Stair lift

Hopeful2

My mother needs a stair lift and I wonder if you can advise on the cheapest way to buy/fund one. She had one installed by MacMillan but now the cost is £500 per year which she cannot afford.

candygirl

My Dad got one fitted free when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.They are coming to take it away as he died 2 weeks ago, so not sure what criteria they use for allocating them free

Savvy_Sue

What is that £500 a year for, renting it? Maintenance and insurance?

Hopeful2

I would imagine the cost is for it all, not sure to be honest. My parents were given it for a year as my dad also had terminal cancer. Sorry to hear about your dad Candygirl.

Savvy_Sue

May be worth talking to Social Services, also to see if there are other adaptations which would make life easier for her.

Presumably your parents signed some sort of agreement for this stair lift, it would be worth reading through that. I wonder if there's some way of postponing paying the charges until after her death? I just feel that if the stair lift suits her, it's surely better to keep it than go to the expense and upheaval of removing it and installing a new one!

Another question - and I don't mean to sound rude by asking this - but can she really not afford it? Or is it just that £500 sounds like an awful lot of money to her, and she doesn't want to dip into savings because she's always been careful with money, or thinks your dad wouldn't have wanted to dip into savings, or ... you know the kind of thing.

Hopeful2

Thanks for responding. Unfortunately not as she does not have any savings and today said if she lives another 10 years it will cost £5,000. I think she would be better to just keep it to save any upheaval but wondered if anyone knew whether it would be better to purchase privately.

Savvy_Sue

If she can't afford the costs of this one, I'm not sure how she'll pay for a different one to be installed, never mind the ongoing maintenance costs for that.

Some other questions: do you have a local branch of Help the Aged or Age Concern who might be able to help or advise her? Is she claiming all she's entitled to? Is staying in her current home the best option, ie apart from the stairs can she manage well around the home? I realise that's not necessarily a question she wants to consider at the moment, especially if it's not long since your dad died, but it seems daft to worry about a stair lift if that's really the least of her problems and she can't use the bathroom properly or use the kitchen easily and the house is draughty and expensive to run and needs repairs and the garden's gone to seed ...

Babshubbie

Hopeful2 wrote: »

My mother needs a stair lift and I wonder if you can advise on the cheapest way to buy/fund one. She had one installed by MacMillan but now the cost is £500 per year which she cannot afford.

If after your research, (and only you know your personal circumstances) you want the best way to buy a stairlift, I suggest you visit nearby mobility shops. Most sell stairlifts and will give you advice. If you seek two or three quotes you will find the market is extremely competitive.

I cannot comment on the last sentence except that £500 per annum seems very high and surely can't be only for maintenance. Perhaps it is a complex set of stairs?

Savvy_Sue

I wondered if it was actually for renting the stairlift as well as maintenance etc. Renting a pre-owned one seems to be an option with some companies.

Hopeful2

Many thanks for all your help. I shall research at mobility shops and if little difference in cost encourage her to keep what she has. After reading this site I shall also arrange for someone to come and do an assessment to check she has everything avaialable for her own needs as the house was only assessed for my dad at the time.

Mojisola

Hopeful2 wrote: »

My mother needs a stair lift and I wonder if you can advise on the cheapest way to buy/fund one. She had one installed by MacMillan but now the cost is £500 per year which she cannot afford.

This is alarming! At that rate they will soon pay far more than if they'd bought one outright. Do check out what the money's for. Also contact Social Services about their needs.

My parents needed a stairlift and would have been provided with one for free by Social Services but there was an eighteen month wait and they really needed it immediately so they bought one.

It wasn't an easy thing to do - some of the companies out there use very high-pressure salesmen! My parents would have been royally ripped off if they hadn't had someone with them when the salesmen called. They had already been seen by a O.T. and had three specific requirements. We told the salesmen this as soon as the discussion started.

The first one got angry and stormed out of the house when he realised we weren't going to sign a contract immediately, mainly because none of his machines could do the things the physio said were necessary. If they had signed with him, they would also have spent over £1000 more than necessary!

The second one was much nicer but still tried to sell them a stairlift that didn't fit their requirements. I knew this because I had looked on the manufacturer's website. The hard sell started a few days later, culminating in them phoning seven times in an hour. When I said that I knew the stairlift they were trying to sell us didn't do what was needed, they got really cross and demanded to know how I had found out!

The third firm sent a man who was an installer/engineer, not a salesman. He was the only one who bought any samples - the others were selling from pictures. As soon as he was told about their requirements, he said there was only one model that could do them all and it was a basic range model. He got the sale!

I have a friend who bought a secondhand stairlift from the local paper's adverts and has been very happy with it. They are easy to install but you must be careful about it. A little boy in our town was killed by a secondhand stairlift because it had been designed to go up the righthand side of the stairs and had been installed on the left. The sensors that stop the lift as soon as it touches something were on the wrong side and so didn't stop the motor when his head got caught between the stairlift and the step.