problem and the response you have had at lower levels, why you are unhappy with that response and what you expect from Repair Care now.
I am trying myself to get a name further up the tree and one name I found is Mark Depper, Director of Connect Distribution Services Ltd, so I am going to try and email him at m.depper(at)connect-distribution.co.uk
I have escalated via the email link that you gave me as I have spoken to both the engineers and the customer agents today – both are refusing to accept responsibility and state that I must take it up with the other party. Verbally the engineer accepted that the part was broken by the engineer but not deliberately, however when speaking to the customer agent the story has changed and now the part must already have been broken and therefore not their fault. I’ve paid my money to repair care and I expect them to resolve this.
John: It’s a difficult situation, it’s quite possible for something to break while trying to remove it without an engineer being negligent. If it’s known that a particular part is vulnerable though it makes sense to warn the customer before (if possible).
I always used to advise customers that I couldn’t guarantee the outcome of certain things and they always understood. Most of the time everything was fine but if something broke I’d covered myself. If I didn’t warn a customer and something broke I would have to just accept I was going to be held responsible even if technically I wasn’t. It’s similar to if you borrowed something from a friend and it broke down while you had it even though it would have broken for them if they were using it. An awkward situation.
In the situation you describe, I would have thought the damage done to a companies reputation by not compensating would be more expensive than the cost of compensating fully. In fact if an attitude of we are sorry it happened, it was one of those things, we weren’t negligent but we will put things right out of goodwill could do a lot of good for a companies reputation.
Cyanna: Yes sometimes you have to try and go higher up the command chain but if you go too soon it’s likely to just get passed back down the line. The escalations@repaircare.net should be tried first as it’s specifically set up for these situations as the last line of recourse for escalated issues.
I completely agree. Had the engineer said that by replacing the item it could possibly break something else, then it’s up to me to allow them to proceed with me taking the risk. This however didn’t happen and although I’m sure it was accidental they did break the other component and gave no warning therefore they are taking the risk. The fact no warning was made makes you believe that the part is not known as being fragile. Lets hope common sense prevails and that they do consider their reputation to be more important than, what would be for them a small amount of money in compensation and refund.
Cyanna,
Thanks – If my latest escalation is a dead end Mr Depper will be receiving a letter from me also.
The ‘manager’ which I have been waiting to speak to ended up being the first engineer that came out to fix my machine and although understood my situation stated that it’s nothing to do with him as they are simply subcontracted jobs. The last few days of waiting and chasing have therefore been wasted. I have surprisingly had my escalation email picked up very quickly (not automated) and will wait to see what response I get now.
John: I’m pretty sure if anyone sub contracts out work to a third party they are totally liable for the third party’s actions. I’ve no idea why Repaircare constantly say they have no responsibility for the engineer they send out and that Repaircare’s customers have to fight out disputes themselves.
It sounds as if there are people at Repaircare that genuinely believe it’s nothing to do with them if there’s a dispute between their customer and the engineer they sent out.
If Repaircare would like to show that they are genuinely not responsible in these circumstances and can legitimately tell their customers they need to argue it out with the engineer I’ll be happy to stop advising that they are responsible. If by any chance it was the case though it’s a strong disincentive for booking repairs through a third party company.
I had a repair carried out on our tumbledrier by Repaircare in December 2009 – the job was carried out by RDA (Bellshill) as sub-contractor.
The repair did not solve the problem so we contacted Repaircare who arranged another visit from the same engineer. The said engineer came and told us that the fluff still appearing in the tumbledrier drum would eventually disappear and refused to even look at the appliance.
As the problem continued we called in another company, who quickly discovered that RDA had not fitted the machine back together correctly with the result that the seal was loose causing the fluff to escape.At a further cost of £120 the problem was solved and has worked well ever since.
I made numerous calls to Repaircare and was given the name of John Biddle as our contact.I did speak with Mr Biddle |(who was at the time having his car fixed at a garage), who promised to call me – I am still waiting! i have ‘phoned again and left messages, and,surprise,surprise no call from Mr Biddle.
I regret using Repaircare and would advise anyone NOT to use them.
John & Cyanna if you email escalations@repaircare.net and mark the missive for my attention Richard Lawson I will look into your complaints.
Ernie, I have asked John Biddle for an explanation and will email you separately.
Thank you.
I had trouble with this outfit. Sorted after going down the legal route.
Ernie. Can I suggest you contact DASA the Domestic Appliance Service Association. According to their website, RDA are members, and so it seems are Repaircare.
