A MOTHER and her two young children were left without heating for more than two weeks after her housing association landlord failed to fix a problem with her boiler.
Carly Reeder, 26, along with her five-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, had no central heating for more than two weeks.
She said: “The boiler stopped working on a Friday evening so I rang the out-of-hours number for Daventry and District Hou
sing Association [DDH].
“They sent out an engineer that night, but he was trained for gas boilers and mine’s oil.”
The association sent another engineer out who reset the boiler, only for it to stop working again. Ms Reeder then waited in all day for another engineer to come, only to be told he was running late and would not arrive until early evening when she was due to take her children to a swimming class.
She gave her mobile number and said she may be a few minutes late, but when she arrived home she found a note saying the engineer had been and gone. Ms Reeder was eventually forced to pay out £118 to get an engineer out and repair the boiler.
Frank Ellis, head of asset management at DDH, said: “Within hours of receiving Ms Reeder’s call to say her boiler had broken down, we sent out an engineer to fix the problem.
“Unfortunately, he was not trained to work on the particular boiler in this property and we apologise for that. We have been working hard to improve our records of the type of boilers in each property so that we can send an appropriate engineer first time.
“Our engineer advised Ms Reeder to use her immersion heater to provide hot water while we investigated the cause of the problem.
“Regrettably, Ms Reeder’s immersion heater broke down two days later and we sent out an engineer that same day, who fixed it there and then. In the meantime we had ordered the part needed to fix the boiler. We also provided Ms Reeder with two temporary heaters.
“On October 2, we fixed the boiler but because it is oil powered it then needed purging in order for it to work properly.
“We arranged an appointment with Ms Reeder for our engineers to purge her boiler but she was out when they called. We attempted to mend the boiler from the outside of the property but they still needed access to the inside in order to fix it.
“Since then our engineers have twice called at Ms Reeder’s house and left messages for her to rearrange an appointment but we have not heard from her.
“We deeply regret this situation and will reimburse Ms Reeder for any costs she has incurred.”
The full article contains 470 words and appears in Daventry Express newspaper.
