Where am I?

Where am I and how far will I travel?

I get a significant number of enquiries asking me where I am and how far I will travel to fix or service a boiler. 

I live in a small village just west of Hungerford, Berkshire, and I’ll drive anywhere to fix a boiler. As you can imagine though, the cost will be dependent to a large degre on the the distance. Or more accurately, the time I spend driving to you and back again. Quite often the majority of the cost of a long distance fix comprises the travelling time rather than time spent on site actually carrying out the repair.

There is a further aspect to consider with long distance repairs. With local repairs (less then 90 minutes travel time each way) I am happy to give a comprehensive parts and labour guarantee on my work, i.e. any problem with my repair and I’ll visit and fix it for no further charge. I get very few warranty calls but those I do, the fault usually turns out to be component failure. With repairs where the travelling time was more than 90 minutes each way it is not practical to return to site for no charge to discover component failure. Consequently I have to decide whether to decline such repairs in the first place, or to continue to offer them with a limited guarantee. With repairs taking more thsn 90 minutes each way I still offer them but with a guarantee limited to ‘parts only’. Any request to return to assess a suspected repair failure will have to be on a ‘labour chargeable’ basis. Faulty components will still be replaced under guarantee but the return visit to check and find out will be on a labour-chargeable basis. Alternatively if you use a local installer to remove a suspected faulty part I can replace it by post. 

I’m also happy to travel to service a boiler a long way away, but as above I need to charge for all the time the trip takes. This makes less sense as a long distance visit can cost many hundreds of pounds. Fine if it saves you from having to spend thousands on a new boiler but spending several hundred pounds on a maintenance service visit makes less sense, but this is your call.

So in summary, I’m happy to travel anywhere to fix a boiler and trips up to 90 minutes each way have a full ‘labour and parts’ guarantee. Trips to places more than 90 minutes away however will have a ‘parts only’ guarantee where any call-back will have to be on a ‘labour chargeable’ basis. 

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