Playbook, electrical contractor
The guarantee on the labour is not the guarantee on the box
When something an electrician installed stops working, the customer has one word for what happens next and the trade has three. There is the guarantee on the workmanship, which belongs to the firm. There is the manufacturer's cover on the unit itself, which does not. And behind both sits the certificate, which is the document proving whose installation it was in the first place. Sorting the call into one of those three is the whole of a useful first reply.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for warranty and repairs holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Faults after an installation split unusually cleanly between the labour and the product: a connection that has worked loose is workmanship, a charge point that will not power up is very often the unit, and those two go to different people on different timescales.
- The certificate issued at the time is what identifies the installation as the firm's work, so it is the first thing the office looks for when a guarantee call arrives, and it is why a customer who has lost theirs is now in a slower conversation than they expected.
- A fault on a different circuit in a house the firm once worked in is not a guarantee call at all, and customers routinely assume that having been rewired means everything electrical in the building is now somebody else's problem for the guarantee period.
- Where work was certified under a competent person scheme, some schemes run their own arrangement covering registered work, which is separate again from the firm's guarantee and is worth naming as a route rather than described in detail nobody in the conversation can verify.
How it arrives
- is the work guaranteed
- the charger stopped working after six months
- how long is the guarantee on a rewire
- do you cover the fittings you supplied
- a different socket has stopped is that covered
- i cannot find the certificate you gave us
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your workmanship guarantee, with its length and its exclusions | The period, whether it covers labour only or labour plus the parts you supplied, and what voids it, including somebody else working on the circuit afterwards. The exclusions matter more than the number and are usually the half that is missing. |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer cover on the products you install | For the items where it matters, the charge point, the board, the fittings, and whose job it is to raise a claim. Say whether you handle it or whether the customer goes direct, because that is the only part they actually want to know. |
| How you identify a past job | The certificate reference, the address, and roughly when the work was done. Publishing what you need in order to find a job halves the length of the first exchange every single time. |
| What is not covered, stated plainly | Other circuits, damage, anything altered by somebody else since, and any installation you inspected but did not carry out. This is the list that prevents the disappointed second message rather than the one that wins the first. |
The reply
It depends which of three things this is. Work we carried out is covered by the guarantee on our terms page for the period stated there [1]. The unit itself, if it is a charge point or a fitting we supplied, usually carries the manufacturer's own cover, which runs on its own terms and often for a different length of time [2]. If the fault is on a circuit we did not install, that is an ordinary call out rather than a guarantee visit. I cannot look up your job or check what was done, so leave me your name, an email, the address and roughly when the work was done, and the office will find the certificate and tell you which of the three applies.
Naming the three routes at the start turns a claim into a sorting question, which is the only version of this the assistant can honestly help with. Each route is described by who owns it rather than by how generous it is, so nothing in the reply can be read as a promise. The handover asks for exactly the four things needed to find the file, which is why the next message is usually the last one.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any claim against a guarantee on a specific job, any request to check whether past work is still covered, and immediately anything describing heat, a smell or a mark rather than a failure.
I cannot look up a job or decide whether something is covered. Leave me your name, an email, the address and roughly when the work was done, and the office will find it. If anything is hot, smells of burning or has a mark on it, ring the number at the top of this page instead and stop using that circuit.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a particular fault is or is not covered, because nothing here can see what was installed, when it went in, or who put it there.
- Never describe the guarantee as covering the whole electrical installation in a property, when what it covers is the work the firm actually carried out.
- Never promise a return visit or name a date for one, since the diary is not visible here and a guarantee call promised for Tuesday is a complaint by Wednesday.
- Never say a scheme will cover something on the firm's behalf, as those arrangements carry their own terms and nobody in a chat window has read them.
Questions
- Should the guarantee length be published?
- Publish it, and publish what it excludes in the same place. A period standing on its own invites the assumption that everything electrical in the building now belongs to you for that long, and that assumption is behind most of the disappointing guarantee calls a firm takes.
- Can it check whether a job is still in guarantee?
- No. It cannot see job records, dates or certificates. What it can do is collect the address and the rough date, which is what the office needs to find the file, and say plainly that the check has to be done by a person rather than implying it is being done now.
- Who should chase a failed product, us or the customer?
- Whichever you decide, write it down. The customer starts with you either way, because you are the person they met. A firm whose site says it raises product claims for its own customers has a much shorter conversation than one explaining the arrangement from scratch every time.
Keep reading
- Everything for a electrical contractorCall out charges, EV charger enquiries and landlord certificates are answerable. A described electrical fault is an escalation, not a question.
- Handling warranty and repairs in generalCustomers conflate a manufacturer warranty, an extended plan and their legal rights. Keep the three apart and never close the third.
- Parking is not a courtesy on a job with a cable drumExternal work needs the van within reach of the cable run, often a suspended bay, sometimes a tower. None of that is a convenience.
- The survey is short if the things it needs to see are reachableThe board behind the coats, the loft full of boxes and the meter cupboard key are what turn a survey into a second appointment.
- Two kinds of electrical quote, and telling a caller which they wantSome electrical work is a fixed price product and some cannot be priced until a floor comes up. The reply has to say which one it is.
Try it on your own material
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