Might be an idea if DASA took this up, as the trade is being damaged by 2 members of the very association that is supposed to protect everyone. DASA according to thier website has a repairers code of practice, and if both parties are members, perhaps DASA needs to discipline them. http://www.dasa.org.uk/
After emailing escalations@repaircare.net my case was investigated and finally passed to Richard Lawson who phoned me tonight. I received a sincere full apology along with an offer of a full refund and compensation towards purchasing a replacement dishwasher. I have accepted this offer to resolve the matter.
The majority of my experience with repaircare was not great but credit to them in the end for resolving the matter in the way any professional outfit should.
Thank you for the feedback and advice from this website and
good luck to all others who are trying to also resolve issues.
Many thanks for your update John. It’s clearly the place to try first if you have any unresolved complaints and this shows it can work. Until an unresolved complaint’s been taken to the escalations department no one can really say they’ve exhausted all avenues and need to complain elsewhere. It’s a shame anyone should have to complain to escalations in the first place, but it’s nice to see a resolved issue.
I used Repaircare after both right hand side hobs on my 6 year old De Dietrich induction cooker failed in April 2010. The all in charge was £165 and I went into it eyes open and more than half expecting that I would be told that it was ‘uneconomical to repair’ and be left to pay the £45 call out fee. After a first visit by a service guy and his apprentice, I was told that two circuit boards would need to be ordered. By then I was pretty certain that I would be shopping for a new hob before long. To my complete surprise, I had a call within ten days to book a follow up appointment and the circuit boards were fitted. The hob is now back to normal and I am embarrassed at how cynical I had been. A thumbs up for Repaircare from me.
This company is quite possibily the worst I have dealt with, behind BT!
My fridge section of my fridge/freezer stoped working end of MAY 2010 it is now the begginning of SEPTEMBER 2010 and it is still not working.
The initial booking had the ‘trianed’ electirition say the freezer just needd to be defrosted, for my £108 fee I felt a bit ripped off so kindly they re-paid to excess so it cost me £40 call out. But a few days after de-frosting my freezer the same fualt occured. I phoned to re-book and was told it would cost me £108! Ummm just payed that..so after a maon they refunded the last lot and took the whole lot out of my bank again….
The engineer arrived 2 weeks later, fitted a part the next day the fridge was not working again, booked in a re-book. On the day the engineer turned up with a wrong part! So had to re-order another one which took a further 2 weeks before I had to phone to find out if it had turned up to be told the engineer had been on holiday. One week later the engineer turned up again at 4.30 in the afternoon after being told they would be here between 9-12 i the morning, fitted a part, 2 days later..broken fridge. Bearing in mind I have a five year old who wants her cereal each morning with no way of keeping milk safe and cold. E-mailed repair care to complain and was told I am lucky as thay will offer me the call-out charge refunded as compensation. But not until the fridge is fixed. Booked in another re-book, for today between 9-12. 10 days after the re-book e-mail. Phone call this morning after booked yet another day off work to say they are’nt coming out, after a confirmation text recieved yesterday saying they were. According to the appliance engineer comapny re-apir care should have told me! SO 3 months later I have yet to have aworking fridge and 4 days off work, numerous phonecalls.
RPPJT,
I am very sorry to read that you have been disappointed by our service. If you could send your Name, Job Reference Number and Postcode to our email address escalations@repaircare.co.uk, we will do our best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Mark at Repaircare
I am utterly disappointed with the service I’ve received from repaircare. I called and paid £139 for my Smeg Range cooker to be repaired. The clock would cut out whenever the oven was used, resulting in no roasts.
An engineer arrived in good time. I was told there was a problem with the ‘clock’, which he later replaced. The oven promptly cut out on the next use. Another call to repaircare resulted in our engineer returning. He concluded that his earlier diagnosis was incorrect and that the problem was ‘the cut off’– some kind of safety feature. This he later replaced. The oven again cut out. The next visit, by the same engineer, he concluded it was the thermostat that was the problem. As you can probably guess, by now my faith in this guys ability was far from solid. Anyway, he hadn’t the part he’ll have to order it. Off he goes.
Weeks go by. Nothing. I call to find out what is happening. I am told someone will be with me in a few days. A few days later, another engineer arrives. The other one had left the company. A change of career. I’m hoping it’s not medicine.
Anyhoo, this new chap concludes the problem is the fan. It needs replacing. He left telling me he would put in an order for a new one. He arrives with the new fan, a week later. It’s the wrong one. Off he goes again. Then nothing.
