An Aberdeenshire family say they feel “betrayed” by SSE after finding themselves with no heating for days.
Andrew Larmour has been without heating for days due to a fault being discovered during their routine boiler service.
An engineer from SSE Energy visited the Kintore property last week to carry out a service on their Vokera boiler.
However, after discovering a hole in the heat exchanger, the engineer was forced to turn off their gas – leaving them with no heating, just as the wintry weather returned to the region.
Mr Larmour claims he was told an engineer from the manufacturing company would be out to assess and repair the boiler.
But they have since discovered the company does not service Aberdeenshire.
He said: “The boiler manufacturer Vokera don’t cover this area of Scotland and because of that it means that SSE can’t get the part or it would cost them too much to get the part.
“Now they have just said it’s not economically viable for us to fix the boiler.
“They have said because they can’t service the boiler or repair it, they’ll just cancel our contract and policy and reimburse us for the last 12 months; although they haven’t confirmed they are going to do that.
“If we didn’t have hot water we would basically have to move out of our house because we can’t get the boiler fixed.
“We have got three children but luckily they all got pretty big hoodies for Christmas so they are all wrapped up.”
‘Our cover means nothing’
The 40-year-old said he has been offered a replacement boiler, worth £3,000, through SSE’s sister company Corgi HomeHeat.
Mr Larmour said he never thought he would be at risk having previously taken out various insurance plans as “peace of mind.”
He added: “Strangely we have gone from thinking we are really covered on our heating system to having no cover at all.
“We have our boiler service plan, which we are paying £30 a month for, and we also have emergency cover through our home insurance.
“However, our emergency cover doesn’t cover the circumstances of a heating engineer turning off the heating. That’s not deemed as an emergency so that’s void as well.
“We were looking at all of our policies and thinking we will definitely keep our boiler cover and we’ll cut back on other things because it’s so important but when it comes down to the crunch, they just say ‘we can’t cover you in that area so we will cancel the policy, good luck’.
“The only option we have got now is we have to basically buy a new boiler.”
Mr Larmour said he was disappointed by the lack of empathy from SSE, accusing them of walking in to carry out a service and then leave the family with nothing.
He added: “We just feel betrayed because we have spent thousands of pounds over the years thinking we had peace of mind if this happens.”
SSE forms part of the OVO Energy family.
An SSE Energy Services spokeswoman said: “We’re sorry for the inconvenience and have provided a recommended approach to Mr and Mrs Lamour.”
