Johnson & Starley Reviews 

Had Johnson and Starley hot air system since the property was built. First system was really good (probably inefficient but fuel prices weren't such an issue then). Replaced the unit for combi (Quantec24C) and hot air unit (aquair s10) seven years ago and boy what a mistake that was. The quality of the installation appears to be poor - J&S factory engineer came down to assist local engineer who was fitting it but the unit has never given out much heat. Had 'ecco' fan replaced at a cost of £600 pounds just over a year ago and this marginally improved performance but still very poor and is quite noisy.

Another problem is that their is only one affiliated Johnston and Starley heating engineers in the whole of our region and not very responsive. Three weeks ago the boiler developed a major leak with water pouring out the bottom of the boiler. Contacted the local J & S heating engineer at 16.30 but he said he had been drinking so couldn't come out and he also couldn't come out the following day (Saturday). He recommended we look in yellow pages for an emergency engineer!

Got different engineers to fix combi leak (After trying J & S engineer turned to insurance company engineers but they were horrendous and had to resort to local emergency combi repair engineer) but now waiting for over a week for J & S to send part and no light at the end of the tunnel.

Mediocre service all round. My advise is don't bother with hot air as difficult to find someone to service it and performance is poor.

**UPDATE** J&S responded below to my post by stating... "Johnson & Starley do not have any 'affiliated, approved or recommended' installers, so your comments about the 'local J&S engineer being unable to attend as he had been drinking are totally incorrect as he has no connection to Johnson & Starley apart from choosing to install our products along with many other manufacturers boilers and our own engineers are only for warranty call outs."

Yet after google search I found only the one engineer in the whole of my region who advertised himself as a hot air engineer able to work on J&S products and on his website it states...
"We are approved contractors to Johnson & Starley so you can expect the highest levels of customer service and quality of work."
It is this engineer who installed the J&S combi and hot air unit and has serviced it every year.
Read into this what you will.

**Update on previous update following second response from J&S** (sorry for the length but feel I need to clarify)....

J&S have reiterated below that they don’t ‘approve, have affiliated or recommended engineers’ and they can’t ‘monitor every gas installer across the UK’ to ensure none advertise as such. Yet there are very few hot air engineers across the UK who advertise that they will install, service or repair J&S hot air heating systems - a google search pulls up just a few pages of results. Of the firms I found advertising on the internet, numerous where representing that they were affiliated, approved or recommended by J&S.

This beggars the bigger question of why buy a hot air heating system? What support do you have for a J&S heating system if they don’t have any ‘approved’, ‘affiliated’ or ‘recommended’ engineers? Who can you rely on to install, service or maintain it? Especially as once it is out of warranty J&S don’t want to investigate any problems that arise with their heating systems.

Furthermore, when we were looking to replace our old J&S heating system we found only one engineer in the whole region who advertised that they could supply a replacement J&S hot air system. This engineer represented that they were ‘approved’ installers for J&S. We paid just under £4000 for the J&S combi boiler and hot air unit, a considerable amount, with the invoice stating quite clearly that the engineers were ‘Approved installers to Johnson and Starley Ltd’. This now appears to be a case of misrepresentation.

The current issues are just the latest problems we have had - ever since the system was installed as well as poor performance it has frequently shut down, coming up with a F37 error message requiring us to re-pressurise it to get it working again.

I contacted J&S a few years back about the poor performance and the problems with our system, explaining clearly the issues and also stating numerous times the actions of xxx ‘the accredited installer’. The J&S Technical Services Department responded by advising that as the system was out of warranty they couldn’t investigate further. In this correspondence, no indication was given that the heating company who fitted the system were not ‘approved’, ‘affiliated’ or ‘recommended‘ by J&S and that in fact there is no such engineers out there.

In late 2018 we had a J&S QuanTec HR28C bolier with an Aquair S-10 water to air space heater.

Since then this boiler has been no end of trouble. The main PCB had to be changed by J&S. The boiler leaked internally and the temperature sensors trip error conditions on a regular basis. Today the hot water has stopped working but no fault code indicated.

We have had two engineers in on around 20 occasions trying to sort it out but they fix one issue and another appears.

We were told it had a 8 year manufacturers warranty on the boiler when we purchased the system but recently we were told by J&S that it was only 2 years.
Worcester Bosch are 7 years.

Although J&S technical support provide some assistance for our ongoing out-of-warranty issues the whole system is a lemon. I've never seen such a poor piece of engineering.

We have spent nearly £1000 on boiler engineers trying to get this fixed but to no avail. We're now considering ripping it out and installing an Ideal or Bosch system it would have been cheaper and simpler.