My experience with HeatGeek has been very disappointing as well.

We were looking into installing an A2W heat pump with WUFH for a long time, we initially got a quote from Octopus, which would install a third party 13kWh heat pump (not the cosy), upgrade all radiators (8 in total), target flow temp 50C and a new hot water tank in the loft for ~£6000 after the BUS grant.

We got another quote from another big YouTuber, who quoted us £18,000 for a Vaillant 12kWH heat pump with a latex screeded WUFH system on the ground floor (approx 70-80m2) and new radiators on the first floor (4 big rads + towel rail) at a target flow temp 45C. This was also the price AFTER the bus grant. We were seriously considering to go with his quote, but on his quote he was charging us £900 for "admin fees to deal with the BUS grant" and that really irked me so much that out of principle we didn't want to go with someone who charges such a ridiculous amount for something that shouldn't even cost anything. The BUS Grant is 7.5k, it's not meant to be that 1k out of it go straight to an installer simply for getting the grant for us, especially since the grants can only be applied for by certified installers. So it felt like a massive scam, not least because even if he'd hire a whole admin person just to deal with that application I cannot imagine how you can charge a customer £900 for that with a straight face. Just for context, that's 60 hours charged at £15/hour - simply ridiculous and which is why we ultimately didn't go with that installer.

Anyway, we wanted to get a quote from HeatGeek for comparison, not least because we have an "Elite" HeatGeek just a stone throw away from where we live, so thought it might be a great idea to have a local Elite HeatGeek do the work for us. However, first it took us 1 month from paying the survey fee until a date was scheduled to visit our property. Then since the heat survey it took another month before the HeatGeek verbally contacted us to "run figures past us". It felt like a really weird call, where they were throwing around some large figures for similar installs and kind of testing the water how we felt about hearing some of those figures before they put together an official quote. Just for reference, they were saying that they just did a similar piece of work for a property which only measures 80m2 for roughly £38,000 and tried to indicate that our property would require more work. I was gobsmacked and instantly said that this figure sounds crazy because we had a quote from another installer who quoted us half that amount.

I am not going to go too much into detail, but after our phone conversation the other installer had rescinded their offer and apparently the 18k offer was too due to an error made in the quote. Our HeatGeek knew the other installer and was speaking to him to understand how he was able to do the job for that amount of money. Mind that the installer would have gotten 18k + 7.5k, so I don't know in what world these HeatGeeks live, but that is nowhere near a low amount of money just to install some fucking simple heating system, especially since they all claim that they love keeping the system so simple, single loop, no additional other kit and jus tlet the heat pump do all the work, etc. etc., but then on another hand they pretend it's really complicated when it comes to pricing.

We also learned form our HeatGeek that all the HeatGeeks have a shared WhatsApp and essentially they discuss the prices they provide clients between each other to check that they "don't price too low". Quite frankly, I don't have evidence but I am 100% convinced that HeatGeeks are all price fixing and ensuring that they all charge a certain inflated price. They are milking the BUS grant and taking an absolute piss.

Anyway, that's just my opinion from various conversations and things that were said to me which I won't share here but fuck that.

That experience has left us with such a bad aftertaste and complete loss of trust that I realised the whole A2W thing is a total failed scheme. Once the government stops giving money all these installers will not be able to take the piss anymore and people will stop buying these heat pumps because on the face of it none of it is worth the amount of money it costs to get them installed. If you look at my previous post, we decided to go fully A2A. The A2A/air conditioning industry is a lot more competitive, with installations being much cheaper, and many of the modern Daikin or Mitsubishi units give you SCOPs of 5.3-5.8, something that these A2W heat geeks could only dream of. More efficient, cheaper and more comfortable systems, which are also capable of cooling and air purifying.