Several weeks later I check what is happening on the repaircare website. I am stunned to discover my repair is logged as complete. I email to complain that the job is far from complete. The oven is not functioning at all! I receive a reply in which I am told, the part (fan) is no longer available and as the cooker functioned– just not on all settings this was deemed a complete and logged as such. I replied that this is incorrect. I am not happy with this state of affairs and have an oven that does not work– possibly because of the thermostat, who knows, he might’ve been right..
I had received no notification that the job had been abandoned (let’s face it, that’s what happened). On top of that, I am stuck with an oven that does not work. An oven I paid repaircare to fix.
I was told that they would send an engineer but there was little point as the part is not available. I replied that, yes, I would like them to send an engineer. Since then I’ve heard nothing. In fact, Ms Goulding at repaircare has chosen to ignore my emails– very professional…NOT.
This has all been extremely badly managed. The engineers don’t seem to know what they’re talking about and the client services representatives seem completely unconcerned with their clients.
I am referring this to DASA and seeking advice as to my next course of action. There is something decidedly unsavoury about this whole thing and I feel as though I’ve been taken for a ride…
My recommendation is to avoid repaircare at all costs.
Not happy. Not happy at all.
DASA I suggest is perhaps a good route to take. I picked up some time ago that Repaircare is a member of DASA, so they ought to show an interest. If not then you can assume DASA are either just as bad, or in bed with them.
I wonder if the repairer/engineer is a member as well?
Thanks Dan, that’s a good point. I’ll check.
Ken,
I am really sorry to read that you have been disappointed by our service. If you could send your Name, Job Reference Number and Postcode to our email address escalations@repaircare.co.uk, we will do our best to resolve the issues mentioned in your above post as quickly as possible.
I would like to offer our sincere apologies for the inconvenience and distress.
Mark at Repaircare
Ken: I wrote an article, which explains why I think there are so many cases such as yours (not just with Repaircare) – Why are there so many appliance repair horror stories?
It’s a long read, and not intended to excuse anything, it’s just once you know it’s less of a surprise I suppose. In the old days, when engineers specialised and repaired substantially fewer products they could suspect a part and replace it from stock in their van. If it didn’t cure the fault (and it’s perfectly normal for an engineer to not always know for certain which part needs replacing – or to guess wrong) they could replace the original part and fit something else until they found the cure. The appliance could still be fixed in one visit. These days, engineers have to order so many parts because they have to fix a ridiculous variety of products and so if they get it wrong the job is cocked up. The customer may have waited over 2 weeks to arrive at the point where a part is fitted and proved to not cure the fault – then the whole thing starts up again waiting for another part.
If that doesn’t cure the fault the whole job’s a complete disaster. It may not help, but not only has the customer lost out, the repair company has also lost out big style too racking up losses than will not be made up even when (or if) the repair gets completed.
I really don’t know how anyone makes money out of repairs these days. That said, the customer can’t be just left with an abandoned repair and if they paid a fixed price for a repair and didn’t get a repair they are not going to be happy at all.
WORST SERVICE EVER!!! DO NOT BOTHER!!! I expected at least something for my money!!! Still waiting on fridge to be fixed after over 2 1/2 months. We have been given the wrong parts, been promised parts and fitting dates and they never turn up, they lie about info, don’t keep up with their lies and tell you different things each time you phone. One guy repeated over and over ‘The part is on order’ in the most rude manner – we later found out he was lying. He part hadn’t event been ordered. They take your money, don’t fix the problem and then ignore you because all they want is money, they do not care about eh job in hand one bit. We have spent SO long trying to chase them and get an answer. Spoke to manager last week and got hung up on. Seriously don’t even consider calling them- you will get NOWHERE!!! In contact with Rogue Traders & Trading Standards now it has got that bad.
I used repaircare for an oven repair. They send an engineer in that was rude to staff working in my house twice, once in my presence and left in a strop leaving the appliance unusable. I spoke to his company first who hanged up on me and I made 3 complain calls plus to emails from repaircare who never got back to me. I have lost my money and have now found another company through a friend who only asks for money once the job is done and took 5 minutes to repair my oven.
Repaircare simply failed to take responsability for the companies they work with and what is even worse, did not even bother to answer to my complains. I have no energy to take it any further so I have payed twice for a service.
I thought the service was excellent. I was contacted by both phone and text to let me know when my engineer was arriving. When he arrived he provided me with great customer service, informing me all the way of what he was doing to repair my freezer. Very quick and professional service.
