Yes Calgon is normally as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm. My thoughts were if you add Calgon you can add less detergent, alot less in some cases. This in turn may improve rinsing results without and consequental damage being caused to the washing machine. The only problem is if you use too little it will not keep bacteria at bay and will still rot the machine with a bio-film. So if anyone wishes to try it use the amount recommended for a soft water area and no less.

Oliver.

I suspect some of my comments may have been seen by people with complaints as unjustly defending Repaircare but at the same time Repaircare will not have liked many of my comments either. I like to think this is a sign of a balanced view as neither side is likely to be over enamoured by all of my views.

This article has attracted 105 comments so far and I’m concerned that new readers are likely to read the first few comments but because there are so many of them skip down to the last few and assume there have been hundreds of complaints so I’d like to put a little context in place.

Out of 105 comments there are 30 complaints, the rest are my responses, further replies from those 30, some from Repaircare, and a few positive comments from satisfied customers. Just after Repaircare launched last year they were receiving around 1,500 repairs a week. If this was maintained they could have been called out to over 50,000 repairs in the last 9 months. Clearly not every dissatisfied customer will complain on the Internet (and of course it’s rare for a satisfied customer to post anything) but 30 complaints does only represent 0.6%. That’s not to say there haven’t been some very genuine complaints but my point is all large companies will always have complaints and as Repaircare are the only repair company I have an article that people can comment on I think this could create an unfair bias against them.

A proportion of these complaints were around 9 months ago just after their launch complaining (justifiably in my opinion) about one of the terms and conditions which seemed to contradict the “fixed price” promise, where a few people were complaining they had been asked to pay extra for expensive parts. This policy was changed though within months of trading and as far as I know is no longer an issue. I’ve since seen one Repaircare agent comment that they spent £700 repairing a Miele appliance which amazed him.

Over the last 3 months or so comments have centred around more general complaints about an engineer not turning up as arranged, or parts taking a long time to arrive when ordered, and dissatisfaction with how complaints have been dealt with. I hate to appear dismissive about such complaints but I don’t want this article to slowly but surely just fill up indefinitely with the inevitable drip of complaints about general cockups and parts taking a long time to get hold of because it’s unfair to only complain about one repair company. Having said that, I feel complaints about customer service and how a company deals with things that have gone wrong are legitimate complaints.

Therefore I would ask that negative comments be restricted to Repaircare-specific complaints which you genuinely feel should be of public interest such as particular customer service or consumer issues or their specific way of working rather than complaints that all repair companies get such as about broken appointments, misdiagnosis of faults, repairs becoming long and drawn out, parts taking a long time to arrive etc. because these are things that happen everywhere in the appliance repair game.

I always strive for fair and balanced views on my sites and whist there’s no doubt there have been some legitimate complaints made here, and I’ve criticised Repaircare on certain issues myself it’s pointless advising others not to use Repaircare because their engineer failed to turn up or because it took them too long to get a particular part because these things can happen to you with virtually all large repair companies. Therefore it will be helpful to focus if further complaints are necessary only on things unique to them.

No one from Repaircare has ever contacted me to try and influence what I say on my sites. This is just how I personally feel. I could turn off comments to the article but I believe that would be seen as trying to stifle consumer comments and experience, which I would not want to do either.