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.
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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.
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Hi Carlo,
Please email me your job number to [email protected] 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.