Alex,
I’m really sorry you feel let down by our service. If you could send your Name, Job Reference Number and Postcode to our email address escalations@repaircare.co.uk, we will do our best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Mark at Repaircare
My washing machine stopped working 1 Oct. I called RepairCare.co.uk 2 Oct. They arranged engineer to come out 6 Oct.
On 6 Oct, I took a day off to wait for them. Engineer showed up 6 Oct – so far so good. He said the drum was broken so needed to order the part and come back next Tues, 10 Oct.
10 Oct showed up, nobody came. I called up RepairCare.co.uk and was told that the part did not arrive. I took a day off but did not receive any phone calls at all that the item was not available or that the engineer was not going to come. Now I have to rebook another appointment and wait until 18 Oct before the parts arrive, if at all.
In the FAQ section of Repaircare.co.uk site, there is a section about the ordering of spare parts. This states that “parts will be sourced to the engineer within 3 working days (subject to availability)”. However, when I questioned this when I called, the phone operator said that “engineers take delivery of parts once a week”, so the claim on website is false advertising.
The website also implies you can track the status of your repair job. I looked at my old job number – C1446778 which was incorrectly closed and marked ‘completed’ even though the washing machine isn’t repaired. I have since been given a new job number for the new call out.
Both the misrepresentation of the time it takes to order spare parts AND the inability for repaircare to ‘track repairs’ constitutes misleading advertising: http://www.oft.gov.uk/about-the-oft/legal-powers/legal/misleading-advertisements/what-is-it
Stephen: Unfortunately you aren’t the first to complain about a job being closed off when the customer is still waiting for a part. The same applies to waiting in all day for an appointment but the engineer not turning up only to find out they’d cancelled the appointment – but not let you know.
Hopefully Repaircare will look into why this appears to keep happening although we have no idea how often and hopefully it’s just isolated cases.
Regarding false advertising it’s a bit of a stretch to call it that. The quote you used states “subject to availability” so they are referring to parts held in stock that should be made available to the engineer within 3 working days. If they have to order a part it will take longer. However if someone told you they get parts only once a week I can see where you are coming from. I don’t know what context that statement was meant in but if they did only supply their engineers with parts they hold in stock once a week instead of 3 working days that would contradict their statement.
Regarding tracking, your complaint isn’t that it’s false advertising because they do provide tracking, it’s more that the tracking isn’t always reliable which again is different to advertising something is available but finding it isn’t.
OK. I hate the thought of closing off this thread to further comments as it provides a genuinely useful consumer service. In fact for all we know it could have been instrumental in getting Repaircare to look more seriously at some of the complaints that were coming through in the early days.
But I’ve no wish to leave it open indefinitely to the current cycle of complaint followed by an apology from Repaircare pointing out the escalations@repaircare.net email address and promising to look into it if they send all their details and job number. This email address has been posted 15 times so far. No one needs a personal invitation to use this route so if you do have any serious complaints contact Repaircare using this email address first and comment if you’ve tried that and still feel you have a case.
I’ve no idea if anyone has done this, but few if any ever come back and report any conclusion to their case – either to their satisfaction or otherwise, which leaves this cycle of comments a bit one way.
I’m also uneasy about the one sided nature of things here where people can post their side of the story – with respect often angrily – but Repaircare never post theirs. I would imagine they might like to at times but all companies are likely to be wary of being drawn into public slanging matches. As balanced observers we should all know there is sometimes another side to complaints which we never get to see.
So for example when I read something like “when I complained they hung up on me” I think that sounds really bad – but unless we know all the circumstances we can’t judge if that was an outrageous response to a justified complaint, or a reasonable response to threats or abuse etc by someone really angry.
When I read something like “they lied to me” I can’t know if that’s true or just that the customer mistakenly believes it to be true. We can’t know if it was a genuine mistake or a deliberate lie. Without full context and details we can’t make a fair judgement and if Repaircare aren’t going to come back and respond directly to some of the more serious accusations it’s all one sided.
I rarely moderate any comments but have had to once or twice because I felt they contained too much sweeping accusations and even a desire to try and do damage rather than a simple statement of facts laid out for others to form a judgement on.
So please don’t add further comments if all you want to do is shout and be angry or even be vindictive – even if you feel have good cause to be angry. Angry complaints always come across as angry. Powerful complaints are more measured and if people see a calm measured objective complaint it carries far more weight than an rant. Please at least wait until you feel you can state your case objectively.
From now on I will only allow reasonable comments, calmly written and sticking to the facts.
