Stop these tradesmen ripping people off
This country needs to put a stop to companies charging extortionate fees by the hour as it leads to abuse. I was charged £236.40 for an engineer to come out and look at a broken air conditioning unit. I had sent pictures of the unit so it was clear it was raised high off the ground, but the engineer did not immediately bring his step ladder in, but had to return to his vehicle for it. He then proceeded to open the unit, clear our some dead flies and test the connections, all of which were not live. I then suggested the problem might be that it needed to be plugged in in the loft. He entered the loft and found that the plug was shot and so he replaced it. He got the unit on, but there was a fault evident. He then said that he would not be able to look at the condenser unit due to it's location and also that we had no control over the unit because the remote control was missing and an app that was previously available had been discontinued. All of this took less than an hour. I then had to return to work and I thought that would have been the end of it, but on returning into the house 10-15 minutes later, he was still there. I'm really not sure what he was doing, but he managed to go into the second hour and so I have been charged £236.40 for the privilege of knowing that my air conditioning unit is broken and for having a plug changed. On contacting them with this information, it was clear that they were only interested in the engineer's tracker that told them he was here for over an hour and not what he actually did nor achieved. I would not use this firm again.