Obviously not the point of this post, which the OP's parents seem to have been sadly scammed, but you *need to know where your stopcock is*. If you know nothing else about your home, just know that.
Don't ask me how I know
My parents, both pensioners, were charged £850 by an emergency plumber last night.
They have British Gas HomeCare, but they couldn’t get anyone out to them quickly enough. Their toilet was overflowing and starting to flood the house, so they called an emergency plumber.
They have another toilet, so the immediate emergency was the flooding. The water could potentially have been isolated and a quote provided before any repair work was carried out.
Instead, the work was done immediately and they were charged £850.
My dad was also sent a series of text messages he had to respond to during the emergency. As far as I could tell, they didn’t appear to contain any obvious company branding, address or identifying information.
Fuming on their behalf. Can’t help feeling they’ve been taken advantage of.
Is this normal practice? And if not, is there anything we can do about it now?