All Case Studies

Boiler, vouchers and complaints handling (March 2025)

Summary

The complaint is about our handling of a boiler repair, issuing of decoration vouchers and our complaint handling.

In October 2022, the resident reported that the boiler kept turning on by itself and questioned the economic impact of this. A contractor was sent out to repair the issue but the resident continued to report the same issues. The contractor was recalled to the job but was unable to access the property. The issue was then repaired in Dec 2022.

In October 2022, the resident had reported difficulty is using the decoration voucher which was previously issued to him. In January 2023, the resident raised a complaint as he had not received a response.

In February, during a phone call with the resident, we asked the resident to provide us with evidence that the boiler issue led to an increase in his bills. Whilst the resident provided a current bill, he did not provide a previous bill for us to compare increase. In May, the resident requested a stage 2 but we explained that the complaint had not been logged at stage 1 yet.

We issued our stage 1 response in May 2023, and reissued a new decoration voucher, apologised for the delays in communication in relation to the boiler repair, confirmed we did not have enough evidence to analyse the bill increase and issued £50 compensation.

In our stage 2 response, we apologised again and issued a further £50 as a good will gesture for the increase in the usage and bill. The resident remained dissatisfied.

The Ombudsman found:

1. that we had acted within our policy to send our contractors to fix the boiler initially, however when the resident reported the issue again, there were delays of a month before we logged and sent out a contractor
2. there was also evidence of poor communication with the resident and subsequently took 35 days to resolve the boiler issue
3. that it was reasonable for us to request bills from two periods to compare increase in usage and that without it, we were not able to reimburse costs. There was further delays in us requesting the evidence which meant that the resident had to chase us for a prolonged period of time
4. that in our stage 1 response, it was unreasonable for us to claim that no evidence was received, when in fact we could have told the resident earlier what evidence we needed. It further went onto mention that it was unreasonable for us to state that the resident could have used isolated the boiler to stop it from switching on, when in fact it was ineffective processes on our side that caused the delay for the repair issue to be fixed
5. the additional offer of £50 at stage 2 for increased usage in the absence of evidence was a reasonable offer, however we could have made that offer earlier
6. we acknowledged our failings in stage 2 and put things in place such as compensation, apology and an explanation of the failings
7. whilst we were under no obligation to reissue a decoration voucher, there was a 6 month delay in responding to the resident
8. there were delays in our complaints handling at stage 1 and 2

Determination

• Reasonable redress in relation to our handling of repair required to the resident’s boiler and increased usage
• There was service failure in our handling of the decoration vouchers
• There was maladministration in our complaint handling

Orders and recommendations

• Write an apology to the resident
• Award of £275 compensation for complaint handling and decoration vouchers handling
• Pay the £100 initially offered for the boiler issue