Domestic & General

[higbols]

Ow forgot to add that my now rebooked appointment for June 12th - which I was never told about - should never have been booked either! I had to push to get him to check that this date was correct or this would have been another wasted day waiting in!

[LordAdmiralNelson]

Oh how I wish I'd read this thread a long time ago. Having been a policyholder of D&G's kitchen policy for over 10 years, I am only now making my first claim for a Hotpoint / Indesit fridge freezer that has stopped working properly. After 4 visits, the Indesit engineer finally threw in the towell and said that he would authorise a replacement unit. After countless and expensive phone calls to D&G, they simply hide behind the fact that they can't do anything until they hear from Indesit. After countless and expensive phone calls to Indesit, I get passed from pillar to post, always promising that someone will look into it and call me back - which they never do. I can only imagine that D&G and Indesit are in cahoots with each other, and are working on the basis that eventually most customers will give up. I won't!

[LordAdmiralNelson]

How disappointing. After posting my last message, I have realised that if you type the words "phone calls", the Consumer Action Group decides you want to insert a hyperlink to some dodgy advert. I guess it is true that half the world is trying to rip off the other half, after all!

[Blue Deltic]

Hi,

You have my sympathy, we have had the week from hell with Domestic & General, the meile fridge-freezer stopped working on the 30 May, we phoned D & G that evening and were told to call miele the following morning. Miele said they couldn't get an engineer to us before tuesday 4 june , so all the food in the freezer perished as did the food in the fridge. As I was at the hospital on tuesday the 4, they re-cheduled for wednesday 5, but thankfully they were able to get an engineer to us on monday 3. The engineer quickly established the unit was a write-off and that's when the problems started. Miele sent the engineers report to D & G on monday 3, but I had to chase-up D & G from then on. They then told me we would have to pay a delivery charge of £64.03, if it was coming from carlisle to oxfordshire I could understand it, but we live two miles away from the miele factory! As I refused to pay it and asked why it was so much, I was told that miele had instructed D & G to charge us, which miele refuted, so I have kept phoning and demanding to speak to a manager, I was assured a manager would give me a call back, thankfully my badgering has paid off and our situation is resolved. I was called today by Angela Millward from D & G, she had been asked to contact me and resolve the situation, the £64.03 delivery charge has been cancelled and the replacement from miele will be delivered a.s.a.p. This lady was a delight to talk to and understood our situation and apologised to us, and made every effort to swiftly resolve the situation. I do hope you are able to get your situation resolved, these numbers for D & G should connect you without paying for 0845 numbers: 0208 946 7777, 0115 910 6500,

[higbols]

Ha! Just had an email from D&G at 13:46 today confirming my repair visit for the 12th June...seriously are they trying to wind me up!

[LordAdmiralNelson]

Many thanks, it's nice to know we're not suffering alone.

I must say, I didn't realise that one might have to pay a delivery charge in the event of a replacement being required. I'd always understood the "kitchenplan" to be an insurance policy, and that the principle of insurance is to put you back in the position you were in before the insured incident occurred. D&G seem to be loading the risk heavily in their favour, by clawing back additional expenses in return for settling the claim. Sounds like blackmail to me!

As with many things that appear a good idea at the time and then turn out not to be quite what they seem, it's finally occurred to me that this insurance is a rip off, unless you are very unlucky and happen to have a lot of things go wrong. That is of course what insurance is all about, but I calculate that based on the current premium, I shall pay a little over £2,000 over the next 10 years. I think I would rather put £17 a month into a piggy bank and take my chances!

[letsmakeamark]

Depends how you paid your premiumss ? Direct debit indemnity springs to mind.

[mivona]

Having Hotpoint group machines that are 10+ years old, having duly paid my insurance on them to D&G for my "Kitchen Plan", they are now breaking down. Because of their age, the engineers never have parts for them, requiring me to take a day off work for the engineer to do a diagnosis, and another for them to undertake the repair.

 

To have a machine "written off", it must be uneconomic to repair, or the parts are unavailable, or the repair takes more than 28 days to do. D&G say that this is up to the engineer. The engineer is not interested in saying it is uneconomic to repair, because they get paid for every repair they do. They say it is up to D&G to decide whether it can be repaired, or not.

 

There is no linked records showing D&G the number of repairs having been done, and the engineer appears to not have any records of all the repairs that have been done, so as long as there are parts physically available to effect the repair, they don't care how much time you have to spend having your appliance repaired. The "complaints" team understands my concerns about having to spend so much time getting the machines repaired, but as long as they can be physically repaired (no matter how often), they are going to do the repairs.

 

I have paid for my appliances several times over with insurance over the last 25+ years. The service provided has degraded enormously over that time, from when you could book an appointment for morning or afternoon, in advance to now, when you have to use two days of annual leave to have the appliances repaired. EVERY TIME... Seriously, bank your premium, and use it to buy new appliances as and when you need them. It will be much less hassle. Next time, I will buy Miele...

[unclebulgaria67]

If an Engineer is telling you they deliberately don't advise of uneconomic repair, you should report them to D&G head office. The whole point of the engineers visit is to either repair or submit a report on the issues with a machine saying parts are not available or what the cost would be if over a certain sum. Following receipt of the report D&G would then advise what they were willing to do.

 

Suggest a written complaint to D&G head office and to consider an SAR to get copies of engineers reports received by them