My comments were all truthful – addmited by repaircare themselves. I have had a full refund and compensation (to all those who have given up, don’t! I thank them for their service in the end despite all the problems) but I only got what I wanted after writing these truthful reviews and emailing the highest person possible. It’s sad that it took that to get their attention but I’m glad I did because once I pointed out the problem publically they took action – action they should have taken 2 1/2 months ago.
I understand you don’t want people shouting their mouthes off about ‘exaggerated truths’ but people are entitled to tell their experiences to make others aware before they make the same mistake, or give advice on how to resolve the current situation. There are always more negative reviews than positive naturally, people don’t feel the urge to tell everyone when something has gone as planned, when a service has panned out correctly – thats how it should be. It’s when things go wrong you need to make people, and the company aware.
Thanks for that Liz: I agree people need somewhere, which is why I said I feel closing the article to comments is something I’m reluctant to do. All I ask is that people exercise reasonable restraint and not come across as wanting to do as much damage as they can out of anger and frustration.
You say yourself that your complaints were eventually resolved and you got compensated. This doesn’t absolve Repaircare of the initial errors or mistakes but it at least shows that someone at Repaircare wants to sort out these issues as does their repeated recent apologies and offers to look into cases. I don’t understand why people rarely come back and at least say Repaircare did eventually sort it out because that’s also important information and very relevant. Thanks for doing so now.
It’s me again, the man with the broken Smeg cooker. I have been contacted by someone from repaircare after leaving my complaint on this blog. A very nice young lady took note of my grievances and assured me she would follow up. A few days later she got in touch to let me know that the part, I was previously told was no longer available until my own research revealed otherwise, was indeed available but would not be delivered to the engineer until the 15th Oct. This was two weeks ago. The part is due in tomorrow so I expect to be contacted shortly with a date for an engineer to come and fit it. I will let you know what happens.
i’ve just come across this site after going back to try and locate the Repaircare website …thru this forum i’ve seen they’re customer service email address and sent a message .My story is very similar to the incidents above… my household Neff oven suddenly stopped working the first indication being the fan assisted part did come on and on inspection inside the grill/oven heating element was buckled and twisted ?…a fixed price fee to check and rectify the device seemed excellent at the time and the date of the 5th of october was booked for the remedy to the faults .When the engineer came he told me what i already knew , that my oven was over 5 years old and it was german and he would need to source parts from somewhere abroad .Well that was 14 days ago…. since then i’ve made 2 phone calls to Repaircare and my wife has made 1 call leaving a message ;ohh and i’ve received a text message back on my phone on the 13th of october telling me my appliance parts will be obtained asap !!well thats grand…with no indication of a completion date it looks like a few more weeks of waiting will make it a month or so with an out of action cooker and grill and no foreseeable end to this stressful situation .The engineer that came out to complete the job as of this week is on holiday ? and there is no quick fix here… does anyone else wish they’d gone elsewhere ?
Hello Derek: This is one of those common problems that I can honestly say is not confined to Repaircare and you would probably have the same issue whichever repair comany you called.
Some brands are notoriously difficult to get spare parts for even for the trade. If a specific part isn’t in stock and has to be ordered it may well take quite a long time to get. These problems are explained in my article Why are there so many appliance repair horror stories?
All I can say is that Repaircare’s parent company are the largest spares supplier in the UK who supply spares to hundreds of the independent repair companies, and supply spare parts on behalf of big companies like Currys as well as run the entire spares web sites for many of the major manufacturers including Neff. Therefore no one is better positioned to get spare parts than Repaircare. Even if you went to the official Neff spares web site it is run by Repaircare’s parent company.
Having said that, how quickly any repair company actually orders the parts, and how well they keep you informed is definitely down to them.
Can I give an answer as one of the repair agents for Repaircare, who to date has had not one complaint on this contract.
Looking back I can see some of the major failings are communication between Repaircare, the customer and the service teams.
The customer books on-line and it comes into us in as pre-booked 2 working days.
Problem No1 Call may be logged of an evening, and we get it on our system next day when we open, and by then it is booked tomorrow. Too late, we are fully booked! We phone customer, who complains had already made arrangements for the day, and expects it as already paid for. Customer demands another service centre is given the call. We electronically reject the call advising the reason.
Problem No2 We may get a call in a remote area where we don’t call on a particular day. Still comes in as pre-booked as the Repaircare system is unaware of our prior commitments. As above, phone customer etc. Reject as before
Problem No3 We receive a call on a product we do not repair. We reject as unable to repair with explanation. As the two paragraphs above, we reject stating reason why.
