Friday morning as the boiler worked intermittently, I called Pimlico to book an engineer. There was no daytime appointment available so I booked after 6pm.

As an engineer had not arrived by mid evening I called to ask what time to expect them. The call centre informed me that they had no idea when the job would be allocated. They were quite surly and unhelpful so as it was clear that Pimlico could not meet the SLA and as the boiler was still working I agreed to change the appointment to Monday from 10am to 2pm.

By 1.30 on Monday the engineer had not arrived. When I phoned to ask what time to expect him I was told he would be late by half an hour. In fact the engineer arrived an hour outside the SLA. The engineer increased the water pressure and turned the heating on (he was there for 20 minutes). Note that he did not test that it would restart. Later when I turned the heating back on it did not restart. This left us without heating or hot water.

So though before Pimlico came we had a working boiler though low water pressure now after the engineer turned up the boiler was not working and we had no heating or hot water.

I called the office and the operator was very rude and only after a long discussion did he agree to send the same engineer back to fix the problem the next day. I asked for a different engineer but was told that the original engineer must come. However I doubted his ability to resolve things. He was not available until the next day between 1 and 3 pm.

On Tuesday, the engineer was late again and again Pimlico did not advise of this. On arrival, the engineer said that he did not know a Worcester boiler and we would have to ask for another engineer. This was particularly annoying as we had already done so! Also, he was rude and abusive generally and clearly out of his depth. Finally he agreed to ring the office from his van and update us. Instead he drove away.

So, I rang Pimlico again and complain and ask for another engineer. The customer service representative said that they could send someone on Wednesday morning, and only after a long discussion would they agree to send an engineer that evening. (Of course for extra cost!) He diagnosed the problem and identified the part that should be replaced. We understood that the office would call the next day regarding ordering the part.

Overall it took from Friday morning until Tuesday evening for Pimlico to send a suitable engineer. As a customer we were not informed about lateness, booking was made hard not easy and the poor attitude of your first technician was offensive.

Ironically the problem was fixed in 15 minutes and described as an easy job by the Worcester Bosch engineer.