Lack of transparency when quoting led to being charged £288 for 25 minutes’ work (no parts).
Make sure you get a written quote from Total Boilers Ltd before agreeing to any work. We were verbally quoted £60 per hour, but later invoiced at £144 per hour for labour (no parts). Despite asking about costs at booking, there was no mention of VAT (semi-expected) or travel charges, or of travel being billed at the same rate as labour, with both rounded up to the hour and combined as one cost.
Astonishingly, we were charged an extra £144 for a second engineer who arrived unexpectedly in the same van as our engineer. He wasn’t needed, and was simply accompanying the main engineer between other bigger jobs.
For 50 minutes on-site (including chat time), we were billed £288, incorrectly for four hours of work. Our CCTV clearly shows two engineers arriving and leaving together after 50 minutes. The invoice falsely describes the second engineer as a separate “call-out” due to a blockage — there was no blockage, and no separate second call-out.
The invoice included:
* 2 hours (£60 + VAT = £144) for the unnecessary second engineer
* 2 hours (£60 + VAT = £144) for the engineer who actually handled - and only completed half of - the job. Although we were charged for 20 minutes of discussion about an additional job, we never received the quote for that work.
Despite one phone call and four emails challenging the invoice, only threats of added interest to the bill were received, and no corrections were made until we pushed further with each passing week.(There appears to be a pattern here, reading other reviews). Six weeks on, we have not received the quote which was one of two things we originally called up for. We have paid for the rounded- up hour’s work and travel plus VAT for the one engineer who did the work, but no more. We refuse to pay for the second engineer who was not requested nor needed for our tiny 10-15 minute tweak of a thermostat etc. Office staff tried to justify their irrational and non-transparent pricing, with one constantly talking over my brother and I.
The director bemoaned the loss made on this job, but that was due to sending out two engineers for a very simple one-person job. Looking at the exceptional time it took his engineers to drive 19 miles (75 minutes - usually 30-40 minutes) might also need looking at - alongside the capability of staff to pass on (or follow) simple, clear instructions for finding a residence. However, having a transparent pricing policy - and staff sufficiently competent to explain it in full to customers - would save wasted money and time all round.
Recommendation: Read the reviews here and decide if you do not want to risk being billed (like us) for superfluous staff being sent out (without your knowledge or consent), for time NOT worked, and for inflated travel time.
Sadly we were recommended this company by my father’s excellent, retiring heating engineer of 12 years, who ran his business fairly and transparently. Optimistically, we had hoped for similar from Total Boilers.
6 October 2025
Unprompted review