Also worth noting, a boiler service and I witnessed this when BG serviced may boiler years ago, is not a flue particle check for 3 mins and a sweep out total time taken 16mins and this was the standard everywhere always. I said to that engineer at the time I was a qualified commercial gas engineer working on 1000kw forced draft burners in power stations, if we serviced like that we would go to prison so do it again and do it properly, he did and he did a good job in the end.

People are lazing, employees often can't be arrrsed with their jobs or will simply cut corners where they can, who knows why, its seems to be in our nature across all jobs, so you get as good as the engineer on the day and I think this is what I am seeing is more of an issue than the actual service and service costs itself, we never had a customer complain as far as I am aware about the service but I would also not push anyone to take one if ever they stopped.

@ashp-bobba 

Absolutely, particularly for the elderly or sick whom would struggle with a heating failure mid winter. Nobody ever minds paying a fair rate for a trained and skilled technician performing a thorough service. 

My experience has been that the folks I’ve encountered have been more clueless than me, but perhaps I’ve been unlucky. 

Last week, we had our chimney swept. That's necessary to get the certificate that says the installation is safe, and that's good both for insurance purposes and if we ever wanted to sell the house. As a part of the sweeping process, the local firm we use (and have done for the past decade and more) routinely start and finish with photos up the chimney for visual evidence of before and after. We receive copies of those photos with our invoice and, to be frank, that's all I do with them from then on.

However, it's a very simple example of a firm providing evidence of what they've done rather than just rely on a customer's goodwill. It's very easy for me to trust a tradesperson when they voluntarily provide corroboration of their work and don't lean heavily on that trust. The work our heat pump installer does as part of the maintenance schedule is similar in that they do have a checklist they work through and are happy for me to stand over their shoulder when I bring a cuppa and talk me through what they've done and are doing.

I don't doubt that heat pump maintenance is a great money spinner, even when the work being done is worthwhile. However, by exposing the detail - stating in advance what is going to be done for what price and then providing evidence that work has actually been carried out - customers will inevitably end up reassured and legitimate companies will gain further brownie points against their reputation. The only ones losing out should, as far as I can see, be the unscrupulous companies who cannot back up their spiel with evidence.

@papahuhu I am sorry to say but you are not alone, many customers experience this, we often pick these customers up when they have been let down and they think we are something else but the truth is, we are not way above the others we are just doing it properly or as best we can. 

I had the opportunity to expand our company 5 times in the last 3 years, I have also had 3 offers to both invest and or purchase the whole company from me, 1 was even offer over 1m to rapid expand as an investment for only 10% cost, can you imagine how many sh'it companies would have snatched that money, employed or subbed to anyone they could find to make more money and damn the quality (remind you of any companies recently gone bust that grew 900% in 3 years)  but unfortunately that model of expansion does not suit our company because I will not allow any of my engineers old or young be allowed to claim they are an expert in ASHP's until they pass my standards and the standards of the company, also I literally don't care about making more money, its like 4th on my lists of importance and yes that makes me a bad business man but secret is, I am an engineer 1st business man 2nd. 

I am waiting on the green light to pair up with a well known college in our area to design and table a service section for learning about servicing and breakdowns, diagnostics and commissioning, so when all these engineers qualify their 3 day course to fit ASHP they can come learn how to service and commission correctly. 

You see in my view, the only way to learn these skills beyond the 3 days course is to be immersed in the works and thats what we are going to look to offer, come train with an expert, learn on a rig for a couple day then come service 10 with us. Spread the love, customer benefit at no cost to them, thats what I am trying to give back.

@dgclimatecontrol Thanks for your reply.  Quite agree that nothing is free but in the case of my EV the service checklist is very short and mostly of the "visual inspection" category.  Cars in general are very competitively priced so I'm not sure I agree that the service cost is priced in, however.  There just isn't that much to fail.  Only 8 moving parts etc...

@ashp-bobba thanks for your detailed reply, which I accept in good faith.

I don't question your list of things that could go wrong without proper servicing, just whether paying for the service will reliably prevent any of them from happening regardless.

Perhaps my use of "con" was too emotive, but my experience has been coloured by the failure described above which should have been corrected during the service.  And because the fault was so obvious, I wonder if anything else was done properly.

My installer actually subbed the original installation work to another company, and I found out later that they really only quote for these jobs and then sub everything out.  Probably including the maintenance - I don't know.

I was lucky that the actual install team were very good and everything has worked well and efficiently.

Re the service, it would be useful if they had offered a Mitsi checklist to show what they had done but there was no paperwork involved either before or after.

I will say that when the electrical connection burnt out they did get it fixed within 24 hours - but again using an independent sparkie.

