UKH

BG Homecare keep repeatedly cancelling my scheduled boiler service. I've also been reading about how shabbility they've been treating their employees - forcing them to choose between re-applying for their jobs on worse contracts or being made redundant.

I have no confidence that BGH will ever be able to do me a service, or would help if I had a boiler fault. I also don't want to subsidise their abusive behaviour.

Can anyone recommend a reliable alternative?

Find a decent local gas engineer?  Take a bit of effort to work out who's good and who isn't, but recommendations help with this.  Once you have an ongoing relationship with someone who lives nearby then you're far more likely to get help if it blows up at 7am on a Sunday.

Completely agree.  I've always used local and never had a problem.

^ This.  If you say where you are someone on here might even be able to recommend somebody.

Your boiler manufacturer may have a their own technicians or a set of approved ones. It might cost more than a local option but be worthwhile if the boiler is under warranty.

I did that with Vaillant through their website. When there was a question mark over whether a part might be failing he just phoned base and got approval to replace it from the spare he had in the van. 

South Manchester

I can see this being wise. The last time I had an issue with a boiler people were just guessing (openly admitting that they didn't really know the problem) and in the end I took out an insurance policy  just to get it fixed because they would keep plugging new parts in at their expense until it reached something like 80% of the replacement cost. In the end the policy cost me ~£300 for the year and they installed about £450 worth of parts before the fault was sorted. Someone from the manufacturer would probably have known a bit more certainly what the problem was in the first place.

I've also been really pleased with my Vailant boiler service.  Not a service contract, just booked it on line.  Fixed price.

I would recommend mine but we are in SE London, might be too far for them.

But, yes local best but  be careful we almost got done by dodgy gas repair company.

With my Vaillant boiler the warranty says it must be serviced by an approved person.
Once the heating engineer who installed it, an approved installer, decided later there was not enough money to be made on the servicing side, I just went to Vaillant direct and never had a problem.

Costs another £25 per service, but the once I had to call them out when the boiler stopped with a fault, it was next day service by them. They knew which part to bring just having been told the fault number displayed. Their customer service centre been excellent too.

I’m coming to an end of the warranty, but I’m thinking to just stick with them.