Acorn stairlift hard sell warranty

back about easter time this year my wife at 51 years young had to retire due to various ill health problems, we had to get a stairlift asap due to her unable to climb stairs, now we live in a 1st floor maisonette we rang them up & a rep came round within 24 hours, on opening the front door he said to me that the stairs looked very narrow & they would have to import one from holland at a cost of £7,000 -told him straight off that if we are talking that kind of money then he can back in his car, he said he would take some measurements etc, we then had the whole " double glazing " routine from him, gave us a dvd to watch- fronted by that dr hilary of t.v fame, all very glossy etc, we had to opt for a curved version & after various phone calls to " head office ' he quoted £5,400 , we pointed out to him as my wife is registered disabled she is entitled NOT to pay v.a.t on these products, ( there was no mention of this in the sales patter ) but it was going to save us £800 ,we had to sign a form with my wife's registration number, now even though he had these forms in his case, he seemed reluctant to mention this upfront, so we duly paid a 50 % deposit we were told the installation would be within the week, we asked about extended warrantys etc, but was repeatedly told that that engineer would discuss all the options after installing, so we went ahead as i did not want to stress my wife with endless salesmen etc, the install was fine - took about 3 hours, then after being shown how to operate to stairlift came the bomb shell an ( 4 ) year extended warranty was £1600, they offer a bronze /silver / gold level of service but the gold one at £1600 is the one they keep pushing & pushing they do, the lift only comes with a one year warranty, and since easter hardly a week goes by without a call from them to sign up, to be fair the lift gives my wife the freedom she needs & its great for any heavy shopping etc, but the whole experience leaves a lot to be desired.

I've had to deal with some mildly irritating phonecalls from Acorn over the last couple of weeks. The 4 year warranty on my mothers Brooks stair-lift runs out in August (Acorn now own Brooks, seemingly) and they contacted us with an offer of £50 off the £595 cover fee.

Don't have a problem with that as such, but the girl who phones keeps insisting that the only method of payment they can do is over the phone and that my mother (90 years old with hearing problems and slight dementia) has to do personally. This is actually nonsense, as they do have the opportunity to pay by cheque on the forms, something someone of my mums generation is far happier with.

Twice I've requested that they post us the forms when they've phoned and twice we've received nothing. I eventually asked them to email me the forms which they finally did yesterday.

I think as well as the phone calls, the most irritating thing about these warranties is their insistance you can only take out 4-5 year contracts with one payment with no opportunity to spread the payments. £500 is a lot of money for a single payment,particularly for an elderly person of limited means.

Does anyone know if there are any reputable companies out there that offer alternative cover with better payment options?