If the service package was clearly defined, properly executed and cost £150- £200 I might reconsider my position.

As it is, it's a matter of weighing risks.  Insurance companies play on people's misunderstanding of probabilities to overcharge them for peace of mind.  I am happy to take some risk based on the Mitsi's worldwide reputation and experience.

And I think about the 10s of millions of aircon units hanging outside buildings in the tropics - the failure of some may be seriously dangerous - and wonder how many of those are serviced every year?

Posted by: @ashp-bobba

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I had the opportunity to expand our company 5 times in the last 3 years, I have also had 3 offers to both invest and or purchase the whole company from me, 1 was even offer over 1m to rapid expand as an investment for only 10% cost, can you imagine how many sh'it companies would have snatched that money, employed or subbed to anyone they could find to make more money and damn the quality (remind you of any companies recently gone bust that grew 900% in 3 years) 

You’ve convinced me, Simon. Based on your demonstrated execution capability and historic performance, I’m prepared to offer a strategic minority position in Renewable Heating Hub. 10% equity, pre-money valuation £10m. Clean cap table, obviously.

Rationale (as if you need it): strong brand moat, engaged user base and optionality for future vertical integration. Exit horizon to be discussed once we’ve "unlocked synergies" and added a slide deck.

@downfield I completely understand your position and I think it is a hard one to prove that it is worth it or not if you just base it on the engineer is there to prevent a break down, having a service agreement gives you more than the service with us, you get prioritised.

Imagine this Service agreement £240, its costs us around £210 inc all overheads, wages and other bits to complete the service so there is only £30 profit around 12%, we do 2 a day and earn £60. Installations I can tell you most companies earn between £500 and £1000 per day subject to which company you use, this is why there are 3000 installation companies and about 500 companies that offer service, or sometimes its why you hear services can be up to £350 probably to cover the £210 cost and actually make some money around 30%, we all only make more than that with that extra call out or repairs.

Employing service engineers and offering this service gives us availability to cover our warranty works and take care of the client over the whole 7 or 10 year warranty, other wise we would just be another bash them in and walk away as there would be no back up. (I think the reason you hear so many complaints is most companies don't have back up engineers to respond to issues so they get a bad rep for mistakes, late call back, didn't fix it for 3 weeks) 

I suppose what I am saying is you may run the risk of no engineer able to fix the system should it have an issue in 5,6 or maybe 7 years time but there would be plenty of companies that would be willing to replace it for you for that £1000 per day. 

Posted by: @editor

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Posted by: @ashp-bobba

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I had the opportunity to expand our company 5 times in the last 3 years, I have also had 3 offers to both invest and or purchase the whole company from me, 1 was even offer over 1m to rapid expand as an investment for only 10% cost, can you imagine how many sh'it companies would have snatched that money, employed or subbed to anyone they could find to make more money and damn the quality (remind you of any companies recently gone bust that grew 900% in 3 years) 

You’ve convinced me, Simon. Based on your demonstrated execution capability and historic performance, I’m prepared to offer a strategic minority position in Renewable Heating Hub. 10% equity, pre-money valuation £10m. Clean cap table, obviously.

Rationale (as if you need it): strong brand moat, engaged user base and optionality for future vertical integration. Exit horizon to be discussed once we’ve "unlocked synergies" and added a slide deck.

Deal 

🙂

Should warn you though my company is worth £1

@ashp-bobba, I really appreciate you laying out the business side so openly. It's helpful to hear from someone actually running the numbers and dealing with the realities on the ground. It's no surprise that installations are where the bigger margins often sit and that servicing is more of a thinner-margin, relationship-building activity to support long-term warranty cover and client care.

Having said that, if I was a one-man band, self-employed installer, invoicing £500 a day for servicing is decent money, without the hassle of a compacted install. Just my take.

The point about having backup engineers available for issues years down the line is fair too... nobody wants to be left high and dry if something goes wrong in year 7.

I get why companies tie servicing into warranties. It gives them control over quality (in theory) and ensures there's a relationship for callbacks. And yes, the horror stories often come from outfits that install and vanish... no aftercare, slow response subbed-out work done cheaply. That's exactly why threads like this exist. People get burned and vent.

That said, from the homeowner side (and echoing what @downfield is saying), the frustration often isn't with the concept of servicing... it's with execution and transparency. We all know boilers get opened up, cleaned properly, parts replaced visibly. You see the dirt, the new nozzle, the combustion test results.

With heat pumps, too often it's a quick controller check, fault codes cleared, maybe a visual and out the door. No covers off, no deep clean of coils/fans/drains, no glycol test if applicable, no before/after photos or metrics shared. £240-£350 therefore feels steep when it looks superficial, especially if the 'service' misses something obvious like a burnt wiring connection (as Downfield described) or leaves a dead mouse in the tray (@outlawUK's issue).

