The MCS Customer Commitment

Alongside the technical standards, the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) publishes a short document called the Customer Commitment. It is seven pages, it is written for householders, not for engineers, and it is the clearest single statement of what a certified contractor has agreed to do.

What follows is the substance of it, with the reasons the clauses exist.

Before you commit

The contractor should assess the property in person, not quote from a photograph, and should tell you what the assessment found, including anything unfavourable. A survey that discovers a heat loss the customer will not like is still a survey that has to be reported.

The information the contractor gives you should let you make a decision. That means the design assumptions, the expected performance, and the conditions the performance figure depends on. A heat pump quotation without a flow temperature, or a solar quotation without a shade factor, has left out the assumption the whole estimate rests on.

The contractor must produce performance estimates by the MCS methods and must not inflate them. This is the clause behind the standardised solar calculation: the point of a fixed method is that nobody can compete on optimism.

The contract

The contractor should put the contract in writing, list anything excluded, and be clear about the price and about anything that could change it. Deposits should be reasonable, and the contractor should explain how yours is protected.

The contractor should set out your cancellation rights. A contract agreed in your home is generally covered by the cooling-off provisions of consumer contracts legislation, and a contractor that obscures that is not meeting the commitment.

Doing the work

To the MCS installation standards, by people competent to do it, with the site left in a reasonable state and the customer told about anything that changes.

The commitment on changes is the one worth holding installers to. Discovering during installation that the pipework will not carry the flow, or that a roof needs strengthening, is normal. Deciding unilaterally what to do about it, and presenting the customer with the result, is not.

Afterwards

After the system is in, the contractor should:

• Register the installation and issue the MCS certificate.
• Hand over documentation explaining how the system works, what it needs and what the warranties cover.
• Demonstrate the controls. This matters more than it sounds, because a heat pump operated as though it were a boiler will disappoint everybody.

If something goes wrong

This is the part most worth knowing in advance, because it is the part people look up when they are already unhappy.

The contractor must have a complaints procedure, must tell you what it is, and must handle complaints within reasonable timescales. If the complaint is not resolved, there is an escalation route: to the contractor's consumer code provider, and to its certification body.

Those are two different bodies with two different powers, and using the right one matters.

The consumer code deals with the commercial relationship: the contract, the selling, the deposit, redress. MCS contractors are required to belong to one, and the codes offer dispute resolution, often including arbitration.

The certification body deals with the technical work and with compliance with the standards. It audits the contractor and can require corrective action, and in the last resort can suspend or withdraw certification. A complaint that a heat pump was sized without a room-by-room heat loss calculation belongs here.

Both are named on your paperwork. If they are not, the MCS directory entry for the contractor carries the certification body, and the consumer code should be on the contract.

Commitment limits

The Customer Commitment is a set of undertakings enforced through certification, not a statutory right. Withdrawing a company's certification does not repair your installation or refund your money.

Your consumer law rights sit underneath it and are separate: goods and services of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose, as described. Those are enforceable in a way the commitment is not. A card payment of more than £100 also carries protection under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, which is worth remembering when deciding how to pay a deposit.

The commitment is most useful before there is a dispute, as a description of what good looks like. Read against a quotation, it makes the gaps in that quotation quite visible.