Problem No4 Commercial premises. Get it all the time, we call in innocence, discover it is a hairdressers, care home or guest house, notify Repaircare, close as No Repair, stating in full the reason. Repaircare take the basic call-out money, but fail to update the client, who by the way should have read the item 7 of the T&C’s before booking.
In all cases, we see the jobs sat on the system as “Cancelled Pending” for several days. Invariably the customer phones to ask why we didn’t show, and we explain we returned the call as soon as received. Customer was not notified.
Assuming a successful visit, and some obscure parts are needed. If not easily identifiable on their system we need to submit an enquiry, usually for each separate item needed, and very often after loads of traffic, get nowhere. Or they advise not available, simply because they didn’t find it. Under those circumstances we close the job as No Repair, and state in full the reasons why. First time the customer becomes aware is when they either chase the repair, or see their C/Card statement
Another trend I see here is when makes that tend to run a “closed-shop” policy where they do not to give out information and part numbers easily. Cases in point are Whirlpool, Smeg and Stoves. If the part number is available, it is not always on the Repaircare system, needs to be created, priced then sourced. Can take up to a week, then we await the manufacturers delay.
The major weaknesses revolve around the situations as above. The job gets closed, as it is the decision of Repaircare Head office whether to proceed, and the customer is not updated by Repaircare.
I cannot speak regards the ones that seem to have had a poor engineer, and as usual we only hear of the majority of bad cases. In our defence, please don’t always blame the repair agent.
Derek,
I am sorry to read that you have been disappointed by our service. I believe a member of our customer services team has been in contact to arrange a suitable time to complete the repair, now that the parts have arrived from Germany. I would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused.
I wish I had read this blog before using them!
You book your repair, you get excited a text message arrives stating “your repair is booked for such a date” relief! The engineer arrives with a tool box my 5 year old once had huffs and puffs and then the dreaded statement “need to order a part” Dismay! How long you ask shrugs his shoulders and leaves. Now the tricky bit trying to get RepairCare to commit to a date for delivery of the part, nearly 21/2 weeks still no date for delivery and they have the cheek to send a text message stating “Repaircare regret a delay in obtaining your appliance parts. We will resolve this ASAP! I have contacted the escalations department 5 days ago, and received the” we will contact you within 24 hours”. Anybody reading this think long and hard about the hassle you will go through in obtaining the truth. PS they also have the cheek to take full payment for the repair but they wont commit to when it will happen! Good luck!
Hello Scott: Did you really mean 21 and a half weeks, or 2 and a half weeks?
2 1/2 sorry, They have called me this morning telling me they have had a delivery at their warehouse but they are unable to tell me if my part is in the shipment they will call on Tuesday to confirm! 3 days to look at a delivery note! I have demanded a full refund if the part is not in the shipment ,initially they refused but after getting very heated on the phone I was put through to the escalations team whom have agreed to give me a full refund if the part has not arrived. We will see!
Thanks Scot: As I’ve pointed out before though, waiting 2 or more weeks for a part is totally normal for many white goods parts, which is why I wrote my article Why are there so many appliance repair horror stories?
There are many, many millions of parts for all white goods, and no one could possibly stock even half of them. If a part is required and the largest holder of spare parts in the UK (ie. Repaircare’s parent company Connect Distribution) don’t have it then it has to be ordered directly from the manufacturer in other countries and it will take time. The engineer won’t necessarily know if the part will need ordering from the manufacturer or be available from Repaircare within a few days.
Some makes in particular are nightmares to get spare parts for and nightmares to even get the right part, some such companies were mentioned a few comments back “Whirlpool, Smeg and Stoves” but there are others. However, that being the case a repair company ought to just stop repairing that manufacturer’s products because it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
But basically I wouldn’t think a repair company having to order a spare part and it taking a few weeks to get it is anything other than totally normal throughout the white goods repair industry. It might be rubbish service from the customers point of view, but for the reasons I outline in Why are there so many appliance repair horror stories? it’s just how it is. The problem is most customer’s don’t realise that’s what happens when repairers try to repair almost everything.
The only chance of getting a slightly better likelihood of more parts being available to engineers, or at least being quicker to get hold of the ones not in stock are if you use the actual manufacturer’s repairmen or agents.
I think you misunderstand my moaning! The fact that parts are as you say difficult to come by does not excuse Repaircare for very poor customer service, I have been given 5 different sets of information when I have contacted them over 3 weeks whilst waiting for a confirmed date for repair. What makes this more difficult to understand is that these days we live in a age where gaining information and contacting individuals is instant am I to believe that when the order for my Bosch motor was placed Repaircare would not have been advised if the item was in stock or there was a 2 week wait. All I ask is that we are kept informed with precise information not and,if,but,maybe. Are you saying 4-6 weeks to repair a washing machine is acceptable?
