Playbook, plumbing and heating firm
The guarantee length everybody remembers and the condition nobody does
The guarantee on a boiler belongs to the manufacturer rather than to the firm that fitted it, and it is almost always conditional. The customer remembers the number of years from the sales conversation and nothing else, which means the installer is the one who gets blamed when a claim is refused seven years later for a reason that was in the paperwork all along.
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.
- The assistant is explaining somebody else's terms while speaking in the installer's voice, which is a position no other page in this family occupies.
- The length is conditional on three things at once: registration within a window after installation, installation by an approved installer, and a service every twelve months that is actually recorded.
- A missed service produces no warning at the time. It produces a refused claim years later, which is why the condition has to travel in the same sentence as the number.
- A service plan sold by the firm and a guarantee issued by the manufacturer are two different products that customers merge into one, and only one of them is yours to vary.
How it arrives
- how long is the warranty on my boiler
- does the guarantee still count if i missed a service
- is my boiler still under guarantee
- who do i claim from, you or the manufacturer
- does it cover parts and labour
- is the annual service part of the warranty
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Guarantee lengths by manufacturer and model range | The lengths you actually register, per range. A single number on a page covering everything you fit is wrong for most of what you fit. |
|---|---|
| The conditions, written into the same paragraph as the length | Registration window, approved installer, annual service recorded. Keeping them in a separate section is how the assistant ends up producing a length with no condition attached to it. |
| Your own workmanship guarantee, kept separate | What you stand behind on the installation itself, for how long, and how that differs from the manufacturer's cover. Two documents, because they are two promises from two parties. |
| How a claim is actually made, and by whom | Whether the customer calls the manufacturer or calls you, what the manufacturer will ask for, and where the service records are expected to come from. |
The reply
Guarantee lengths vary by model and are listed on our installation page. They come with conditions: the boiler has to be registered after installation, fitted by an approved installer, and serviced every twelve months with the service recorded. A missed service is the usual reason a claim gets refused. Our own workmanship guarantee is a separate thing and is on the same page. I cannot see your installation record, so the office can check yours if you leave your details.
It never states a length without the condition, which is the entire design of the page. Splitting the manufacturer's cover from the firm's own is the second half, because a customer who conflates them makes the claim to the wrong party and loses a fortnight doing it.
Where it stops
The trigger. Whether a particular fault on a particular boiler is covered, and anything requiring a customer's own service history to be looked up.
Whether a fault is covered depends on the model, the registration and the service record, and I cannot see any of the three. Leave your name, a number and the make and model and the office will check it and ring you.
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
- That a particular fault is covered, or is not.
- A guarantee length with the conditions left off it.
- That a missed service can be made up so the guarantee continues, since that is the manufacturer's call.
- Any instruction to open or inspect the appliance while working out whether it is covered.
Questions
- Should the condition really go next to the number every single time?
- Yes, and the way to guarantee that is documentation rather than settings. Put both facts in one paragraph of the indexed material. An assistant retrieving a paragraph quotes the paragraph. An assistant retrieving a bare number quotes the number.
- Can it tell somebody their boiler is out of guarantee?
- No, because that needs the installation date and the service history, neither of which it can see. It can explain the length for that model and the conditions, which is enough for most people to work it out, and offer to have the office confirm it.
- Does explaining this cannibalise our service bookings?
- It does the opposite. The annual service condition is why a large share of services get booked at all, and an assistant that states it every time is sending your reminder letters for you, at the moment the customer is already thinking about the boiler.
Keep reading
- Everything for a plumbing and heating firmSorting an emergency from a routine job, quoting call out rates, and never suggesting a fix on gas work that only a registered engineer may touch.
- 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.
- What a customer should know before an engineer sets offA plumbing appointment is a time window, an access requirement and a charge on arrival. All three can be explained without seeing a diary.
- When taking a name is the wrong thing to doA live leak or a carbon monoxide worry cannot wait for an email to be opened. Here the handover is a number in the first line.
- The number they want is on the other side of a surveyA survey settles the flue, the gas pipe from the meter and whether the cylinder stays. Until then a from price is the only honest number.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.