I had a very poor and abrasive manner demonstrated by one of the Homecare call handlers just now. he is called Dean on 36279. He has refused to give me his surname or put me through to a supervisor in spite of the call clearly going badly wrong.

I rang to say that we had water seeping out of our heating pump. He offered an engineer on Mon am (some 60 hours away). When asked how i was supposed to manage with water coming out of the boiler and that i was paying £200/year for coverage he simply repeated aggressively that the engineer would come on Mon am. I asked what would make this higher priority, noting that the leak would likely lead to a low pressure alarm and the pump probably seizing incurring extra cost. He said that old people and young children had priority. I said we had two children aged 1 and 4. he said this only applied to children under 1 and Monday was his final offer. I argued that this was completely unacceptable and that he had failed to understand the problem or ask up front about any priority reasons. he has now reluctantly and with extremely bad grace agreed to an engineer visit on Saturday afternoon.

When you review the policy documents it turns out there is no specific guarantee for any response time: it says 'priority service every day of the year' under the summary agreement and at the beginning ' we aim to attend your breakdown promptly'. Which might make you THINK they wouldn't leave you freezing over the weekend but don't be taken in...

I think 60hours is anything but prompt. Indeed I believe they are in breach of contract.

I have written to customer service as surprise surprise the contact us complaints form mysteriously has a system error on it and is not accepting anything.