The aircon-in-the-tropics comparison is interesting too... I've lived in the Middle East, and the AC units get serviced twice a year... before and after summer. If they don't they don't cool effectively. 

I've spent a lot of time pondering this over the past two days for my next video... more food for thought here.

Posted by: @editor

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@ashp-bobba, I really appreciate you laying out the business side so openly. It's helpful to hear from someone actually running the numbers and dealing with the realities on the ground. It's no surprise that installations are where the bigger margins often sit and that servicing is more of a thinner-margin, relationship-building activity to support long-term warranty cover and client care.

Having said that, if I was a one-man band, self-employed installer, invoicing £500 a day for servicing is decent money, without the hassle of a compacted install. Just my take.

The point about having backup engineers available for issues years down the line is fair too... nobody wants to be left high and dry if something goes wrong in year 7.

I get why companies tie servicing into warranties. It gives them control over quality (in theory) and ensures there's a relationship for callbacks. And yes, the horror stories often come from outfits that install and vanish... no aftercare, slow response subbed-out work done cheaply. That's exactly why threads like this exist. People get burned and vent.

That said, from the homeowner side (and echoing what @downfield is saying), the frustration often isn't with the concept of servicing... it's with execution and transparency. We all know boilers get opened up, cleaned properly, parts replaced visibly. You see the dirt, the new nozzle, the combustion test results.

With heat pumps, too often it's a quick controller check, fault codes cleared, maybe a visual and out the door. No covers off, no deep clean of coils/fans/drains, no glycol test if applicable, no before/after photos or metrics shared. £240-£350 therefore feels steep when it looks superficial, especially if the 'service' misses something obvious like a burnt wiring connection (as Downfield described) or leaves a dead mouse in the tray (@outlawUK's issue).

The aircon-in-the-tropics comparison is interesting too... I've lived in the Middle East, and the AC units get serviced twice a year... before and after summer. If they don't they don't cool effectively. 

I've spent a lot of time pondering this over the past two days for my next video... more food for thought here.

I agree with you at every point, you are welcome, it is my pleasure to place 1 installers / service voice on the forum, I am very happy to input where I can and time allowing, I had a good run today 🙂

Agreed on the 1 man band bit, i think there are a few very good engineers that focus on service and that model but they are a few in number for sure and that makes support outside of a service agreement with a company harder to find someone to help you when things go wrong, for every non contract request we get, we are able to cover about 30% due to being fully booked with our priority clients. Having dedicated clients on service agreements allows me to anticipate and train new engineers as this list grows. We currently have something like 800 of our own direct clients on service in agreements and we look after around 200 more though other contracting means but we have reduced this somewhat from well over 3000 in 2020, some left, some went bust, over 1000 went with an ex director in 2020 and so on.

800 does keep keep about 2 or 2.5 engineers fully booked just on service, we have 9 engineers and all the remaining engineers are fully booked on projects, repairs and other stuff. We used to have 26 staff but people had to stop having maintenance agreements and other works like they used to before the pandemic, we could get more back by expanding but I chose to be busy experts rather than busy fools like we were in 2010 to 2020... instead we upped our game and started training all our staff better and to be more technical.

I agree and hear all the time when we attend clients will say, oh the other company didn't touch that or open that and so on, we take pictures, we write reports and lists, we take our time with the client, our engineers carry IR cameras, refractors, tongs, clamps, chems tests, refrigerant gauges (although we don't use them unless there is an issue due to the breaking a seal law) but we have them ready if we suspect the seal is broken, flow meters, tools, cleaning products, data books, tech support numbers on speed dials and our engineers seem to know the chief engineers at most the manufacturers, especially Rae, she is a charmer and somehow manages to bypass the whole tech support office and talk straight with the senior eng that they will eventually pass her on to. 

If we think you have a fridge leak we can deal with it then, not call in the F-gas boys as we are the F-gas boys / Girl 🙂 This is what you should demand when you pay £240, in fact I think I should raise our prices as we offer way more than even the manufacturers.

I will look out for your next video, they are great and I think you are really getting the points across. I just purchased an Insta 360 x5 for snowboarding so I might try and make a servicing video if I get chance in the summer, perhaps if we do the service correctly you would like a copy?

@editor 

After my recent install my installer provided me with a standard maintenance checklist, which seem to be from the MCS standards documents, and it seems to me (from the standards document) that it is a requirement to provide such a list at the time of the installation.

Just wondering (perhaps @ashp-bobba has a view) if there is anything missing from this we should look for in a service?

Simon

ps

They quote £195 for a one off service, £525 for a three year plan and £875 for five years.