Callbacks and warranties: what are you liable for?

Callbacks are the part of the job nobody quotes for and everybody has. A boiler you commissioned last month is locking out, or a customer wants you back for something that turns out not to be your work. Handled badly, they quietly eat the margin on good jobs. Handled well, they are one of the strongest reasons people recommend an engineer. The difference is knowing what you owe, and deciding it before the phone rings.

What does the law require of your workmanship?

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sets the baseline for work you do for consumers. Section 49 puts it in a single sentence: every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill. That term is implied whether or not you have written terms, and section 57 stops you contracting out of it, since a term is not binding on the consumer to the extent it would exclude your liability under section 49.

Two boundaries matter. The consumer rules apply to consumers, so work for a contractor or a letting agent acting as a business runs on that contract's terms instead. And reasonable care and skill is a standard of workmanship, not a guarantee of outcome: it asks whether you worked as a competent engineer would, not whether the appliance later failed.

What is repeat performance and what does it cost you?

It is the customer's first remedy when a service does not conform. Section 54 gives them the right to require repeat performance or a price reduction. Section 55 defines repeat performance: you perform the service again to the extent necessary to bring it into conformity, you bear the necessary costs, and you do it within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to the customer.

Section 56 is the fallback. A price reduction becomes available where repeat performance is impossible, or where you were asked to repeat and did not do it in a reasonable time, and any refund must be paid without undue delay and within 14 days. The practical message: fixing your own defect promptly is the cheapest route the law offers.

Where does the manufacturer's warranty stop and yours start?

The clean way to hold it is that the manufacturer stands behind the appliance and you stand behind the installation. A failed component inside the warranty period is the manufacturer's problem. A flue not fitted to the instructions, a system left dirty, a control wired wrong or a pressure set outside the manual's figures is yours. Customers rarely see that line, and manufacturers' engineers are very good at finding it.

The grey zone is where a component failed but something about the installation contributed: water quality, no filter, a system never flushed. That is why the commissioning record matters. A completed Benchmark checklist showing what was measured and what preparation was done is the difference between a warranty conversation and a warranty argument.

Why do warranties depend on servicing and registration?

Because the long warranties that sell boilers are conditional offers, not unconditional cover. Manufacturers typically require the appliance to be registered within a set window after installation, commonly 30 days, commissioned properly with the checklist completed, and then serviced every year with the record kept up. Miss the window and the headline warranty can drop back sharply. Skip a year's service and the chain of evidence breaks where a claim needs it. The specific periods belong to each manufacturer's terms.

What should your own workmanship guarantee say?

A guarantee you offer voluntarily sits on top of statutory rights and cannot cut them down, so write it as a clear promise rather than a set of exclusions. The useful ones say what is covered, for how long, how quickly you will respond, and what falls outside: fair wear and tear, work by others after you left, faults elsewhere in a system you did not touch, customer-supplied parts, and problems you flagged in writing and the customer declined to fix.

That last one earns its keep more than any other clause. If you noted a corroded pipe run or an unsuitable flue route on the quote and the customer chose not to proceed, that note separates a callback you owe from a job you should be paid for. It only works in writing, before the work.

What counts as a callback and what is chargeable?

• Your defect: something you installed, set or reassembled is wrong. Free, promptly, and without making the customer feel awkward for asking.
• Part failure inside the manufacturer's warranty: free to the customer, but the labour may be recoverable from the manufacturer depending on their terms. Establish that before you go.
• A fault elsewhere in the system, unrelated to your work: chargeable, and agreed on the phone before you travel rather than debated on the doorstep.
• User error or no fault found: a policy decision. Many engineers do the first one free on a job they installed and charge thereafter, which is defensible when stated in advance.
• A pre-existing condition you flagged and the customer declined: chargeable, on the strength of what you wrote at the time.
• Anything unsafe: attend as a gas safety matter first and settle the commercial question afterwards, following the Gas Industry Unsafe Situations Procedure regardless of who is paying.

How do you set a callback policy that stays sustainable?

Write it down, on the quote and again on the invoice, so expectations are set while the customer is pleased with you rather than while they are cold. Give yourself a realistic response commitment, same week rather than same hour, with unsafe situations and loss of heating or hot water carved out as priority. Apply the chargeable categories consistently: a policy applied unevenly is worse than none.

Then measure it. Log every callback against the original job, with what caused it, and read the list each quarter. Callbacks are rarely random: they cluster around a particular appliance, a part, or a habit of your own that is easy to correct once you can see it.

What records make a callback easy to settle?

The ones you made on the day. What appliance was installed, what was measured at commissioning, what preparation was done, what you advised and what the customer declined, and every service since. That turns a contested callback into a five minute conversation, and it is the evidence a manufacturer asks for. Manifold keeps it against the property, with the annual service reminder going out automatically so the warranty chain does not quietly break.