Hello Scott: I got the impression your main complaint was how long it was taking to get the part and the fact that they couldn’t tell you when it was going to arrive. I’m saying that’s not necessarily their fault. It sounds like they are trying to give good service sending a text message apologising for the delay but you thought that was a cheek.
I’ve said many times before that how well a company keeps us informed is down to them so yes, if they have a bad system in place they are fair game for criticism. The problem is they won’t know when the parts are coming into stock if they order them from the manufacturer, so each time a customer rings there’s nothing much to say other than whether the part has arrived or not.
I’m just saying 4 – 6 weeks to repair a washing machine or any other white goods appliance is how long it can take, and how long it does take for many customers if a part is out of stock although a couple of weeks is much more usual. It’s not acceptable, but it’s how it is, and how it will always be because of the ridiculous amount of different brands and types of appliance companies have to try to repair these days.
Hardly anyone specialises any more so this is the status quo. If your appliance needs a part ordering and the part isn’t quickly available then that’s very bad – not just for the customer but for the people trying to fix it too. I’m saying most people have no idea of the difficulties in trying to repair so many makes, which is why I tried to explain them in the article I linked to.
If they can’t fix it first time they are almost certain to lose money on the job. They can’t carry any where near enough parts to cover all repairs, and the best of repair companies repairing most brands and most appliances only achieve between 70 and 80% first time fix, which means almost every engineer out on the road will have to order parts for some of his customers virtually every day. In my opinion the only reason the entire repair system still limps on is because roughly 70% of repairs can be repaired in one visit. If yours isn’t one of them there’s a chance it could get messy and this is how it is for most repair companies these days. I’m just calling it as I see it.
on October the 19th i left a comment on this site. Since leaving that saga of my experience things have change but sorry to say due to mis-communication between repaircare the engineer and the lawrence household a return visit has only resolved half of the oven …to the engineers credit the oven is now working but one of the grill/oven element ceased to function 1 day AFTER his initial inspection …on inspection the element is buckled and is blackened with use .On checking with the engineers office to see what would be rectified i told them of the element sparking and disintergrating …the lady there assured me that was on a list of parts ordered …she was wrong the element she was discussing with me was the fan oven element…on talking to the engineer and Repaircare today this is a second £124 pounds and a third visit to make my Neff oven 100% useable in 21 + days …so there you have it a comedy of errors leaving us scratching our heads as to who has’nt given the information to whom and who should repair what at who’s cost …do you want to have the same outcome ? decide for yourself !!
Thought I would come on here to say I contacted repaircare on Tuesday, and booked an appointment for today (Friday) for someone to fix my fan oven. Paid the fixed price of £113, someone came & did the job (replacing the element) in 10 minutes.
No problems at all; very good service if you want to know exactly what the repair is going to cost.
Not happy at all with Repaircare and won’t be using them again.
When I originally called the company I told them my dishwasher didn’t work and the door didn’t shut. They gave me a fixed price quote for £118 to fix it.
So I booked an appointment. The company cancelled it as the engineer was sick. Second appointment they didn’t turn up. Third appointment they didn’t have the parts. Forth appointment they finally fixed the door so it closes.
However, the dishwasher still doesn’t work.
Apparently the fault I originally reported was that the door didn’t close so the fact the dishwasher doesn’t work is a “different fault”. I asked how they knew that the work done to fix the door wasn’t the reason the machine wasn’t working. They said they would send someone out but if it was a different fault they would charge me for the call out.
Not at all what I would expect. And to mention “contracts” during that discussion shows the company puts it’s concerns above those of happy customers.
I mean… did they think I want a dishwasher door that closes so I can use it for storage? Wouldn’t any decent engineer test that the machine worked before they left the premises and if they didn’t wouldn’t they feel obliged to come back and test it with no obligation?
Hello James: Engineers can be sick at any company so that’s not a fair criticism, but not turning up a second time is. (This seems to be a repeated occasional problem with repaircare’s system booking in jobs).
The engineer not having the correct part is also pretty normal as I’ve discussed many times. The tens of thousands of different appliances and milllions of different parts mean any company attempting to fix most makes and most types of appliance will often need to order a part.
If the door won’t shut on a dishwasher it wont work because when it closes it needs to operate the door micro switch. As an engineer I can’t imagine fixing any fault and not checking the appliance runs OK afterwards. That would just be plain pointless and asking for trouble.
