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

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.

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.

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.

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.