Warranty/Guarantee and labour costs

[Kelvin]

Hi

 

Long post alert. 

 

I need a sanity check on something. Not sure if this is the correct place for the question as it’s really a legal/contract question. 
 

We have a private water supply via a borehole. It was installed 9 months ago so is still under warranty. It has a relatively slow recharge rate and  it’s deep at 147m. The pump is fitted at 80m and it has three water probes. Not sure how far they are spaced apart. I think the top probe is at 10m and the other two are then 20m apart. The water level is nominally at 1.2m bgl. The control panel pumps the borehole between the top and the bottom probe to make sure the pump doesn’t run dry. We moved into the house 6 weeks ago so it’s only now that we are using the water on a daily basis.

We’ve configured it to provide softened water as the primary main source and an unsoftened drinking water tap. A few weeks ago I noticed that the raw drinking water wasn’t working. I checked the pressure vessel and it had dropped to zero. A few hours later it was back to normal. It happened again a few days later but this time I noticed that the water level in the storage tank had dropped below where it would normally activate the pump and refill. I did some basic checks and couldn’t see anything obviously wrong with the pressure vessel or the control gear. There were also no alarms noted on the control panel. It lights up a red tell tale if it detects low water in the hole. 
 

I called the installer to get an engineer sent out to investigate the issue. Despite being under warranty they said I’d have to pay the labour because the manufacturers don’t credit them the labour cost. The labour cost would be charged at £65/hr ex VAT with the clock starting the minute the engineer left the yard and until he returned, plus a van mobilsation cost of £142 to cover the cost of providing a van with tools and spare parts. This is more than their standard callout fee as  we are further away. So not cheap.  We had a family party that weekend so I had to little option but to agree to this.  

 

The engineer investigated the fault and concluded a probe had failed. Rather than replace the probe he reconfigured the system as a two probe system rather than a three probe system. We’ve had no further issues since then. He also mentioned that it was unusual for a deep borehole with a slow recharge rate to operate as a three probe system as it means you need to wait until the water level reaches the top probe before it will pump again. The more standard configuration is two probes further down with the pump slightly deeper than 80m.

The bill for this  was £637 inc VAT. Made up of 2 hours travel down and back plus two hours on-site, plus the van mobilisation cost. I’ve queried this on three points. 
 

1. It’s under warranty so to pay such a huge amount in labour seems unfair and excessive. 
2. The travel time looks excessive. We are 82 miles from their yard.  I regularly drive the same route with a trailer and it very rarely takes longer than 90 mins. 
3. Their engineer questioned how it had been originally installed given the nature of our borehole. 
 

I’ve queried the bill which I have already paid as they refuse to send an engineer without first providing your credit card details. They then automatically bill you after the visit. All I got was a credit card receipt. I had to asked for a breakdown of how they arrived at the bill.
 

This is the second warranty failure. They didn’t charge any labour for the first failure as it happened only days after it was originally installed. They pointed out they didn’t charge me for this like I should be thankful. They are also querying the engineers fault report saying that the water level may have dropped rather than a probe fault. 
 

I feel somewhat ripped off but I can’t quite work out if I am being unreasonable and this is normal or they are as they seem quite surprised I am questioning it. 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2024 by Kelvin

[Mr Punter]

What is the point of the warranty if you are having to shell out so much?

[Kelvin]

Not much. Their argument is they don’t get the labour cost from the manufacturer so pass it on. I’d actually be happy enough to contribute towards the labour cost but not £637. 60% of the cost is because we aren’t local to them.