Based on our experience I would not use this company. We booked an appiontment, part was required which was no surprise or problem. We’ve chased repaircare who have been nice to deal with but they can not contact their contractor to come and finish the repair althought they have had the part for a week.
So we’ve given up and decide to replace the fridge which is what I wish we had don in the the first place. I have no problem with the delay caused by having to order a part, but the problem seems to be with the attitude of the contractors that they use.
Hello Aled: You put your finger on one of the weaknesses in this business model, which is that the relationship between the work provider and the people carrying out the work is not as dictatorial as it would be if you had them in an exclusive franchise, or employed them directly.
Independent repairers are proud and work very hard, and of course can vary in quality considerably at times but the main thing is they work for themselves – and run their own business as well as supplementing it by doing work for Repaircare and/or other work providers. This presumably sometimes throws up conflicts of interests if the independent has a lot of work on from his “own” customers or if the agent feels he’s being treated unfairly or asked to do too much for the amount of money he receives for his services.
It is when calls are refused or rejected by the repair agents is when the main issue comes to light. They are returned electronically, and can stay in abeyance until Repaircare find an alternative agent who is prepared to carry out the work.
All us repairers have our own loyal customers, who pay us our normal rate, and those customers tend to get priority. The Repaircare contract is a “Schedule Filler”. Pays us less money, very often makes we are unfamiliar with which gives us a supply issue re spares. Sometimes you read the nature of the fault, and know you may be faced with an issue.
We have had, Machines in Residential Homes, Pubs & Hotels. Appliances where someone else had tinkered and put more faults on. Instances where we are given a basic problem, arrive and find a catalogue of unreported faults.
We had a Whirlpool Commercial dryer at some stables, and when we spoke to our friendly Whirlpool eng for advice, he told us he wrote it off the week before. We have met other machines where parts are missing.
Machines that are obsolete, or 12 years old. Machines out in the back garden, and we are expected to drag it in to investigate.
If the repairer is busy he cannot oblige a pre-booked appointment in less than 2 working days. Very often in the lead-up to Christmas we can have a week service delay. Yet in the Summer, keep tripping over under-utilised engineers.
We find as a repair company, the contract is not the best by any means, and therefore not looked upon as a valued part of the business. Regretfully the customer can end up as a “second class” consumer.
Thanks to a poor relationship some repairers have with Repaircare, the poor old customer gets forgotten at times, and can become part of a dispute which is not their fault.
This article is now closed to new comments. Here’s why, and a summary of previous comments -
The article was written in June 2009 shortly after Repaircare launched to the public and early comments referred to initial problems long since fixed. For example, some people posted complaints that Repaircare advertised fixed prices but had a clause in their terms & conditions allowing for them to charge extra to cover particularly expensive parts, or appliances needing a lot of parts. After some months they abandoned the clause and as far as I know no one is asked for extra money any more so this issue is resolved.
The comments have slowly filled up since then with some positive feedback but lots of negative comments. However, as most people are unlikely to read all 173 comments (some, especially mine, of which are pretty long) it’s easy for newcomers to assume hundreds of people have complained but 55 of the comments are my replies, and many people have multiple comments on one issue, plus dozens of comments are from Repaircare apologising and offering to sort out issues. So although it now looks like there are hundreds of complaints the true number is considerably less.
Having said that there have been complaints, and a few issues have been recurring, the worst of which was when several customers had complaints, but were told to sort it out between themselves and Repaircare’s agent, which was incorrect as the contract was between the customer and Repaircare.
Many of my comments have sympathised and agreed with complaints but I’ve also pointed out when I felt many might have been a little unfair, or were not issues confined to Repaircare and so were (sadly) typical complaints applicable to hundreds of repair companies each day due to the nature of the repairs industry.
Unfortunately, problems such as as engineers breaking appointments or misdiagnosing faults, parts ordered that don’t fix the fault, and delays in obtaining a part are all very common issues within the appliance repair industry and likely to be encountered using any large repair company, which is why I wrote Why are there so many repair horror stories? to try and explain the reasons behind such problems. The article isn’t meant to excuse issues, only look at the realities of the way things are.
Complaints have reduced to a slow trickle but as all large companies inevitably have a small percentage of dissatisfied customers it seems unfair that this article be left available to slowly fill with all Repaircare’s negative feedback indefinitely.
If you have an unresolved issue you can send all your details including job number to escalations@repaircare.net
If you have any comment you would like to get to me please use my contact me form