I just had a horrible experience with OR’s gas safety check. The engineer arrived late to the property. He called me to say that there was some faults with the boiler and that he was unable to complete the Gas safety certificate. No problems had been reported by the tenant, the boiler was working. He said he could fix the issues on the spot and would be 270 pouns plus VAT. He caught me offward and was keen to get the certificate so I agreed. He kept calling me every 5 minutes to see if I had paid. I asked the tenant to let me know how long he was in the property. Within 20 minutes he had completed the boiler service, the gas safety certificate and the suppossed “repairs” for which he was charging me over 300 pounds. When I query what his rates were and what parts he had changed he said it was a fixed price repair and therefore it didn’t matter how long it took. As per the repair, this was in the report: gnition Cable Faulty and Gasket was Leaking along with pressure low… The ignition cable, assuming he replaced it, costs about 12pounds, the gasket leak it was a rubber band, and apparently he had to adjust the pressure and clean the condensate drain, which i’ve read is part of the service. Anyway a boiler service should take 45 minutes acording to most boiler manufactureres!!! This was a complete rip off. It happend before when I used Open Rent designated electrician to do the Electrical Certificate. Never again will I use OR’s additonal services. Better to get a local tradesman that you can trust, because you’ll call him every year, so won’t try to rip you off.
I wont use OR inspectors, when I reported one, OR did nothing.
landlords should always have a list of a good tradesman who they trust
Hi @Marcos,
Really sorry to hear about this.
Firstly, we’d recommend filling out the star rating feedback that you will have been emailed following the appointment. Where contractors receive negative feedback, this can impact the jobs that they are offered. This is a measure designed to reward good service and ensure all contractors are operating at a satisfactory level.
It goes without saying that there is no obligation to agree to have remedial work completed by our contractors, but we understand that it’s easy to feel backed into a corner at the prospect of having work completed immediately.
We’ll follow up with this contractor on the matter and we’re looking into how we can better monitor these instances.
Once again, we’re really sorry to hear that this has happened.
I dont understand why OR behaves so secretively. Once booked, OR should decide on which contractor they plan to use and should provide LL with links to the contractor’s ratings/reviews on checkatrade or mybuilder or google [or all three if available] and website as a matter of course, and allow LLs to cancel the booking and be refunded, if they are not satisfied with the proposed contractor’s reviews [or anything else eg if they dont have professional accreditation or insurance].
This would force OR to pay attention to contractors’ quality and feedback, and allow LLs to publicly review and give feedback on both good and poor contractors. If people have no idea of the quality or qualifications of a contractor and are relying on OR or an agent to find a good one, inevitably cowboys may take advantage. This then just leads to people distrusting OR to provide contracted services and finding them separately. It’s in OR’s interest to do everything possible to make sure LLs will be content with the contractors they use, as use of poor contractors doesnt just mean subsequent loss of business to OR for contracted work but also reputational damage.
thanks for considering
I have personally used British Gas HomeCare cover which includes a gas safety certificate (boiler only). They will charge extra (£40) for each additional gas operated equipment (e.g gas hob) which will need to be included in the safety certificate. Additionally you can include plumbing and electricals in the cover.
I also went for the 0 excess cover and would rate it 5* service. It is expensive but they do have discounted offers regularly. I had issues with my boiler, I could get immediate appointments and parts and labour was included. There are others that offer similar cover albeit with some sort of excess for each callout. I would recommend looking at trustpilot reviews and not be influenced by the price of the cover.
I have had a similar experience with an electrician ( Jack of Harrogate) who turned out to not be a registered electrician at all.
I called him in to check a faulty socket ( he was was recommended by a friend of a friend- turned out to be his girlfriend)as my usual electrician was away. He claimed he had found a vermin damaged wire in the roof space which he had had to replace and sent an immediate invoice for £650. He then hounded me for payment.
On inspection of the roofspace, nobody had entered the roofspace in a very long time, it was completely occluded by cobwebs. No wiring repair had been carried out. I have asked trading standards to investigate.
On checking the roofspace he had not
A good electrician would take a picture of the fault and the repair to show you. I was building a dormer roof once and saw a big hole in a chimney ,that could not be seen from the ground > Took a pic and of the repair, all about peace of mind for the customer
I also had a terrible experience with OR tradespeople the first (and then only) time i used them for the electrical safety cert. They failed it and said they couldn’t do the remedial work. He was there less than 5mins and still charged the amount.
I had to then pay an entirely new electrician the full price to do another safety check and the ‘repair’ which was a 5 min job.
Won’t ever use OR cowboys again, always use local trusted trade people with good reviews.
Always always use your own guys . They are out there
Good luck with trading standards, they are also useless.
I’ve said the it in these forums before several years ago and repeatedly since….trades booked through OR for both CP12+service and EICR have been
- late
- very poor communicators and rude
- not doing the full and correct job (gas)
- looking to squeeze you for extra unnecessary work (EICR)
OR did a survey on their tradesmen services a little while ago. I’m hoping they got a fair amount of actionable points and do something with them.
I had a similar shocking experience with a gas company via OpenRent. I got 2 different electricians to verify that they were pulling a fast one (the readings were within the amount but they were saying it failed the EICR). I complained, took a while but finally got a full refund. Don’t back down and escalate it to OpenRent.
Gas companies doing electrical work… there lies your problem 
Pah. Eagle eyes. Sorry meant electrics of course!
I had a similar experience 2 months ago. A functioning boiler had developed a massive CO leak after I’d left the technician alone with it. He estimated it would cost “over £200" to fix because the gasket/seal was difficult to access and would take time. He looked guilty as hell and returned sheepishly a week later, completed the job in half an hour and charged £285. I’ll use OR for fixed cost items like inventories (had a really professional one done last week) but nothing else.