Yes mate I see your point, but you've got it totally wrong.
I went with elecsa because they are there and have been set up by the ECA as a contractors association.
NIC have been set up as more of a consumer protection style association.
Elecsa always help their people out (providing they havent actually done anything wrong) in times of need. If I have a question I need answering there is always a knowledgable person on the other end of the line. More importantly it is my understanding that if a customer compains to NIC about you, for whatever reason (lets be honest there are some mental people out there) NIC will always take the customer's side and drag you over the coals, no matter what. Effectively, as a consumer protection association, that is all they are there to do. Elecsa are there to help improve the contractors, not just 'deal with the naughty ones'. To that end, Elecsa will always look into the problem and, wherever possible, will take the contractor's side. To be honest if I'm going to pay the best part of five hundred quid per year that's the sort of association I want to be with.
In my area, there are a lot of NIC guys, and I have seen a lot of their works and to be honest it's shoddy at best. Is this an indicmemt to NIC contractors everywhere? I doubt it, but obviously we never get called out to fix installations that were done perfectly! There are a fair few elecsa guys round here as well and I don't think Ive ever had a call out on one of their jobs, I may be wrong though. So in ths area at least, NIC seems to be making a bit of a name for itself with bad contractors.
Flukey yea I understand it's a bit different just watching, but to be fair this guy knew I was there, and you'd think if you were being watched by an outside party you'd lay it on a bit, wouldn't you? This guy only asked 'how far from gas meter/stopcock for bonding' and 'what's the tripping time for an RCD? (which my mate got wrong by the way)'. Then got my mate to do a Zs reading on a ring final s/o and an RCD tripping test. The jobs were a c/u change in my mates house and a PIR light on his neighbours, which both got a cursory glance, and to be honest while they worked fine, the c/u looked like spaghetti junction inside! The bloke was pretty much totally unfriendly though and seemed to be a total jobsworth, couldn't be bothered at all. I was going to go with NIC before looking into it and seeing the benefits of elecsa, and I figured 'well elecsa must be pretty much the same assessment wise'.
My assessor asked me much tougher questions and much more questions during the course, probably about 10 in all. Showed him my job (only need 1 job for elecsa which is maybe where people get the idea it's an easy route) which was a c/u change in my house - it was very neat and tidy as are all my C/Us - I'm a bit funny about having nice looking wiring. He pulled several cables, none of which came out, was looking at any exposed copper, how the MCBs were distributed over the 2 RCDs and asking me why I have done it this way etc etc. Then said 'it's a very good job' which was nice. Then did a series of tests, Ze, R1R2 on lighting circ, 500V IR, Zs, RCD, and asked how I would perform other tests like bonding and ramp etc. All this but he wasn't a hardass - was really friendly and helpful, made me at ease all the way through and gave me loads of tips for doing the job. Really nice bloke actually.
As I say, these are my experiences and the NIC guy may have been on an off day, but this is why I always refute peoples accusations that elecsa are the easy route.