Repaircare are a National appliance repair company offering fixed price repairs. This review was written only several months after they began trading. Things may, or may not, be different now.
Their fixed price appliance repairs include call out, parts, labour and VAT. 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. Their website is easy to use and features 3 simple steps to get a quote. It’s incredibly simple and well designed.
How do they do fixed repairs? 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. They covered themselves against the more expensive repairs with a clause in their terms and conditions allowing them to charge extra.
They did claim that most repairs should be covered by the amount advertised, but after a few months (of complaints) they were forced to change their terms and conditions to remove their right to charge extra for certain parts. Offering fixed price repairs is a big ask.
But Repaircare should have access to very cheap spare parts because of their massive buying power as part of the UK’s largest spares distributor 4Ourhouse. However, they don’t employ their own engineers.
They instead use a network of independent engineers, which appears to cause some problems at times where people have complained of poor customer service.
Complaints
Repaircare have been accused 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 Repaircare subcontracted to do the repair.
It sounds like Repaircare have been frustrated by different accounts from the engineer and customer and want them to sort it out between themselves. But if a customer can’t, then Repaircare must.
Forbes rent appliances and specialise in renting Bosch appliances so they know them inside out. They also rent other brands and many other products – more details at Forbes
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 a lot of complaints in the comments of this article (and elsewhere), which is disappointing.
They may have been struggling to cope with the work load at the early stages as they had promoted themselves very heavily. It’s also fair to say that appliance repairs tend to attract a lot of dissatisfied customers due to the length of time it can sometimes take to get them repaired.
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.
If you are the type of person who takes comfort in prices being fixed and inclusive, then fixed price repairs may be attractive for you. Sadly it’s become the main way large repair companies operate now.
You can end up paying a lot more than necessary if your appliance turns out not to need any parts, or only needs inexpensive parts, (most repairs).
You can save money if it needs an expensive part but if it’s quite expensive most repair companies just tell you it’s beyond economical repair. This can make it difficult to get a “win” on these schemes.
Make sure you read and understand the terms & conditions. It will probably state that if parts are “too” expensive they can say the appliance is not worth repairing, which may still cost you a fair amount of money.
Make sure you understand how much it will cost you in that scenario.
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 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 Consumer Rights Act 2015 (previously the Sale of Goods Act), any repair should last a reasonable time, as should any new parts fitted. 3 months (90 days) is nowhere near a reasonable time for almost any repair, especially if new parts are fitted. However, that’s all you get.
So 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.
I have to be honest and say that I personally would never use any repair company that only gave a 90 day guarantee, which I consider pretty disgraceful, and a very poor show of confidence in their own work – Is a 3 month guarantee on repairs reasonable?)
More appliance repairers
There are some appliance repair companies listed on site Book washing machine (or other appliance) repair page including companies offering a much more desirable 12 month guarantee on repairs.
Repairs
Fixed-price repairs, Pay monthly options, Repair & protect your whole appliance..
Save Money Now
Subscribe to Which? today and start saving money now. Subscription offers often available.
Spares
Spares4Appliances is a spares company run by repair engineers who understand all about spare parts for appliances.
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, though some of the manufacturers charges are much higher (eg. 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: 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.
I recently read 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.”
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.