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“30 Days to get service pipe fixed.”

written by kgeorge4 on 13/07/2017

We spotted a bad leak in our driveway; we contacted Homeserve to be told an engineer would attend in two weeks. We contacted the water authority to notify them of the leak; they sent one of their engineers out within 2 hours, although they would not do a repair as the leak was on private land.
The water authority engineer advised us not to use our boiler, because the pressure was so low it would not be safe, we were also advised to notify Homeserve of this information, we also let Homeserve know that as the leak was so bad we did not have enough pressure to operate our washing machine or electric shower, we got the same reply, it will be two weeks for an engineer.
My wife arranged a day off work for the appointment. The day before the appointment we rang Homeserve to confirm that an engineer would be calling, we were told he would be with us the following day between 08:30 & 18:00.
At 18:25 I enquired where the engineer was, I was told that he couldn’t make it today and a new appointment will be arranged in “another two weeks”. I explained that we had no hot water, no shower and no washing machine, we were told that the engineers were very busy and that two weeks was the earliest appointment, so that is a month without adequate water.
On the day of the repair, two engineers with a van each, arrived in good time found the leak, repaired it and reinstated the drive all in about two hours.
So, getting the engineer here was an absolute nightmare, but when they did arrive a very good job was done.
Our conscience would not allow us to leave the water run down the road 24/7, so we only had the water on for around one and a half hours a day, the cost of the loss of water had we left it on extrapolated over 30 days would have been around £3000
Although we were contacted by Homeserve’s Escalation Team and were compensated for the inconvenience, the amount of compensation would go nowhere near covering the cost of wasted water had we had to pay for it, therefore we have cancelled our direct debit.